The overt negative influence on X has only grown more apparent since then, and my feeling that it should be banned as a platform has only increased.

The government should have acted then. I’m not optimistic that they’ll act now

Something decidedly odd was happening on BlueSky last night. No, it wasn’t a new influx of patrons celebrating their departure from X as usually happens when Musk’s platform does something particularly horrific.

It was different - slightly more low-key, but potentially far more telling. It was first picked up (by my reckoning at least) by Alex Ip from Xylom, who noticed that the BlueSky team was working particularly late doing masses of verifications - very specifically, verifications of political parties in Canada. This led him to speculate that there may be a coordinated move happening between the governments of Canada, Australia and the UK to potentially ban X.

A move like this would be, and I’m not underselling this, monumental. Since its founding in 2006 (20 years ago?!), X was the go-to platform for breaking news across the world. It has been instrumental in the communication strategies of nearly all governments globally, played incredibly important roles in the mobilisation of revolutions, specifically in 2011 during the Arab Spring.

X, however, is no longer that platform. Now more than ever, with X’s robot happily allowing for the creation of non-consensual sexual imagery of women and children, I think it’s time for our government to depart the platform - or, even better, ban it completely.

Which brings me to the meat of this piece: the possibility of a ban. The idea first started growing legs late last week when The Telegraph reported that a ban was under consideration. This came off the back of comments made by Liz Kendall, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, who commented that:

“Sexually manipulating images of women and children is despicable and abhorrent... I, and more importantly the public, would expect to see Ofcom update on next steps in days not weeks.”

She also noted that the Online Safety Act:

“…includes the power to block services from being accessed in the UK, if they refuse to comply with UK law” and that “if Ofcom decide to use those powers they will have our full support”.

At the time of writing, there have been no official announcements about a ban, however, as Alex Ip noted, where there is smoke, there is most certainly fire - and this potential fire could be a full-on conflagration, especially in certain parts of society that have become increasingly dependent on X.

I would personally be very much in favour of banning X - there is no good reason for it to still have a presence in the UK.

The lack of moderation, an algorithm that amplifies far-right conspiracies and this most recent scandal clearly demonstrate that the once go-to platform has become a shell of itself. I am likely not alone in this. YouGov found in 2025 that only 12% of Britons have a favourable view of the platform, with 63% being unfavourable. I can’t imagine that has improved over the past year given the multiple scandals (”Mecha-Hitler”, EU fines and now unregulated AI image creation) swirling around not only the platform, but its billionaire owner.

Many of X’s proponents will argue this week that this is nothing more than an authoritarian crackdown on free speech by the UK government. They’ll be, if I’m honest, uncomfortable arguments, because who really wants to defend a platform that has become as ignominious as X has - and I discussed a few of these on the very first episode of Bear and Monk Debunks.

The primary defence will be that there is undue focus by governments around the world on X, and that crime is prevalent on all the other major platforms. This argument was rolled out by the Telegraph in a piece written by Jake Wallis Simons this weekend, who noted that:

“Grok is not the only AI system able to carry out such intrusions. Clearly, this is part of a much larger problem involving the helter-skelter pursuit of super-intelligence with scant regard for the human consequences... TikTok is widely exploited by human traffickers, while paedophiles are known to target children using Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. None of those are facing a ban.”

What he’s saying is not untrue - there have been major issues across all major social media platforms. But he’s leaving out three things that make the situation X finds itself in stand out:

Scale, design and response.

Yes, crime happens on all platforms - however, there is a fundamental difference between a crime happening on a platform and a platform being architecturally optimised for harm, and what we’re seeing with X isn’t a failure to prevent abuse - it’s the systematic removal of the infrastructure specifically designed to stop it.

Independent researcher Genevieve Oh found that Grok was producing between 6,700 and 7,000 sexualised images per hour during peak periods in early January. By comparison, the top five dedicated deepfake pornography websites combined produced only 79 such images per hour. That’s 84 times more abuse content than platforms specifically designed for this purpose. The scale is just staggering.

In terms of design, when xAI launched Grok’s image generation tool, they made a conscious choice to include “spicy mode” - a feature explicitly designed to allow NSFW content with minimal restrictions. This wasn’t an oversight - it was marketed as a selling point, positioning Grok as an “unfiltered” alternative to what Musk characterised as overly censorious AI systems.

Competitors like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic all implement strict filters against non-consensual intimate imagery.

Grok deliberately didn’t, which was a design choice, not a technical limitation.

The most damning aspect of this all though, is the response - or rather, spectacular lack of one.

When journalists initially contacted xAI for comment, they received an automated reply:

“Legacy Media Lies”.

When Elon Musk himself was confronted with AI-generated images of women and children in sexualised scenarios, he responded with laugh-cry emojis.

When the Internet Watch Foundation confirmed finding criminal images of children aged 11-13 that appeared to have been created using Grok, xAI’s solution was to put the abuse tool behind a paywall - in effect monetising harm rather than preventing it.

When other social media companies discover child sexual abuse material, they report it and take immediate action.

They do not send snarky auto-replies.

They do not laugh.

They do not charge people for access to the tools creating the abuse.

What’s absent from Simons’ assessment is that X didn’t only fail to stop this abuse. Under Musk’s ownership, the platform systematically dismantled the infrastructure that could have and should have prevented it.

Musk fired 80% of the engineers working on trust and safety.

Musk disbanded Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council.

Musk reduced full-time content moderators from 107 to 51.

Musk was warned that Grok’s image generation function was essentially a nudification tool waiting to be weaponised.

Musk then proceeded to ignore those warnings.

So when we’re asked why X is facing potential bans whilst other platforms aren’t, the answer is simple - because X made deliberate choices to remove safeguards, to ignore warnings and to respond to criminal content with contempt. The very foundation upon which X is now built is architectural negligence at best, and complicity at worst.

Which leads me to the ultimate question: should the UK government ban X?

Five years ago, I would have said that question was unthinkable, and banning it would have been similar to shutting down the telephone network.

But, crucially, X is no longer that platform - and it hasn’t been for some time.

What we have now is a service that has systematically dismantled its safety infrastructure, deliberately designed AI tools to bypass industry-standard protections, and responded to the creation of child sexual abuse material with mockery and monetisation. This isn’t about one scandal, however horrific, but a pattern of choices that demonstrate fundamental contempt for user safety and the rule of law.

The inevitable cries of “censorship” and “free speech” ring exceedingly hollow, because a ban on X isn’t about silencing dissent or controlling the flow of information.

It’s about holding a platform accountable for enabling criminal content at industrial scale. Free speech and the freedom of expression has never included the right to create non-consensual sexual imagery of women and children - this is explicitly illegal in the United Kingdom, and there is no legal or moral framework under which what Grok has been doing is defensible.

Two countries have already acted - Indonesia and Malaysia implemented bans on Grok over the weekend, determining that X’s responses were insufficient and that the platform’s design posed inherent risks to women and children.

France has opened a criminal investigation.

India issued a 72-hour ultimatum.

Ofcom has made clear it’s considering all options, including a ban, with the full support of the UK government.

Would a ban cause disruption? Without a doubt.

Government departments would need to find alternative communication channels, journalists would lose a tool they’ve relied on for nearly two decades and public figures who’ve built audiences on the platform would need to migrate elsewhere. None of these are trivial concerns.

