This week, our intrepid independent MP turns his gaze upon Reform UK plc, a business whose USP is division, spite and (alleged) financial enrichment
How do we solve a problem called fascism?
We went through it in the 1930s with Mosley, in the 1970s with the National Front and in the 2000s with the British National Party. Now, with even far-right sympathies an electable option in Germany, British fascism has an acceptable face: a Dulwich College schoolboy who went into the City of London before time in European politics, who got into This Place at the eighth attempt and who earns far more money through his extraparliamentary interests than he does representing Clacton.
It’s a shame that he comes to the House of Commons so infrequently, pleading (quite rightly) that his life is in danger. But some would say he brought it on himself with his rhetoric, demeanour and colleagues. Let us consider the Not At All Hateful Eight who embody Reform UK plc, whose business is rage and who would rather not clean up, or have anybody else succeed in mucking out, the mess they helped create.
I think enough has been said about the party leader, except that one man is desperate to claim that the new MP for Clacton is called Nige Al-Faraj. I can’t see it catching on, but then the term ‘suicidal empathy’ has only taken a few week to be seeded into public discourse as the latest mutation of what used to be called ‘being politically correct’ or ‘woke’; like fascism, it’s the same body in a different cloak.
Robert ‘Jenners’ Jenrick, the MP for Newark in Nottinghamshire, is the man who embodies a certain type of politician: where the wind changes, so does his stance on everything. He is a shell of a man, whom I am sure is kind and generous to his friends, but it is clear he wants to be to Farage what JD Vance is to Donald Trump. Perhaps one day he will be the acceptable face of British fascism; a lot of people are saying that, but not I!
Third in line at Reform UK plc must be Richard Tice, the MP for Boston and Skegness and a very objectionable fellow. Did you know his mum loved horses more than him? I heard it on Radio 4 once. Although you can’t send a horse to Uppingham (but you can try to make it drink!), Dicky the Tice was like Jenners a Tory in the Brexit years but, unlike Jenners, was elected to represent Reform UK plc. He is (and I must say allegedly here) a spokesman for the forces that dislike ‘Net Stupid Zero’. Yes, that is his argument; fascism doesn’t really do nuance.
Then we come to the four other former Tories who, like Jenners, were poached by Reform UK: the born again Christian Danny Kruger, son of National Treasure Prue Leith from Bake Off; Suella Braverman, who was twice Tory Home Secretary despite being deeply unqualified; Andrew Rosindell, a man who rose without trace and represents the good people of Romford in Essex; and Lee Anderson, the Ashfield MP who started out as a Labour researcher, became a Tory MP and is now the man Reform UK wheels out when Tice is in Dubai, where his partner lives.
The business/party’s token woman is Sarah Pochin, who won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in May 2025, taking over from Mike Amesbury, who hit someone while in public office, which is a no-no in a way that open fascism is a yes-yes. Ms Pochin won by six votes. Democracy!, as Count Binface of Sigma IX would say. To prove that they’re not racist, there an actual Iraqi behind the scenes in Nadhim Zahawi (albeit one who was pals with Jeffrey Archer) and Zia Yusuf, who got his start fixing stuff for rich people and is now hopelessly compromised and lashing out whenever he is near a microphone. He too wants to be the leader, but as my media adviser Em said a while ago, he thinks he’s Gaston but he’s really LeFou.
Pray silence please for James McMurdoch, tossed to the wolves and the back benches for crimes that came to light even before he became MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock. What a lucky man, with constituents in Essex AND Kent!
Aditya Chakrabortty has followed a few messiahs, and can also speak money. He wrote a comment piece recently in the Guardian that Em flagged up for me, headlined ‘Does Nigel Farage know what people really think of him? I do – and he won’t like it’.
‘You know how in football it used to be Anyone But United?’ Vish said, as he took off his cycling gear and prepared for a day of speechwriting. ‘Here it’s Anyone But Reform.’
‘Or Restore,’ Em-Dash said. ‘The writer doesn’t mention the MP for Great Yarmouth.’
‘What’s his majority?’
‘Ha! He was born on Halloween. Ah, ah, ah!! Six racists. Ah, ah ah!’
‘He’s a muppet alright, allegedly,’ I said, munching on the first croissant of the day.
‘Your answer is 1426,’ Em said. ‘Very reachable if Binface goes up against him.’
‘Does Binny want to swap Sigma IX for the Suffolk coast?’
‘Norfolk, Al.’
‘Oh Norfolk’s sake. Let me reread your summary.’
Based on research by Hope Not Hate, who asked 9000 people to tell them where they would place their vote if there were to be a snap election, there would be two cohorts in the ABFs: what the US would term Antifa and what I call Not-Jenrick.
Writes Chakrabortty: ‘A party that wants Trump-style deportation squads on British streets, to curb further the right to protest and to slash social security might still lead the next government, or at least become the official opposition. Anyone worried by that prospect needs to understand who those anti-Farage voters are and what could get them off their sofas at an election.’
