In the same 24-hour period that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and MAGA imploded into staggering acrimony, where Musk alleged Trump looms large in the Epstein Files, the chairman of Reform, Zia Yusuf, quit the party. This was on the very day of the Hamilton and Lanark by-election. and came after the brand-new MP Sarah Pochin called to ban burqas. And it showed to Yusuf at least the obviousness of the party’s true colours.
For Yusuf, was this a ‘this leopard ate my face’ moment, or is it a ‘First they came for the Jews’ moment? At this point I’d have said “Zia, take note! Be a hero and…” – but as of 7pm on Saturday night the situation’s changing again …
Aping DOGE in the UK
Another Reform quitter (when I wrote this yesterday) is tech entrepreneur Nathaniel Fried, who was only days ago fully aboard Reform’s demand to carry out a DOGE-style audit of Kent County Council, threatening any resistance with a motion being passed. Disregarding that councils are externally audited anyway, or the theory that this is just Reform kicking up so as to cry Conspiracy! when Kent County Council Deep State kills it, the ironic idiocy is part of the background to the Musk-Trump-Bannon fallout is the failure of the real DOGE. This promised trillions in savings by mass-scraping by teenage agents of the most sensitive of American state and citizens’ data for reasons yet unclear. However, we must assume they’re sinister – and it was MAGA eminence gris Steve Bannon saying so and now, now, demanding Musk be deported as an illegal immigrant – situation unfolding …
I was going to imagine Tice trumpeting implementing DOGE over here just as it smashes into the toilet over there, to the sarcastic applause of Reform’s dead-eyed ex ex-luminaries Ben Habib or MP Rupert Lowe, whose massive public bust-ups with Reform as much ape MAGA as anything. But this might change in the next five minutes.
I remember going into late last year, all that talk of Reform getting $100 million from Elon Musk – until in January he declared Farage ‘doesn’t have what it takes’ to lead the party, preferring jailbird Tommy Robinson (since released but possibly heading back). Musk unanchored from MAGA may reseek a political home to wreck – he enjoyed spreading misinformation about Southport – and may offer again to Reform – but, would even Farage want anything to do with so loose a cannon? Let me refer my Honourable friend to the reference to Musk’s regard for ‘sensitive information’ I made just moments ago …
How seriously should we take Musk’s morals when he chooses now, now, to ‘reveal’ Trump is the ultimate Epstein A-lister? Similarly puzzling that only now, now does Steve Bannon think Musk being not quite American enough is an issue and he should be deported – but at the same time a South African billionaire stoking riots in our country hasn’t chafed with Reform’s patriotism.
Climate change and Net Zero
On this point of aping DOGE just as DOGE dies, Dale Vince brilliantly shows how Reform has made the boldest claims of savings to be made by wrecking Net Zero and DEI – numbers as wildly wrong as the claimed benefits of Brexit – yet more notably maybe is they’re as wrong on a scale with the trillions Musk claimed to be able to cut, by the same means. It’s pan-Atlantic populist bollocks.
The attack on Net Zero: Reform UK control the Mayoralty and County Council in Lincolnshire with myself as local MP … If you are thinking of investing in solar farms, Battery storage systems, or trying to build pylons … Think again … We will fight you every step of the way … We will win … because binning a billion pounds of investment, 12,000 jobs, and stymying the fast-growing renewables industry is a ‘win’.
Farage doesn’t deny climate change is happening, just says Net Zero is futile and expensive when China and India blaze away on coal (although China’s added more solar in the last year than Germany’s entire capacity). Tice, however, pushes not the debate about the extent of anthropological impact on the climate, but says carbon dioxide is so tiny a part of the atmosphere it makes no difference.
We’ve had parallels between the American and British far-right for years. Attacking the judiciary. Attacking the (disloyal) media. Withdrawing from, unfunding, upturning international bodies (the United Nations, the World Health Organsation, the International Criminal Court, the EU, NATO). Abetting Putin. Getting our supporters to riot on the basis of complete lies, like who was responsible for the Southport murders being akin to the 6 January riots about the non-theft of the 2020 US election (per the stunt of wheeling out a gallows, the Brits For Brexit pipped the 2020 Patriots US Against Pence on that one). Weaponising racism, assuming brown folks are rapists (Mexicans for MAGA and South Asians for the Brits), and deporting ‘illegals’ (regardless of their constitutional rights for MAGA or international law for the Brits) to foreign prison (US to El Salvador, UK to Rwanda).