But the alternative - allowing X to continue operating with gross impunity - sends an equally powerful message: that platforms can architect harm, ignore warnings, fire their safety teams, and face no meaningful consequences as long as they’re sufficiently embedded in our digital infrastructure. This is a precedent that no reasonable government should be comfortable setting.

This is a watershed moment for tech accountability, and what happens next will determine whether we live in a world where platforms answer to the law, or where the law bends around platforms too large to fail.

I, for one, know which world I’d rather live in.

I wanted to send a quick note out to say a quick “totsiens!1”

After an absolutely non-stop few months since my dad’s funeral in South Africa, starting a new job that’s had me up and down the country like a blue-arsed fly, and politics in the UK (and the rest of the world) deciding to self-immolate on a nearly weekly basis, I am taking my husband on an extremely overdue week break to sunny Spain.

Now, I’m fully aware that this is not an airport, and there’s no need for me to announce a departure, however, this post also serves as a massive thank you to each and every one of you. I have, without a doubt, had the most challenging six months of my life.

Between my decision to leave the NHS in December, trips to and from South Africa to smooth my dad’s departure from this world, learning an entirely new industry, trying to keep Bearly Politics growing, writing columns, publishing guest pieces, and attempting to remain at least semi-functional as a human being, there have been moments where it has all felt a little overwhelming.

Through all of that, though, this community has been extraordinary.

You have read my ramblings, challenged my thinking, shared your own stories, corrected my mistakes, supported my work, and, more than once, reminded me that there are still a great many decent people out there trying to leave the world slightly better than they found it.

For a bloke who started writing largely because shouting at Twitter felt more productive than shouting at the television, the fact that thousands of people now choose to spend part of their day reading what I have to say remains both humbling and faintly ridiculous.

So thank you.

Thank you to those who subscribe. Thank you to those who share posts. Thank you to those who comment thoughtfully. Thank you to those who disagree without being complete bellends. Thank you to those who have sent kind messages during some really, truly dark moments over the last few months.

It has meant more than you probably realise.

For the next week, I intend to spend less time staring at Westminster and more time staring at the Mediterranean.

An honestly healthier use of my rapidly diminishing eyesight - though I will of course be popping into my news app from time to time to check in on Makerfield.

Look after yourselves, be kind to one another, try not to overthrow any democracies without me, and I’ll see you all on the other side.

Much love,

Bear

If you have any ideas that you would like to contribute to Bearly Politics, please feel free to send those to iratusursusmajor@gmail.com.

The UK’s mainstream legacy press is predominantly right to far-right wing. Despite reductions in all physical newspaper sales and the shift online, right-wing media (RWM) still dominates the news arena with a significantly larger reach than left and centre news publications.

This right-wing ascendancy has been further boosted by the advent of the GB News “soapbox” which, together with the usual suspects (the Express, Sun and Mail), provides a Reform mouthpiece. But there’s also been a shift further right in previously more neutral publications, notably the Telegraph and Times.

Adherence to standards of impartiality and proper scrutiny is now often token and in “power struggles over our ears and eyeballs” shared by influencers like Mr Beast.

Unsurprisingly, the UK now ranks a rather shameful 18th in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index with uncomfortable similarities to Orban’s Hungary. 80% of UK press media is owned by right-leaning wealthy oligarchs, as was Orban’s. Journalists have been censured using SLAPPS, regulatory appointments, digital surveillance and smear campaigns. And just as Hungary’s media became promotors of Orban’s party, Fidesz, so IPSO’s infamous toothlessness has hastened the corrosion of editorial neutrality, paving the way for predominantly right-leaning media to become ‘left-bashing’ Reform cheer leaders.

The heavily concentrated ownership of our news media by right-wing oligarchs is well documented. But it’s also worth considering how the RWM manipulation of social attitudes works, and how we should respond.

Construction industries

The leading social media platforms (X, Facebook and Tiktok) enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the RWM in which news is mutually amplified and mediated. But despite algorithmic tailoring, much online content still flows from what the RWM decides to headline. It’s a primary lens through which we experience our political world on a day-to-day basis. We understand politicians not so much through what they do in the raw, or through social media noise, but through how the RWM frames them.

RWM framing uses laser-guided tactics like labelling, suppression, selective exposure and normalisation, all especially powerful where we lack independent experience for comparison. Most of us are largely dependent on the media to shape our understanding of figures like Andy Burnham, Nigel Farage and Zak Polanski. With a clean slate, the RWM is essentially free to construct political reality around these figures from scratch.

Playtime

This freedom is harnessed to a destructive rationale within the dominant RWM - the gladiatorial “sport” of making or breaking politicians whose audacious profession renders them ‘fair game’.

This nihilistic modus operandi is common amongst the political commentariat. It’s perhaps inevitable though in a culture whose contributors, often from the same privileged education stables, are relegated to the side-lines. If their professional purpose is to comment rather than act, what’s left except to gameplay, exercising their tribal power over the actions of others?

This sport isn’t confined to the RWM, but the effects are proportional to its considerably greater reach, and its influence is pernicious across the RWM spectrum from the more subtle Times to the explicitly rage-baiting Daily Mail.

Display stand politics

The RWM is viscerally contemptuous of Polanski. Predictably, as a leader who threatens the right-wing status quo, there’s a gaping contrast between how he’s portrayed and the indulgent treatment of Farage. The RWM quickly wrapped Polanski in insinuating labels, deploying ‘hypnotist’ as an early identifier. This formed the basis of further understanding, solidifying into beliefs about ‘untrustworthiness and inauthenticity’ through repetition and familiarity, and attracting other consonant labels which together formed a consistent mental ‘Polanski’ map.

Related high frequency descriptors the RWM flogged were: ‘actor, tax dodger, antisemite, drug legaliser, ‘narcissist’. This spicy wordplay assembled a mesh of attributes that lodged itself within social discourse, further shaping ‘Polanski’ as a faulty political type. Even as a debate, seeds were successfully planted. Splashed daily across supermarket and garage forecourt display stands, these labels are the only prompts for some on how to vote.

With Polanski thus sculpted, counter-information can’t then land. Humanitarian concerns about Gaza or wealth inequality can legitimately be discussed by bodies like the UN. But out of Polanski’s mouth they are dangerous rantings. He’s a ‘press clay pigeon’, a brittle flyer projected high into the political arena, to be shot down.

Artistry

Other key tactics are information suppression and reinterpretation. Dismissing Farage’s antisemitic behaviour and dodgy donations as ‘boyhood japes’ and ‘innocent gifts’ presents him as a blameless victim hounded by the left.

Meanwhile, behind the staggering level of voter ignorance about Reform’s ‘‘Great Repeal Bill’ is the RWM’s wilful determination not to spell out its implications for worker’s and women’s rights.

The RWM’s interpretive dance around Raynor downing pints was a reminder that ‘she’s unfit for office’; conversely, Farage and Johnson downing pints shows they are ‘solid, relatable men of the people’.

Similarly, the Times and others present the self-confessed ‘sexism’ of Robert Kenyan, not as the outright disqualification for becoming an MP it should be, but as showing he’s the ‘kind of normal bloke we need in politics’.

Portrayals like these are the core brush strokes via which our understanding of key politicians is drip fed and fleshed out.