These ABFs certainly include your usual graduate types who have read some Monbiot or Laurie Penny, go Green or Labour ‘and ask their baristas for exotic milks’, but the others are to the right of the hard right, especially on economics; ‘think driveways [and] tidy lawns’. Such ABFs disdain Farage and Reform UK plc because they don’t go in hard enough; racism is ‘vulgar’ rather than offensive, even though the window has moved to make racism great again. Every time a Labour politician stands in front of a flag, or has a go at white liberals while appearing on a podcast hosted by a white liberal (cf the Home Secretary talking to Matt Forde), part of democracy fades.
Chakrabortty makes two points from this poll (and while I’m on this hobbyhorse, no more of these polls to prove a biased point, especially from the Marshall-Rothermere-Murdoch Mainstream Media, of which/whom much more in a future entry):
1. ‘What works against Reform in one seat will almost certainly not work in others’ because, unlike in the devolved regions, English nationalists ‘wear red corduroys and are bankrolled by foreign billionaires while bleating on about remigration for brown and black people’;
2. ‘Opponents of Reform share with its supporters an utter abhorrence of Westminster’ and the main parties rarely try to connect with them. Independent MPs like me, of course, depend on the votes of these Anyone But Incumbents.
The PM needs more than good TikTok game, important though that is, because Reform UK plc have aced social media and are big on Facebook, which has a light-touch approach to laws and suchlike. Just because James Purnell, the guy who pioneered BBC Sounds, is in charge behind the scenes, doesn’t mean he can do better than Morgan McMandy. Chakrabortty predicts ‘a disaster, not just for Labour, but for the rest of us’ if Purnell, the PM and the rest of the administration do not rid us of this canker. A lot of Guardian writers end their pieces with variations of ‘or else the fascists get in’.
Chakrabortty is on a roll, actually. On the train into This Place today I read his most recent piece from last week, where he did some shoe-leather journalism and went to Luton to talk to employees of the now shuttered Vauxhall plant. I implore you to read the piece in its entirety, hyperlinked here, because it looks at the cause, not the symptoms, of fascism, which begets racism, sexism and plenty of other isms; from desperation, we get fascism.
‘See this from a Luton worker’s point of view,’ the reporter asked the reader. ‘The company to whom you’ve given half your life has first castigated you for not being as cheap as your Turkish counterparts, then upped and left. The union to whom you pay your subs wasn’t able to stop it going. Also impotent was the Labour government you voted for – again. Luton lost its car plant under Tony Blair, it lost its van plant under Starmer. Now you’re out of work, and…you’ve just bought a house with a hefty mortgage.’
These ex-factory workers have switched their vote to Reform UK plc, and I wonder how much attention they paid to the Verbatim investigation into where the party get their money from (clue: it’s not through the trade unions). I expect the Labour Party were paying close attention to places like Luton, which has had more reason than most to fear fascism, what with the large Muslim population and, as Chakrabortty reminds us, being the town that brought us Andrew Tate and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. It should worry the government that these men, admittedly a tiny sample size of five, believe that all the workers have left the UK and taken their skills with them.
‘The economic models these guys discuss now are Donald Trump’s protectionism and Beijing’s historic public investment. European social democracy doesn’t rate a mention. “The system of capitalism is dying because people are seeing it’s not worked,”’ says one of the men. The quintet are pictured as the kind of honest men who toil in the engine room of our great nation. But Luton is struggling: even the town’s football team have been relegated twice in the last three seasons, having risen all the way to the Premier League after falling into non-league 15 years ago. They get a new stadium soon, which should be a boon to local industries, not least the airport, which helps transport people away from Luton.
While Reform UK plc took over Birmingham for Faragestock, its famous son Joe Lycett was live on Channel 4, the very broadcaster who screened the Verbatim investigation. On Friday night, he was Live From The Lycett Arms in East London, bringing back the spirit of TFI Friday, which itself is back as a Youtube show because all culture is nostalgia now. Incredibly, Em knows someone who knows someone who knows Lycett, and that somebody sorted her out with a pass to the show.
Lycett, who upstaged Liz Truss in 2022 by whooping and hollering as the poor thing was interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg, no longer seems welcome on the BBC, but he would never enjoy the straitjacket of due impartiality. His comedy is fuelled by anger, and he has on his face the same great silly grin that the old satirists did in the 1960s; one of those satirists was Alan Bennett, and that is probably the first time Bennett and Lycett have been put in the same sentence. Channel 4 was made for Lycett, whom Em calls ‘the yummy Brummie mummy’.
The man promised 'an unmissable anarchic hour of comedy, mischief and celebrity pub chat’, all in the best POSSIBLE taste; so he’s Kenny Everett too. I did tune in to see if Em was part of the show, but she wisely told me afterwards that she stayed hidden and asked the production team to, if at all possible, look for other people in the crowd to contribute to the skits and sketches. They made her go on her hands and knees so that Lycett could tell his guests not to worry, it was just a pub crawl.