Just like in the US, Reform has decided the woes of the world rest with non-WASP men achieving things, so they bundle on attacking anything DEI and all things Pride, including the pettiest of actions like taking down Pride flags (while Nigel’s alma mater, Dulwich College, flies one high over its school pavilion).
Spillover
A real problem is the spillover. Rooting out DEI initiatives in public bodies is something the self-styled conservative-socialist ‘Blue Labour Group’ says Starmer’s government should do, in part to see off the threat of Reform – by dint of doing what Reform would do anyway. That’s not seeing off a threat so much as allowing yourself to be coopted by bigots.
And they’re poisoning the discussions on other subjects, like abortion. Only a year ago, as the pro-life group Right To Life summarised, Farage had never really taken a position on abortion – but now, backed by the anti-abortion, anti-trans, US-based Christian-legal Alliance Defending Freedom, which truly loves Trump’s executive orders, he’s all over restricting it and using the same lethal, ungrounded hyperbole to make his case. He’s demanding debate in parliament about it – though as Stella Creasy said, that he didn’t even show up to the committee to discuss amending the law on abortion, shows his views are solely a ‘batsignal’ to US entities that a Farage government would make the UK open season for them.
All the time Farage spends not in Clacton but across the pond, sucking up to Trump, by April having done eight trips to the US – versus zero Clacton constituency surgeries – since becoming an MP less than a year before, to see his friend Trump, who, even by his own gargantuanly vain sense of entitlement, remarked almost quizzically of Farage, “He’s always been my friend for some reason.” Calls for him – prompted not least by himself – to be the UK’s ambassador to the US.
And it’s the language of it all, the shoulder-rolling, balls-on-the-table machismo, the posturing, the threats, of the language as we saw with Tice, ‘we will fight you’ like we see with MAGA, there’s no discussion or debate, there’s just US and THEM. Just as arch Trumper and now FBI chief Kash Patel told anyone perceived as an enemy of MAGA – and he particularly aimed at the media – that ‘We’re going to come after you’, a phrase Lee Anderson then used to threaten the BBC . For the same thin-skinned Trumpian reason he didn’t like what they’d said about him on Have I Got News For You.
Or indeed sucking up to America First at all. You cannot be a British patriot and be in league with America First. Americ First doesn’t have any friends – it hates most of the people in its own country, and the entirety of the rest of the world is its to ravage and rape – including the United Kingdom.
Patriotism?
A very quick example: Farage’s News star Ben Leo on America First Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk’s show, describing the UK now as under some ‘Biden’-esque regime of ‘libs’, from which it’ll be hopefully soon liberated. This was while the US had levied tariffs on the British economy, from 10% and even then after a trade deal was struck, a load more, up to 50%, on steel. There is nothing patriotic about going on foreign platform and attacking your own country to a foreign audience, using the divisive right-wing words of a foreign entity, a foreign entity actively seeking to damage our economy. That is the opposite of patriotic. There is no special relationship. They are not our friends. They don’t want friends, they want others to ‘willingly’ submit to their abuse cos it means less noise and legal fees later on.
Their influence on a practical level is as profound, US interested parties embedding with our far-right and seek more opportunities hereafter since a decade or more, Steve Bannon’s Cambridge Analytica antics in 2016 leading Farage to thank him for winning it for Leave, Bannon’s influence metastasising into British right-wingery to have Suella Braverman, Jacob Rees-Mogg wearing MAGA hats if not appearing a la Lettuce Truss to speak at MAGA events. Those on the ground outside the Commons will have seen the weird, American-staffed fairground organ jalopy for ‘Liberty’ that also the Brexit Party’s bastardised aping of the Jarrow March, or the hardcore Brexiters replacing their UKIP flags with Trump 2024 flags.
Chaos and suffering
Chaos, so much chaos. It’s hard to keep up. This piece will be worthless the second it’s published if not already. For sure, it’s all going south, as I write and had been doing so for hours if not days. But there’s real hate being generated, unbelievable damage being wrought upon our systems ability to function, people’s faith in them at all, and millions, tens, hundreds of millions of people to suffer.