A good kicking in the name of scrutiny

Polanksi’s popularity, like Burnham’s, is a RWM red rag. It’s an excuse to set both up as resilient and able to ‘take the hit’. Hence it affords a licence to discredit them under the guise of ‘extra hard-hitting scrutiny’, i.e. Trevor Phillips style ‘rottweiler attacks minus balance’.

Such grillings, delivered to a public who know little about either man, create impressions, piece by suspect piece, strongly predisposing them to negative evaluations. The Times’ strenuous efforts to portray Burnham as an unprincipled shapeshifter, for example, minimally sows doubt amongst voters whose beliefs about him are less than rock solid.

Some consequences

The RWM feasted on Raynor’s minor tax issue for months whilst their response to Farage’s £5mn donation from Christopher Harborne was sluggish.

As Luke Tryl notes, Raynor’s “tax scandal” caused a “tangible fall” in her popularity. Despite her being found not guilty, the damage was done - the media assault worked.

Similarly, even if repeatedly kicking someone in the head is police protocol, Polanski’s response, though politically hasty, was probably natural, humane concern about brain-damage. But the RWM skipped this justification, instead briskly spinning it as ‘anti-police’ and, by initially omitting the third Muslim victim, absurdly, also as ‘antisemitic’. They spotted a pre-election attack fissure in the left and leapt in with the zest of piranhas.

Again, it worked. The ‘antisemite’ and ‘anti-police’ tags caused Polanski’s approval rating to plummet 14 points, shifting from positive into the red overnight.

The RWM can’t seriously be said to mirror political reality since it constructs chunks of the content in the first place that it then claims to ‘reflect’. Much of the doorstep Corbyn hostility it ‘found’, for example, was its own regurgitated narrative.

Starmer has, in reality, made serious mistakes that aren’t simply conjured from press manoeuvres. But the RWM sets the ‘success and failure’ agenda. Starmer’s sticky ‘lame duck’ persona was consolidated by prioritising negative labels (weak, indecisive) and amplified by pointed failures to highlight positive achievements: knife crime down 10% in the last year, the stock market outperforming the US, NHS waiting lists lowest in 3.5 yrs, GDP up every quarter since 2024, the new Renters Rights Act, 30 hours weekly of funded childcare.

This RWM silence is why, when asked, voters famously ‘stare blankly, struggling to find a good word for Labour’.

Doorstep antipathy is also because Starmer can’t relate to voters, is no storyteller (and should go). But ruthless RWM manipulation of success and failure narratives have massively intensified voter contempt. Labour’s 2026 local election performance would have been poor anyway. But media puppeteering turbo-charged the preposterous fall of Starmer’s popularity below Trump’s, and the catastrophic election results.

Weaving social understanding

Starmer is just another in the latest round of left-winged clay pigeons. This isn’t a Starmer endorsement, just an observation that our media could have played it very differently.

Starmer’s opponents, Johnson and Farage, are notorious censure escapologists. But it was the RWM that carefully curated the unscrutinized, charming, Teflon personalities we’re familiar with, and who orchestrated their success by cultivating fear narratives that shoved immigration to the top of the social issue league table.

The key point is that the portrayals of all these political characters by our dominant RWM have not only penetrated our social consciousness but are working supremely well in furthering Reform’s trajectory as the new preferred political tribe.

These portrayals don’t just consolidate the views of the already converted. They create political reality for others and sow doubt amongst the undecided. Our RWM, like Orban’s, constructs political understanding by omitting, redefining, insinuating and quietly eviscerating whatever it wants to obliterate.

This isn’t information delivery, or even ‘mildly politically biased’ news. It’s social engineering – on a massive scale, with deeply dysfunctional consequences.

Stop the sane washing

Yet we continue excusing our media because we cling to the idea that it must somehow be working in our interest. Consequently, we despair when it keeps failing, as it does, every day.

It took Hungary 16 years to remove Orban, a process greatly assisted by their independent media. For UK politics to function, we must turn away from our right-wing dominated mainstream press towards independent political journalism.

This largely Impress-regulated ecosystem, though economically fragile, speaks truth to power with integrity, producing responsible, exacting investigation and analysis. We must start fostering this vital independent voice because it belongs to us, not oligarchs, and has our human rights and our democracy as its lode stars.

For more on how citizen journalism plays a role in the media ecosystem, I have previously published the piece in below.

Byline Times

Citizen Journalism and the New Ecosystem of Truth-Telling

I am not a journalist…

Read more

a year ago · 59 likes · 2 comments · The Bear

Barely 24 hours after I made the note that Nigel Farage had been conspicuous in his absence, out he came, scurrying in front of a camera.

With an “emergency address” no less, sounding for all the world like he was not only measuring the curtains for Number 10, but already waving away the movers who had just decamped all …

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Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been a little quieter over the past week or so, and I’ve had a few messages of concern (which I find both deeply touching and slightly worrying, in that it suggests I may, in fact, have been online far too much in recent years).

I just wanted to give a quick update that all is okay here. Very, very busy…

Read more

I couldn’t help but feel a malaise that had overtaken me at what, at that point, had felt like years without feeling anything but slightly chilled and slightly damp…

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Ten years ago around this time of the year, I was still living in South Africa. My concerns at the time were mostly around whether we would be able to cook dinner on the stove that evening, or whether it would be another braai because the power utility would shit the bed again around the time I got home from wor…

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Yesterday wasn’t a particularly good day for a rally. When I think rally, I think hot summer days, not the miserably cold, rainy London that we all had to live through yesterday.

That, however, didn’t stop Tommy Robinson, aka. Stephen Yaxley-Lennnon, aka. Tiny-Tommeh-Ten-Names, from doing his thing, though. The Unite The …

Read more

It’s been a hell of a week of travel. Tuesday in Birmingham, Wednesday in London, Thursday in Leeds, and last night I arrived in Manchester. I am thoroughly enjoying the up and down, though I am a bit tired of the inside of train carriages.

Very coincidentally, as I arrived in Birmingham, Jess Phillips decided to stand down from her ministerial role. As I arrived in Manchester last night, Andy Burnham had basically gone, “yeah, I’m coming back to Parliament.”

I’m not saying I had anything to do with any of this, but it is funny how these things work.

Beyond the travel chaos, I think everyone would agree this has been one of the most chaotic Labour weeks we have ever seen. It’s largely reminiscent of the constant Tory chaos, though in a much slower way, which somehow annoys me even more. We’ve all known that Keir Starmer is in trouble for a long time. The election results crystallised it, but the lead-up has been building for a couple of months. It’s in the last week where things really picked up pace. People started talking out over the weekend, resignations came in on Monday, and it all came to a head yesterday with Wes Streeting putting in his resignation. That feels like a domino starting to push things over.

There will definitely be a leadership election by August or September. That timeline depends largely on what happens with Andy Burnham standing in what was Josh Simons’ old seat.

All in all, it’s a pretty slow-moving situation. With the Tories, I don’t really want to give them compliments, but they were fast on this. I remember those hot summer days when Boris Johnson was on his way out. I remember where I was when I got the BBC News alert that Rishi Sunak and various ministers had started standing down. I was actually in B&Q. I told my husband: we need to get home, I need to get on Twitter. Within 48 hours he had stood down. The Labour way of doing things feels constipated. It genuinely just feels so slow.