Sara Cox, herself no stranger to zoo TV and now entrusted with the Radio 2 Breakfast Show, was the celeb manning the bar this week, with appearances from Guz Khan aka Man Like Mobeen and Marc Silcox, whose comedy is an acquired taste I am yet to acquire. This is the Britain that some have called Silly Sausage Britain. Most people would rather listen to Lycett than Reform UK plc; his 2022 stunt of shredding a vast amount of money was revealed to be a satirical attack on David Beckham, who seemingly (allegedly, I must add) says yes even before he knows which company is offering him a million dollars this week.
I asked Vish what companies Beckham sponsors or once sponsored, and he came back with this list: Pepsi, McDonalds, Stella Artois, Home Depot, Verizon, Bank of America, Lenovo, Nespresso, Emporio Armani, Gilette, Disneyland, EA Sports and, of course, Adidas. And Manchester United, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Paris St-Germain and the LA Galaxy, who all employed him to do his actual job of bending a football. Plus Inter Miami, which the folks who run American soccer gifted him and which is responsible for the twilight of Lionel Messi’s career.
Beckham prefers Walkers crisps and perfume, while Nigel Farage promotes bitcoin, gold bullion and fascism. And here’s where I come into it: I know that, when my constituents go to the polls to re-elect me or cast me out, many of them will vote with their heads. They will have watched the debates, heard the local radio appearances and read the manifestos, choosing where to place the X that defines parliamentary democracy in Britain. Many, however, will vote with their hearts. Which party has the most passion, the most volume, the most kudos, the nicest haircut, the ability to stand in a queue to pay their respects to Her Majesty? And what about that nice man who is fighting the establishment, even though his part is an establishment party bankrolled by billionaires?
David Beckham is now Sir David; Nigel Farage is plain old Nigel, and it appears he will not be in his post much longer. As Bob Dylan once sang, how many financial investigations must a man be under before you can end his career? The answer, my friend, should be one, but the genus Nigellus Faragius of the Fascist species is a reptilian creature who is covered in slime, ie. cryptocurrency millions. Rollcall: George Cottrell and his mum Fiona, Ben Delo who was pardoned by the US President, the Thai-based squillionaire Christopher Harborne who wants absolutely nothing in return for a £5m donation to Farage’s security. Or a Brexit bonus. Or a way to (allegedly) influence crypto policy.
Enough already. I think my constituents, if this weekend’s coffee shop surgery told me anything, are in two camps: some of them take his lead and call all of this an establishment smear that doesn’t stop the boats, while others are just fed up with how economical they are being with the truth. ‘I wasn’t listening’ is just about the least worst thing Mr Farage could have said after his policy director and de facto chief of staff, who are not ‘contractors’, were suspended or expelled. They couldn’t even get the story straight on Friday: Anderson said they were gone, Tice said there was an investigation, while Orr and Jukes, tossed overboard like so many other pieces of flotsam on the Good Ship Farage, couldn’t say a thing because it might upset the Great and Powerful Nigel.
That’s where we are: he is the Wizard of Clacton finally being revealed, after many millions of words, to be a puny little weasel, sticking to a fascist script that stopped being funny when Count Binface became the hero of an unnecessary by-election. I have received so many messages since Thursday night more or less ordering me to call the man a liar and a fraud. I think we should wait for this investigation to proceed, but I take their point. Maybe Joe Lycett should say something on his show, or turn him into a caricature.
Reform UK plc are an unserious organisation masquerading as anti-establishment; need I tell you that I twigged in 2023 that they were the Anti Elite Party (That Were Actually Elite). If you’re not establishment, why is your leader a member of Mayfair gentlemen’s clubs? Why do you contain five MPs who were literally Conservatives in the rump government of Sunak the Lame Duck? Why do you take money from billionaires? Why does a multimillionaire hedge fund manager, who also owns the Tory house magazine The Spectator, sink millions of pounds into a TV station with News in its name that exists as entertainment to promote fascist viewpoints to an audience who don’t like impartiality?
And yet Mr Farage and his party will keep claiming victimhood, will harp on that the system is rigged, will call everything a smear or a hoax; anything to keep SovereignTV viewers and conference attendees in a state of fear and anger. ‘Look at our MoU for the boats which are clearly being stopped! Don’t look at our finances, look at the migrants! Is that a dead cat in your pocket or do you just like my retail offering?’
Enough already, as one of the old codgers yelled at a cloud after I spoke to him at the coffee shop. I’m actually most angry at the Conservative Party. Whoever it was who said that there were far-right sympathies in the 1970s (the National Front) and the 2000s (the British National Party) whenever a gap emerges on the right of British politics needs to get themselves to The Rest Is Politics. This is all becoming even more of a farce than it already was. It will take a team effort, from members of This Place, from the client journalists who just follow the orders of their owners, and from the British public, who need to lobby their MP to call out these fabrications and bring an end to this era of British politics.
Far from being silly sausages, Reform UK plc are meat on the turn, with visible mould spores sprouting from it. And you know what you do with rotten meat: you toss it in the bin(face).