Nigel Farage may be favourite to be next PM – but Reform have a big challenge to prove they can run Britain
HEY, have you heard the news? Apparently, Nigel Farage is going to be the next Prime Minister.
Yep, the old rascal has gone and done it.
A YouGov poll this week put Reform UK ahead of Labour for the first time — and they’re already ahead of the Tories. Bookies now have Farage at 2/1 to be PM.
So long suckers, it’s Reform for the win!
Downing Street staff better start looking for a job lot of ash trays.
And get that bloody sparkling water out of the fridges — it’s real ale all the way now folks.
I’ll drink to that!
OK, OK, I know it’s four years until a general election.
But that will go quicker than you can say “Stop the boats!” Right?
Well, no.
Four years is a long time in life, but an even longer time in politics.
And for Farage that’s a blessing. He doesn’t want to be PM now.
He knows that would be a total disaster (he’d have to give up his £100,000-a-year TV show for a start).
But there is no longer any doubt that Reform UK are changing the political order.
And while opinion polls are often dubious — I conducted one for this newspaper recently that found HALF of all people in the UK had had a threesome (Really?) — this latest survey of voting intentions feels right.
Vast swathes of Britain are sick of Oh Dear Keir screwing everything up — and combative Kemi is struggling to cut through.
You don’t have to go to Britain’s decaying seaside towns to understand that.
Disaffection is everywhere.
Farage is like the cat who got the cream, declaring: “Reform have all the momentum in British politics.
“Our positive attitude for solving the desperate problems that face our country is getting results.”
But while he drinks in this newfound support (by the pint, natch) Farage still has a mountain to climb.
Where are the Right Honourable men and women that will get the member for Clacton-on-Sea across the line and into No10?
It is one thing to have a “positive attitude” and say all the right things, but quite another to have enough sensible people on board to turn attitude into action.
Let’s not forget that despite the noise they generated at the last election, Reform only have five MPs. The 13 seats they were predicted to win by the exit polls (those dodgy polls again!) never materialised.
Farage boasts of being able to get an overall majority, but to get that he must find another 321 credible candidates by 2029.
That is one hell of a long shot, but not impossible — many bright young activists are joining and the list of Tory defectors is growing (Marco Longhi became the third former Tory MP to make the switch, joining last month).
But the party’s short history tells another story.
Reform have a notorious knack of attracting some of the most unpleasant people in Britain.
At the last election, Reform candidates were found to have called black people thick, lazy and “savages” and suggested immigrants should be “slaughtered”.
Poison the well
One of their own prospective MPs, Georgie David, even went as far as saying — as she defected to the Tories — that the “vast majority of candidates are indeed racist, misogynistic and bigoted”.
The vast majority!
It would only take a few of them next time round to poison the well.
However tough Farage thinks his vetting process is, or how much he tries to distance himself from thugs like Tommy Robinson, Reform continue to be plagued by racism and extreme views.
Indeed, no sooner had the champagne corks been swept up after a previous positive opinion poll last week, they were caught up in another scandal.
Reform’s ex-leader in Scotland, Michelle Ballantyne, quit the party after being suspended over her links to a Facebook page that featured racism and far-right bigotry.
She denies having anything to do with the appalling comments and claims she is the victim of a “witch hunt”.
OK. But who will be next?
If Farage is to prove the bookies and pollsters right, he needs to use his famous charm to reform Reform and fill it with decent human beings.
To his credit, he has hired some new blood, untainted by Reform’s chaotic infancy.
New chairman and major donor, Zia Yusuf, an impressive former finance guy, is helping “professionalise” the party.
(He has already had some success without having to lift a finger, purging those who don’t want Reform being chaired by a man who proudly describes himself as a “British Muslim patriot”).
Because while Reform may well be shaping the way Britain is run, the big challenge now is to prove they can be trusted to actually run it.
VANCE'S BLAZE OF RORY
I RECENTLY read new US Vice President JD Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, primarily to mug up on the New World Order.
It’s a heartbreaking tale, detailing his chaotic upbringing in the Appalachian “hillbilly” heartland of Ohio. I recommend it.
Vance’s story is a far cry from that of ex-Tory MP Rory Stewart, the smug son of an MI6 officer who was educated at Eton.
So I grabbed the popcorn for their recent Twitter/X spat.
The eminently bog-washable Stewart took issue with Vance’s interpretation of Christian values and decided to lecture him.
You would have thought Vance had bigger fish to fry than clapping back at a small-time politico on the internet.
But the comment riled him enough for him to reply that Rory was one of those people with “an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130”.
Ouch!
But while deliciously caustic, his reply was too generous.
As any student of the English class system could tell him, Rory is in fact a typical elitist toff who thinks anyone who wasn’t in his Latin class at Eton is beneath him.
TYPICAL CHINA
THE West’s DeepSeek AI tantrum continues to baffle.
Even a bozo like me knows that whatever we make, the Chinese will rush out a knock-off version before you can say “cheap and nasty”.
Yet somehow all the brains – and yes, AI computing power– of Silicon Valley failed to predict that the communist kleptos were working on their own chatbot.
And that they would make it for buttons.
The only surprising thing about this whole situation is it’s taken them this long to show their hand.
NOWT BETTER
TOP tip, fellas. This Valentine’s Day, present your missus with a fancy gift box containing . . . absolutely nothing.
As her face turns to thunder, casually inform her that no, you hadn’t forgotten to get her anything – you have in fact bought her a garment from Bianca Censori’s spring/summer ’25 collection.
After all, wearing nothing is the inevitable next step for Kanye’s flesh-flaunting “muse”.
So you’ll look bang on trend – and save yourself a few bob in the process.
You’re welcome!
Cynical abomination
HOW do you stop your kids getting hooked on a mobile phone?
Maybe don’t buy this cynical abomination I spotted at the weekend, in a bookshop of all places.
It’s cute that the manufacturers insist it’s only suitable for 18 months or older.
I guess you don’t want any newborns getting drunk on breast milk and firing off an inappropriate text at 2am.
Blame greedy Jim for Man Utd’s Rash decisions
JEEZ, Marcus Rashford looked like he’d been taken hostage by Aston Villa when they unveiled him the other night.
The poor lad, at Villa on loan, has had a terrible run of form at Man United but it’s not been helped by the management upheaval at the club.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s tenure has been a disaster – fleecing fans to watch below-par action. Greedy Jim, brought in another sir – Mr Marginal Gains, David Brailsford – to mastermind the comeback and so far he’s been a gigantic flop.
The Reds were seventh in the table when he arrived in December 2023 – they’re now 13th.
So a new owner, a new tactician and new coach in Ruben Amorim and they are still – to use the local parlance – a bag o’ shite.
It’s all just left many of us fans wondering . . . maybe it’s not the players, Jim, maybe.
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