Is that a better thing? If you’re going to be taking the scalp of your leadership, it is a bit more considered, a bit more thought out. Am I annoyed it’s happening? Yes, absolutely. I think this is the absolute last thing the country needs. Do I understand why it’s happening? Also yes. Both things can be true. Keir Starmer has not been a good leader, policy-wise. A couple of successes, but he is a technocrat. I wrote about this at length earlier this week if you need the full version.

In terms of candidates: Wes Streeting, I really don’t want to see him as Prime Minister. While he has done a good job on elective recovery, he is not painting a full picture. Community services in the NHS are still so strapped, and community services are the ones that live most closely to people. They come to your house. They look after you outside a hospital. I’m not talking GPs. I’m talking district nurses, urgent community response, all the bits and pieces that happen a bit more quietly. By the time I had left the NHS, it was a dreary place. I could go into a lot more of that, but I’ll leave it for another post.

Angela Rayner, cleared of her HMRC issues just yesterday, is also a potential candidate. I think with Andy Burnham coming in, it will likely be him with the support of Angela Rayner, which I think is a bit of a shame. I genuinely believe Angela Rayner could make a fantastic Prime Minister. She is a thoroughly human, thoroughly relatable politician. She would surround herself with the right people, and that matters enormously. As for Andy Burnham: wildly popular, and if you’re looking at the election win for 2029, he’s probably a good bet. Policy-wise, I think he could make some real differences.

I’m currently sitting in Manchester and I realised yesterday that it has firmly become my favourite city in the country. I love London and I will very likely always live there, but my second home has without a doubt become Manchester. It is clean, it runs well, it’s a genuinely pretty place. Yes, I only come here once in a while, and there are people in Manchester who can tell me about all the issues. I don’t doubt them. But there is a feeling of cohesiveness here in terms of how things function.

My bigger concern through all of this is actually the NHS and DHSC needing firm, consistent leadership. There is a replacement Secretary of State and I don’t know particularly well who he is. I need to do far more research. But the hope is just that there is continued stability, because that really is desperately needed.

Now I don’t want to just focus on Labour today. I also want to do a quick update on last week’s episode around Reform, racism, and crisis. And it is now definitely of crisis proportions.

Reform did very well in the local elections. They won more than 1,300 council seats and made really big inroads, however, the candidates they put up were somewhat less than savoury.

Byline Times did an analysis around the 12th of May and identified 30 newly elected Reform councillors facing allegations of wrongdoing and racist social media posts: Holocaust denial, neo-Nazi sympathies, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism. Hope Not Hate published their Dirty Dozen report naming 12 councillors they said Reform really should have already expelled.

By midweek, at least six had been suspended, expelled, or resigned from their seats, triggering by-elections. Which costs money, by the way. So Reform is never going to save any money for any of their councils, because they are incapable and don’t have any of the skills necessary. But that’s an aside.

Somehow in between all of this, Reform’s Home Affairs spokesperson Zia Youssef publicly boasted of having the best vetting in the country. Obviously not. The events before and after the council results have made that claim completely untenable.

Hope Not Hate’s campaign director Georgie Lamming put it well: they’ve exposed countless Reform candidates, including racists, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, conspiracy theorists, and even former BNP members. The question is, why do so many extremists think Reform is the party for them?

Here’s a quick run through the ones who’ve gone so far:

Stuart Prior resigned on the 10th of May, days after being elected to both Essex County Council and Rochford District Council on the 7th. He had gone on social media saying white people were the master race with larger brains, called Muslim people rats who could never suffer a genocide, called for Black people to be segregated, and appeared to celebrate the rape of a Sikh woman. He was exposed by a joint investigation by the Daily Mirror and Hope Not Hate. Reform did not expel him. He was allowed to resign. He should have been publicly expelled.

Jay Leslie Cooper was actually expelled from Reform and had her membership revoked after the Liverpool Echo reported that she had posted: “I don’t agree with murdering innocent people, but the Holocaust is a hoax. There wasn’t even 6 million Jews in Europe at the time. Propaganda.” She also shared content claiming 9/11 was fake. Nigel Farage said she was not marked in Reform. Good riddance. Why the hell did she get through vetting in the first place?

Glenn Gibbons, elected in Sunderland on 7 May as part of Reform’s takeover of the city, was suspended after now-deleted Facebook posts emerged in which he allegedly said Sunderland’s Nigerian community should be “melted down and used to fill in potholes.” He also called BBC presenters Mel and Sue “the unfunniest, fat, repulsive lesbian hosts” and said female sports commentators should stick to cooking. Richard Tice initially dismissed all of this on Laura Kuenssberg as smearing and sneering. No, sweetheart. It is not a smear to report racism in your party. Have a look at why your party is filled with so many particularly racist people, rather than just going “this is all an attack.”

Ben Rowe was suspended within days of his election after Hope Not Hate and The Times reported that he had accused Jewish people of creating division, described immigrants as “breeding like rats,” shared blackface memes, and fantasised about impaling Muslims. Had to go. Don’t know why it took them so long.

Nathaniel Mende of Sheffield City Council was suspended on the 13th of May after posts emerged showing a Nazi flag with a swastika, an image of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, descriptions of himself as an ethno-nationalist, requests to add a neo-Nazi Sunwheel emblem to a football flag, and a shared image of the 1936 Nazi Olympic stadium. When approached by the Times before the election, Mende claimed he enjoyed “risky humour and pushing boundaries” and admitted he had “flirted with far-right ideology” but claimed he had rejected its core tenets. Reform confirmed his suspension for “failure to disclose social media posts that have brought disrepute to the party.” No. He should have been completely expelled for being a neo-Nazi. I don’t know how you can make that clearer.

Daniel Devaney was probably the most chaotic case. He had reportedly withdrawn from the race before polling day, remained on the ballot, and won, which raises quite big questions about the robustness of Reform’s candidate management. He allegedly posted that he wanted to blast all Muslims off the face of the earth and called Muslims “pure scum.” He told his local paper he said it while in a bad mood watching TV and that it was “well out of order,” while also defending other comments and insisting he was not racist. His status remained unresolved as of today, with a by-election expected if he does not take up the seat. I imagine he will be out of there fairly soon.

There is a panoply of bigots still waiting to be suspended, expelled, or have anything done to them at all. I do wonder whether this is being purposely mismanaged, because another little piece of news that came out this week may or may not be related.

You may remember the five million pounds that Reform leader Nigel Farage received as a gift from Harborne, a Thailand-based billionaire. What has now come to light, following further investigation by Sky News, is that around that time Farage bought a house for 1.4 million pounds in cash. Because why would anyone get a mortgage? That’s clearly just for the normos among us.

The slight issue is the timing, which is exceptionally suspicious. According to a Reform spokesperson, the purchase of the house had commenced before the donation was received from Harborne. That’s where it gets tricky, because “commenced” could mean anything given how slowly things move in UK house buying. What many critics may be saying out loud is that there was a nice little bit of money that came in to help support it. Supposedly the donation to Farage was given to him for security purposes. Is he going to try and sell the house as a security purchase? Is it some sort of fortress he’s bought?

It is just a bit troubling, the whole picture around Nigel Farage’s properties. There’s the £800,000 question around his girlfriend, who bought a house in cash with money that came from somewhere. No one is quite sure. There is now obviously the question around the donation and the £1.4 million purchase. Things are getting very hard for Nigel Farage to navigate.

