At the moment it looks odds on whoever contacts his constituency office for advice will get a response referencing Hitler in some way at least.
This hilarious if true! Farage is complaining that a company Reform UK Ltd paid £144k to do background checks on their candidates didn't provide any reports. It appears the company doesn't do reports, they just provide access for clients to do their own: https://x.com/Frances_Coppola/status/1803088353148981720?t=9sl3LFdmaygA6_n0DRW3gw&s=19
And their platform is tax cuts built on efficiency savings. You shudder to think of the damage they could do in Government.
Farage accuses the West of ‘provoking’ the Ukraine war. For most ordinary politicians this would be a big problem but it seems likely that many of his followers are ready to swallow this sort of line after years of softening up with irrationalities.
Would've been page after page of "Corbyn is a Putin apologist, can't trust him on defence" if he was still a leader as pretty sure this is his position too. The shills for hire in the Telegraph, Mail, Sun et al obviously won't mention it for Nige though. It's incredible how many people who think of themselves as patriots are willing to align themselves with a hostile state run by a warmongering madman. Watford's own mega patriot Dougie Brimson had a Russia flag on his Twitter bio for years, whilst railing against #WokefordFC and getting upset about players taking the knee.
I posted on another thread that this is also the case with Farage’s record of spreading antisemitic conspiracies about ‘the Jewish lobby’ and George Soros. But then there is almost no limit to the areas where Farage has said flakey or disgraceful things and allied himself with very shady characters. The Tory press does not want to know, because it may have to back him as the future direction of conservatism and even the Tories under threat of election annihilation won’t take the gloves off, because they either fear the backlash or, like Truss and Andrea Jenkyns, are lining up another go under his leadership. Vote Farage and get the worst of the Tories back, including their disgraced or failed councillors now standing as Reform candidates.
And then there is Reform UK’s Ben Aston. Ben used to have a Twitter account themed on his twin passions of cycling and talking bollox about Jewish people. The Times article on this is behind a paywall. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/religio...-coming-to-uk-reform-candidate-said-gh3p0kmrg but it appears to be more global conspiracy ‘Great Replacement Theory.’ There are some disturbing and nutty theories the World over about Jewish people but the idea that they seek specifically the immigration of Muslim people is genuinely baffling.
Can't speak for the Mail or Sun, but he's been getting slated by most journalists and columnists in the Telegraph for his latest remarks on Putin. Albeit they have also since published an article written by Farage himself where he tries to explain his comments.
Is that something you can do round here? The interesting thing will be to see how all these pundits and rival politicians respond going forward. Farage isn't going to drop or moderate his views on the Russia topic and assuming he's an MP from 5 July he'll have the platform to keep pushing it, especially as the Tory party licks its wounds and goes through a bit of a reformation. We've seen in America career politicians and party officials perfectly happy to blast the populist messenger when he's outside their tent but once he's in droves of them are happy to renounce their previous views. I can something similar happening here with Farage. The most important thing now is to keep the receipts.
If he'd managed to get the gays in there he'd have absolutely smashed it TBF. As it is, it feels half baked.
Over the weekend I got round to watching this and it was, a fairly engrossing (emphasis on 'gross' considering the subject matter) watch. Jones was as odious as I expected but some of his hangers on were off the scale. I wondered half-way through if der Färager had ever appeared on Jones' show - I could have looked online but that was a series of rabbit holes I didn't particularly wish to go down. Just booted up my PC to see this: Farage appeared to compare Sandy Hook parents to liberals trying to curb free speech In a 2018 interview with US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Reform UK leader said liberals were ‘the very fascists they criticise’ Which carries this captioned photograph of der GROPAZ:
WTF? https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ilmed-secretly-making-racist-homophobic-slurs I know much as the partei supporters are delusional and gullible but that is surely taking the piss?
This could be big. If it is a Channel 4, or more likely an independent production company, plant then that's very serious and as far as I can see covered by electoral fraud laws. Very likely heads will roll and prison time might well be on the cards. If Farage is wrong and it isn't orchestrated, then it may well kill off his political career and possibly even the party. Even if he can explain it away as a party research told him it was a fraud any thread of credibility reaming will have gone. Lets see if its reported that might well give us a clue which camp it's in.
Edit thinking about this he may well be a genuine supporter who happens to be an actor who has been caught out and has been thrown under the bus by the party. I think that's the only way either side comes out without egg or is it milkshake all over their faces.
I've not read / seen everything he's said but the little I have Farage's language has been quite ambiguous. At least ambiguous enough to give him room to pivot away in a general anti-C4 / establishment thing. Personal view is it'll melt away into nothing after next week.
The actor has already been clear that he is a Reform supporter. You are right that it would be a massive deal if he was a plant but he doesn’t appear to be and the line being taken by Farage is smokescreen. Follow any Reform conversation on X and most end up with some expressing these views and others skating close to the acceptable line.
If he were a plant why the heck would he use his own name? It just doesn't make sense. It was easy to link him to his "acting profile" and give Reform UK Ltd a way to discredit him. I suspect he is a racist that just happens to do some acting. If it was a "set up" to attack Reform UK Ltd then it was very clumsily done.
I only watched some of that dispatches, but the Andrew bloke wasn't the only one. The whole campaign team were in a pub carpark saying stuff that gets any of us sacked.
Do you? Undercover isn’t a nice tactic but sometimes it’s justified. If someone got in on another party’s campaign and it’s team were expressing vile views about gay people, races or religions you’d want to know. Frankly, this was waiting to happen. Reform social media is a cesspit of anti-Islam prejudice that also takes in other groups. Farage was getting to campaign as if it wasn’t a factor, not a luxury the other parties, esp Labour, have. I do have one view of this, which is that Farage and co are absolute b’stards for telling everyone this guy was a plant. They could be cross that he showed them up but to accuse him of being a traitor, with all the possible consequences for his safety, is low.
The problem for Farage is that many of Reform UK Ltd supporters on X and the like are saying that they agree with what was said by the canvassers on the C4 report. When Farage initially condemned it he was in danger of losing part of his base. This conspiracy theory that has been conjured up is very convenient for him imho.
My initial reaction on learning that the chap is an actor was that it sounded like it might be a set up purely on the basis that I tend to think of luvvies as being more left wing in their politics and generally less likely to have racist views than, say, a van driver from Eltham. But then Mrs Lloyd pointed out that that Fox bloke who spends his time annoying people on the Internet with his daft and dodgy opinions is, or was, a thesp apparently, so my case collapsed. But if it does turn out that C4 set it up I think the punishment should be severe - and I'd say that regardless of whatever side of the divide their target was from.