To draw to a close here, there was a comment on my Bluesky recently asking why media organisations aren’t covering this. And I have to say, people like Byline Times, Hope Not Hate, The Nerve, The Lead, so many other independent media organisations are doing a very good job. If you aren’t supporting them already, through paid or free subscriptions, do go and look them out. They are brilliant journalists doing brilliant work with very little funding in a very hostile media environment. And share their work.

On the large media ecosystem, yes, more scrutiny is needed, but, we also literally just heard from Sky News this week. It is going to happen at two levels: big investigative pieces that spur other organisations on, and the independent journalists who follow the threads further. Support the small media guys. They are doing a fantastic job.

I have a full day of meetings to get ready for. I also must apologise for the sound quality. I forgot my mic at home. I am currently talking at you while sitting on a hotel bed, straight into my laptop, which may be the most middle-aged thing I have ever done.

Either way, thank you all for the comments, support, and messages this week. Nothing in particular happened. You guys are just really, really nice. So I just wanted to say thanks for that. Have a great week, and I’ll catch you over the weekend.

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There is something that, over the past few years, has become a bit of a niggle in the back of my mind. A niggle that’s been recently getting just a little bit more insistent.

Many of you will know that I am a big old homosexual. I say this quite literally. I am a 6ft3, broad-shouldered, actual physical BIG homosexual. I’ve been with my husband for the pa…

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This goes straight to the kind of person I am: slightly nerdy, obsessed with how systems actually function and convinced that iteration, planning a…

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I’m aware I haven’t done one of these in a while, and it’s largely been down to things actually just being pretty insane. A new job - which I love, don’t get me wrong - has been demanding in the best possible way. Life’s just been busy. Between being your favourite bear on the internet (and yes, I do believe that I am your favourite bear; screw all those other guys), I’ve also become a dungeon master in my free time. And no, there’s no sexual connotation there. I’m just literally the nerdiest man in the world, meeting three of my friends once a week to emotionally terrify them with horrifying stories they have to roleplay through whilst I try to murder them with really interesting monsters. But the less said about that, the better.

Now, yesterday, quite a few people looking at my subscriber numbers taking a massive drop were very annoyed with me over my approach to the local elections and my view on how Labour has done. I’m not here to challenge that. Anyone saying this was anything but a complete catastrophe for Labour is truly deluding themselves. It was a bad day. Yes, the losses weren’t necessarily as big as in other instances, but the fact remains they did lose voters. People didn’t want to vote for them, and they have serious questions to answer. However, that’s not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about is our own Teflon Trump-like person in the UK, very specifically, non-stick Nigel - Nigel Farage.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is probably one of the big winners from the local elections. They’ve made serious inroads, and anyone saying otherwise really does need to face reality. They’ve made inroads into councils where the status quo was very set. They’ve put a lot of councillors on the council. It was only a third of councillors, I believe, that actually stood, but they did have a successful run. Anyone has to acknowledge that. How they did it is questionable, but before we get to that part of it, the one thing that’s still sticking with me and bugging me is money.

Very specifically, five million pounds.

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Good Saturday-morning, All.

I’m writing this column two days after the local elections, once the dust has settled and the final counts are in. It’s a part of the slow-down I’ve been imposing myself to be less reactive, and just a bit more reflective once the facts actually arrive - and now that they have, the messa…

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Since then, I’ve received multiple comments and messages from people basically going “yup, samesies.”

The floodin…

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Not completely disengage, I should clarify1 - but to focus the lens out a bit. To take a moment to digest what I’m reading, hearing and seeing instead of the reactive state I’ve been…

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How decisions made by an orange-tinged, near-80-year-old man with dwindling power (and wits) may just move peo…

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And yes, the receipts are included.

Nigel Farage is, unsurprisingly to anyone, all in a huff.

A terrible one in fact. I haven’t seen him this huffy since Beth Rigby asked him about his house, sorry, I mean, his girlfriend’s house in Clacton, which was met with a “How dare you?!” that was reminiscent of a Victorian Aristocrat accused of being a bore.

His new huffiness, however, is a rather different strain - he is terribly, terribly upset that Keir Starmer in his Keynote speech at the Labour Conference had the temerity, the audacity (and some might say the balls) to call Reform policies racist.

Shocking. I know.

The melodramatic performance of wounded dignity was, as expected when it comes to Farage, positively Oscar-worthy - a video posted on Reform where he bloviated loudly about how very unfair it all was. Zia Yusuf, Reform’s ex-chairman and now policy chief took it even further, claiming that Starmer in his speech was “inciting violence” against Farage by using the “R-word1”, because apparently accurately describing overtly discriminatory policies that mainly affect minority groups is now tantamount to putting out a hit. The victimhood was so thick you could spread it on toast.

The problem with Farage’s indignation is a big one though: it demands that we all collectively pretend that Reform does not, in fact, have a well-documented, extensively catalogued and repeatedly exposed problem with racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia running through the party like rot through timber2.

Which it absolutely does.

The Receipts

Between April 2024 and September 2025, Reform UK has been directly associated with twenty incidents of racist, xenophobic or Islamophobic behaviour by its members, councillors, candidates and activists.

Now I have to be emphatic about this - these weren’t rumours or allegations, whispered in shadowy Westminster corridors. They were documented, on the record and often caught on camera or preserved in the wonder that is social media screenshots that will haunt these people longer than a bad tattoo of a sexy bear on the inside of their left thigh3.

This is not a “few bad apples” situation, it’s a whole damned cider press ponging of rot with Farage standing next to it insisting very loudly that it smells like Roses.

In the interest of context, I will below walk through each and every incident, because that context matters when people are claiming they’re being unfairly maligned.

Method note: Incidents compiled from contemporaneous news reports, public posts, and watchdog investigations between April 2024 and September 2025.

1. On 26 June 2024, Andrew Parker, an activist for Reform UK was caught on Channel 4’s undercover investigation using racial slurs about then PM Rishi Sunak and describing Islam as “the most disgusting cult out,” and casually suggesting that the army should be using refugees crossing the Channel for “target practice”. This, according to Farage, was “ordinary folk” speaking, as if your average person down at the pub regularly advocates for using asylum seekers as live ammo practice. Parker was eventually disowned by Reform, but only after Farage made one of his favourite claims - that it was a “political setup.” Parker’s colleague, George Jones, a party volunteer, was also caught making offensive comments in the same investigation and was quietly shuffled out of the campaign with no formal censure or accountability.

2. On 29 August 2025, James Regan, a Reform Councillor in Epping Forest, described an asylum hotel as a “paedophile babysitting centre” and called Islam “an evil criminal cartel of evil pedo’s.” He was eventually suspended, but only after what was significant public pressure. The initial response from Reform? Silence that spoke absolute volumes.

3. On 24 August 2025, Darren Grimes - ex-GB News Presenter, Reform’s deputy leader of Durham County Council and newly minted elected member of Reform’s national board - posted a video that his brother had sent him on a boat in Scarborough alongside a family made up of, shockingly, brown people, including children. His caption: “I had to ask him if he was on a dinghy to Dover, but then I realised there are women and children on board.” North East Mayor Kim McGuinness accused him, rightly so, of “inciting racism and hate,” to which Grimes responded that he was merely “making an observation about demographic change” and that “love of country is not hate.4”

4. On 23 June 2025, Andrew Barry, a Reform UK councillor for Merthyr Tydfil, was recorded in a voicemail in which he described Pakistanis as “tribal” and claiming “they don’t just dislike us, they dislike Sikhs.” He talked about the “tens of thousands of them in cities” in tones that would make even Enoch Powell say “woah down a little there, boyo.” Welsh political leaders called the remarks “absolutely racist” while Reform, somewhat predictably, defended him by claiming that his comments had been “taken out of context.5” Barry, as of 1 October 2025 remains a Reform councillor.

5. On 29 May 2025, Mark Broadhurst, Reform UK councillor in Doncaster, was expelled from Reform for posting a meme suggesting that Adolf Hitler would have been “a legend” if only he’d chosen to exterminate Muslims instead of Jews - a sitting councillor posting Nazi apologia with an Islamophobic twist. Even though he was expelled by Reform, the fact that he felt comfortable posting this in the first place should be a good indicator of party culture.

6. On 26 August 2025 it was reported that Robert Bloom, Reform UK councillor for North Northamptonshire had allegedly used racial slurs against a black family while threatening to involve far-right extremists while telling them that they wouldn’t receive fair treatment from the council due to their race. A by-election will now be held on 9 October for the Lloyds and Corby village ward.

7. On 16 April 2025 it was reported that Ron Firman, a then candidate and Parish councillor Hunsbury Ward had posted multiple racist tweets, including that refugees should be ejected from aircraft mid-flight, made derogatory remarks about Grenfell tower victims and for good measure threw in a few KKK references. The parish council issued a reminder about conduct, Reform UK refused to comment. He remains a Reform member and parish councillor.

8. On 29 June 2024, three candidates were dropped simultaneously:

   1. Edward Oakenfull, the Reform candidate for Derbyshire Dales had posted comments on social media about the supposed IQ levels of sub-Saharan Africans.

   2. Robert Lomas, standing for Barnsley North stated that black people should “get off [their] lazy arses” and stop “acting like savages”.

   3. Lesley Lilley, the candidate for Southend East and Rochford took to describing people arriving on small boats as “scum” and added the delightful little sentiment that “I hope your family get robbed, beaten or attacked.” All three candidates were dropped by Reform, but it took media exposure to make them realise that these people were liabilities rather than assets.

9. On 10 May 2025 it was reported that Paul Harrison, a Reform UK councillor from Leicestershire County Council retweeted and voted “yes” to a Twitter poll asking the question whether the UK should conduct mass deportations with an accompanying AI generated picture of Muslim men holding Pakistani flags. As of 1 October 2025 he remains a Reform UK councillor for North West Leicestershire.

10. On 8 April 2025, the Sunday Times ran a story that featured a bumper crop of extremism that strongly suggested that Reform UK’s vetting was less “professional screening” and more “anyone with a pulse and a grudge.”

    1. Pete Addis, the candidate form South Shropshire made the comment a comment that “Bum sex, this is where brown babies come from!”

    2. Amodio Amato, standing for Stevenage, described London as “an Islamic State” and said there would be “a Muslim army run by Sadiq Khan.”

    3. Jonathan Kay tweeted that muslims could “never coexist with others” and should face deportation, while also claiming that Africans had IQs “among the lowest in the world.”

    4. Mick Greenhough was found to have posted that the government should “remove Muslims from our territory” and calling Ashkenazi Jews a “problem” who “caused the world massive misery.6”

    5. Ian Harris, candidate for Lewes had liked7 a tweet by Nick Griffin, former leader of the BNP, that had described the UK as a “bankrupt, crime ridden, LGBTQ-obsessed, multicultural shithole” and another tweet by Tommy Robinson (aka. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) that called for “mass deportations.” Reform at this stage promised more vetting. We are still waiting.

11. On 26 April 2024, Richard Brown, the Reform candidate for Harrogate and Knaresborough, was exposed for having shared Tommy Robinson content, promoted “Ban the Burqa” groups, circulated “Sharia Controlled Zones” memes and dabbled in Anti-Vaccine conspiracy theories. He was, truly, the full bingo-card of far-right talking points, all neatly packaged into one candidate profile. He was eventually dropped by Reform UK.

12. On 15 May 2025, Wayne Titley who had just two weeks before won the Eccleshall and Gnosall division for Reform UK, stepped down after a Facebook post from his account called on the navy to intercept small boats attempting to reach the UK and use a “volley of gunfire aimed at sinking them.”

13. On 27 August 2025, Paul Bean, a councillor for Durham County Council, and more worryingly, a civil servant who, as his job, processes asylum claims, was suspended by Reform for allegedly posting anti-asylum content including that “97% of asylum seekers are lying about persecution… Source: me. Guess what job I do.”

A big one worth adding, even though he was not connected to Reform at the time, is of course none-other than 30p Lee Anderson. In February 2024, while still a Conservative MP, he claimed that “Islamists had control” of Sadiq Khan and accused him of “giving the capital away to extremists.”

The comments were so egregious that even the Conservative Party, not a group of people known for their low threshold for discrimination, suspended him when he refused to apologise. He sat as an Independent MP for a short period, before catching the eye of Reform who looked at a man who had just been suspended for blatantly Islamophobic comments and said to themselves “Yes, that’s exactly who we want as our very first person to represent our party in the House of Commons.”

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Twenty incidents in eighteen months. A mix of elected councillors (including a deputy council leader and Reform board member, parliamentary candidates and one MP they actively recruited weeks after he was suspended on camera. Activists caught on camera.

There is a pattern here that is so clear that you’d have to be wilfully blind not to see it - or wilfully dishonest not to admit it.

Patterns of Discrimination: Islamophobia as Policy

If you’ve been keeping score while reading this - and you should be, because it’s clear that Reform is refusing to do so - you may have noticed something somewhat telling about the nature of these incidents.

When you start examining the incidents and their themes, even with minimal rigour, one thing becomes very apparent: Islamophobia isn’t just tolerated within Reform UK, it makes up the dominant strain of what appears to be an endemic issue of prejudice.

Where it becomes even more insidious though is that it isn’t just limited to grassroot bigotry, but becoming baked into Reform’s policy platform.

Sarah Pochin, Reform UK’s MP who joined the ranks as MP for Runcorn and Helsby after winning the by-election in May 2025 used her first question to Keir Starmer to advocate for a Burqa ban. Despite initially resigning in response to this, Zia Yusuf has since warmed to the idea by calling the Burqa a “huge impediment to assimilation.” This policy would specifically target Muslim women and seems designed to use the language of integration to justify what is, for the most part, religious discrimination.

The Reform-controlled Durham County Council made the decision to cancel all diversity training, with critics rightfully stating that it “reintroduces racism, sexism and discrimination.” The party’s manifesto explicitly commits them to eliminating all diversity, equality and inclusion roles across government, purposefully removing institutional protections against workplace discrimination.

Their recently proposed immigration policies that aims for the removal of settlement status for specifically non-EU migrants who are already in the UK legally - a position so extreme that even Keir Starmer, not exactly known for radical “leftism”, described it as “racist” and warned that it would “tear our country apart.”

Reform wants you to believe that any racism is accidental, that it’s isolated, the result of rapid growth and inadequate vetting, but when your official policies would institutionalise discrimination against specific religious or ethnic minorities, you can’t, in any way, credibly claim the problem is just a few bad actors gone rogue.

Not, of course, that they haven’t tried.

The Defences They Wheel Out (And Why They’re Nonsense)

Because, by God, they have tried.

Reform has developed a well practiced repertoire of defences of their racism problem, each one more threadbear than the last - and I think it’s absolutely working through them, one by one, because they absolutely deserve to be dismantled and examined a bit more closely.

“Ordinary Folk Speaking”

We saw this specific excuse rolled out in the case of Andrew Parker above when Reform was challenged. They tried to sell us the idea that the racism being spread by people connected to them as “ordinary people” speaking in non-political language and claimed that candidates and supporters are just “speaking like ordinary folks” and are not part of the “mainstream political Oxbridge speak.”

This defence is, to put it mildly, weapons-grade nonsense.

The documented incidents go well beyond what could be considered “political incorrectness” and veer perilously closely to incitement of violence.

In the cases of Parker, suggesting that migrants be used for “target practice” and James Regan calling Islam “an evil criminal cartel of evil pedo’s” isn’t a lack of polish, they’re explicit examples of hate speech.

Mark Broadhurst posting Nazi apologia memes isn’t in any way unfiltered authenticity - it’s Nazi apologia (the clue is in the name).

“Ordinary folk” don’t usually and casually advocate for genocide or for refugees to be shot in the Channel, and if your “ordinary folks” are doing so, you might want to examine just the kind of “ordinary” you’re cultivating.

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“Rapid Growth” Excuse

Another consistent excuse that has been used is rapid expansion has impeded their vetting attempts, with the argument being that they can’t possibly screen the massive influx of new members and candidates. Farage has claimed that Reform is a “fast-growing movement” and that they face challenges “working with many activists they may not have met before.”

Except that this defence doesn’t just fail because it betrays massive disorganisation on behalf of Reform - it also actively contradicts their own actions.

In July 2025, Reform deliberately started relaxing their vetting standards, telling their prospective candidates who had previously failed vetting to “reapply under new ‘common sense’ standards” that were “more proportionate than before” and gave more weight to “individual freedom of expression.”

Just read that again - they didn’t struggle to vet candidates because of rapid growth, they consciously lowered the bar and invited back extremists who had already been rejected once. That’s a deliberate choice to welcome back racists into the fold.

They have, in effect, admitted that it’s less a case of “we’re growing too fast to maintain standards” and more “we’ve decided that standards are terribly inconvenient.”

“Professional Vetting System” Claims

In contradiction to the “rapid growth” excuse, Farage has also previously claimed that Reform had implemented “a vetting system that was as good if not better than the other parties”, and boasted that “proper professional vetting” was in place.

Except that the evidence, including previous comments by Farage, suggest otherwise.

He admitted that Reform did “zero” due diligence had been performed on James McMurdock when he was suspended following questions COVID loans, stating explicitly that “there was no due diligence on him at all. Zero.”

This is despite the statements made by Farage in June 2024 that they had paid vetting.com £144k for candidate screening services but had received “absolutely nothing” in return.

Their stance on vetting makes my head spin - it veers from “we professionally vet all our candidates” to “well, we didn’t vet anyone at all” and then again to “well, we’re taking a much more common sense approach to vetting now, so everyone who had previously been kicked out, have another go.”

And when those clear vetting failures became public, Farage fell back on his favourite excuse of them all.

“We’re being stitched up”

“Being stitched up” is an excuse that has been used by Farage, for among others:

• The above mentioned Channel 4 Racism Investigation.

• The Coutts decision to “debank” him.

• UKIP Resignation Confusion.

In the particular context of a large number of candidates with openly racist views getting through vetting… yup. Stitched up.

The excuse here goes that Reform had been “stitched up” by their vetting company, with the specific allegation being that it was an “establishment stitch-up”, because the company’s chair had previous Tory connections.

This particular excuse, as with so many others, collapses under its own weight with even the most mild of scrutiny. Reform knew about the vetting owner’s Conservative background, but hired them anyway.

The company explained that they didn’t have time to complete checks due to the snap election timing - a perfectly reasonable logistical explanations.

All these points being thrown together again contradicts any claims by Reform being victims of sabotage.

“Individual Bad Actors”

Reform UK has in the past chosen to frame racist incidents as involving individual members whose views don’t represent the organisation, with officials claiming to disown problematic behaviour as soon as it’s exposed - except of course when that doesn’t happen.

When Councillor Andrew Barry made his xenophobic comments about Pakistanis, the party, instead of immediately disowning these comments, defended him and claimed his remarks were “taken out of context”, while Reform UK’s own official Facebook Groups, administered by party officials, contain extensive racist content that remains largely unchallenged.

When your “individual bad actors” include elected councillors, parliamentary candidates, activists and official social media administrators, you have moved on from having an “individual” problem straight into having an institutional one.

Reform UK is Racist

When we start considering both the incidents involving racism from people who are pretty directly connected to Reform and then weight it up against their responses and actions to these, I feel you can’t help but coming to the conclusion that, yes, Reform UK is, in fact racist.

And I am saying that directly - in complete contravention with a sudden norm that’s found itself into our discourse that calling something racist has suddenly become worse than the act of racism itself. Terming something “racist” has now come with a side of squeamishness that I find, to be very frank, gross.

Reform has over the past few years been one of the players who have weaponised this squeamishness rather brilliantly. When Keir Starmer called their policies racist (which they are), all hell broke loose.

This has parallels to when Robert Jenrick recently wrote in an op ed for the Daily Mail that he didn’t want his children sharing a neighbourhood with “immigrant men with backwards views who broke into Britain illegally.” When Dr Krish Kandiah pointed out on BBC’s Thought for the Day that this language was xenophobic, the BBC apologised. Not, of course to migrants who might be smeared by Jenrick’s rhetoric - but to Jenrick himself. For someone daring to accurately describe his words.

This is the environment Reform UK now operates in, and happily exploits - they can traffic in blatant racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia, but the moment someone dares to name it accurately, they’re suddenly the victim, shifting the focus from substance to etiquette and from prejudice to politeness.

Laurence Fox took this particular strategy to its logical extreme when he decided to sue two critics for calling him racist after he had called them paedophiles. To no one’s surprise whatsoever, the High Court ruled in favour of his critics, finding that while Fox’s accusations towards the claimants were “seriously harmful, defamatory and baseless”, his counter claim that “racist” was somehow more libellous was thrown in the bin where it deserved to live.

The fact that Fox’s case happened at all though tells you everything about how successfully the word “racist” has been weaponised and slurrified to a worrying extent.

About That Huff

We return ourselves now to Farage’s theatrical outrage at being called a racist - all that performance of wounded dignity, the claims of unfair treatment and media persecution, the suggestion that accurately describing Reform’s policies and membership is now, somehow, beyond the pale.

What Farage would dearly like you to forget is his own history of racist and xenophobic statements. Naming Enoch Powell as his political hero. Claiming parts of Britain “look like a foreign land” due to migration. Suggesting Muslims lack British values and all “loathe us.”

He’s very keen on you forgetting all the documented incidents that I point out in this piece - the councillors, candidates, members and activists caught on camera or in writing expressing their unveiled hatred of minorities. The Facebook groups full of racist conspiracy theories administered by party officials. The policies that he is pushing himself that would further institutionalise discrimination.

He would love for you to believe that the real scandal is that Keir Starmer used the word “racist” to describe racist policy - that the true victim, as ever, is Nigel Farage, with his TV show, his column inches, his handful of MPs, his growing membership, his many donors - not the minority communities targeted by his party’s rhetoric, membership and policies.

The farce of it all is that this strategy now so often works. We’ve become so squeamish about naming racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia that we’d rather engage in endless meta-debates about whether it’s appropriate to use the word than confront the monster it describes.

But here’s the truth that Farage’s huff is designed to obscure - when nearly half the British public perceives your party and it’s policies as racist, when 20 incidents in 18 months document systematic discrimination, when your policies would institutionalise prejudice against minorities - you don’t have a perception problem.

You have an accuracy problem.

The evidence of rampant racism isn’t being manipulated, and there is no large scale “stitch up”. The data isn’t being twisted and the quotes aren’t being taken out of context.

When Reform is being described as racist, that is accurate, and Farage’s huff is the sound of someone who wishes that reality will bend itself around his needs. Reality, as it turns out though, doesn’t much care about Nigel Farage’s wounded dignity or his performative victimhood - and neither should you.

The racism is real. The xenophobia is documented. The Islamophobia is systematic, and no amount of huffing and puffing will blow that house of evidence down.

This article is from our greatly appreciated regular contributor Claire Jones, and it’s a piece that asks some uncomfortable but necessary questions about how we’re engaging with politics right now. It doesn’t flatter, it doesn’t shout, and it feels particularly important as we head into the local elections.

If you have any ideas that you would like to contribute to Bearly Politics, please feel free to send those to iratusursusmajor@gmail.com.

Reform is still polling strongly, escaping mainstream media scrutiny, receiving absurdly large amounts of funding, and enjoying fragmentation and non-co-operation among left block parties. Hence, in the upcoming May council and Senedd elections, we, as progressive campaigners from the left and centre left, have a vital role in curbing Reform support. This, then, is a good moment to pause for some introspection.

The locked room

Progressives are good at intellectual navel-gazing. Imagine a room with many doors, each firmly locked but containing a letter box through which corroborating information pours daily – in-depth investigations of Reform’s questionable finances, new angles on Reform’s climate denialism and radical-right links, more Reform councillor revelations. Locked inside, we drown in an excess of supporting evidence, up to our necks in paper, unable to move outside and act where we could make the biggest difference.

Most viewers of this ever-replenishing corner of the political ecosystem are on the same ideological page. Faith is placed in the ‘outward ripple’ principle that some progressive content will somehow make it somewhere beyond the echo-chamber walls. But we have to question the efficacy of this supposed movement. If it happens, arguably, its influence is marginal.

Continuing investigative research and analysis is essential. But we should also go forth and communicate with Reformers, using our understanding of them and their perceptions of us to refine our messaging.

“Campaign groups need to be better at getting out into the community” Nick Lowles

The ‘persuadables’

Of the five voter types that emerged from Hope Not Hate’s research, three groups, together representing over 50% of Reform supporters, are persuadable: squeezed stewards, reluctant reformers, and contrarian youth. They share deep cynicism about establishment parties and want radical change.

Undecided voters are another key demographic. For brevity I’ll refer to all these ‘persuadables’ as ‘Reformers’.

Automatic barriers

But do we really understand how we’re perceived? Assumptions Reformers make about progressive campaigners are significant obstacles to communication. We are the ‘snowflake wokerati’- soft middle-class elites detached from the grinding existential coal face of life, a dodgy bunch of sandal-wearing, tax-hiking, motorway-blocking tree-huggers, contemptuous of people’s desire to restore cherished traditional values. Instead we favour crackpot ideas fed us by climate science quacks, and the deeply gender confused, whilst welcoming in alien invading cultures.

They perceive us, frankly, like we perceive them – as ill-informed, dangerously manipulated by propaganda, and a threat. This is a poor starting point for campaigning.

Polarisation

These preconceptions are amplified via relentless rage-baiting from press and social media that tips defensiveness into hostility. The left and right blocks are no longer two sides of one nation separated only by finer points of difference on economic strategy, state intervention, taxation, etc. Polarisation has shunted us into fundamentally different opposing universes.

It’s clear Labour lacks the will to tackle the media’s pernicious role in this process. The Levison Inquiry gathers dust whilst OFCOM continues pretending GB News is news. But, instead of railing from the safe confines of our echo-chamber about media toxicity, we have, for now, to work with it.

Elements of truth

Nor are the Reformer’s perceptions of us pure caricature. It turns out we are prone to self-righteous intolerance of opposing views and presumptuousness about the self-evident correctness of our own. Research by More in Common revealed that progressive activists grossly overestimated voter support for taking in more refugees, placing it 17% higher than the actual rate. We’re also more likely to believe our opponents have been misled by misinformation. 72% viewed Leave voters negatively, in contrast to “backbone conservatives” only 24% of whom viewed Remainers with the same contempt.

Labels like “judgemental and dogmatic” aren’t entirely unfounded. To deter Reformers we must recognise our own assumptions and prejudices and how they might influence our campaigns.

Complacency

In the meantime, these preconceptions add to the unsurprising feeling that facing Reformers is daunting and ‘sitting it out’ more appealing. We quietly hope events will step in and do our work – that some huge scandal uncovered by diligent investigative journalists will hasten Reform’s recent poll dip, or that, strained by the weight of Farage’s ego, the party will internally combust.

But it would be folly to rely on these outcomes. It’s how democracies get caught out by the sneaking creep of authoritarianism. We can’t afford to sit back with crossed fingers.

Immigration

Only some ‘persuadable’ Reformers, notably the ‘squeezed stewards’, are stridently anti-immigrant. Nevertheless, immigration remains Reform’s ‘go to’ rationale for Blighty’s woes. The party’s links with international radical-right organisations also creates conduits (from think tanks to local community groups), all pushing anti-immigration propaganda. The sheer quantity of St George’s flags draped around Britain is a measure of its effectiveness.

Given these points and the likelihood of immigration featuring on the doorstep, it’s difficult to sidestep and worth exploring. However, the rift between progressives and Reformers on immigration is particularly acute.

Sliding attitudes

Much progressive campaigning is premised on the view that our cost-of-living crisis generates a sense of unfairness and competition over scarce resources. If services and living standards are improved then resources will become more accessible and fairly distributed. Competition will ease and, with it, hostility to migrant competitors.

This economic solution can’t be the full story though. ‘Ethnic replacement’ anxiety is also a powerful cause, driving fear of being overwhelmed and the need for control.

These emotions complicate the narratives surrounding immigration. Views like ‘I’ve honestly nothing against black people. I just want my country to remain recognisable’ may be sincerely held. But, as easy prey for radical-right manipulators, they are a minute step away from outright racism.

Similarly, resource scarcity may be cited as a genuine reason for anti-immigrant sentiment or wheeled out as post-hoc justification – ‘my beef with migrants is that they’re threatening my white identity. Blaming them for my difficulties getting a GP appointment, house or job is just a handy excuse I read in my favourite news-rag that I’ve tagged on to help vindicate the hostile stance I’d already adopted’.

So, campaign messaging that resource scarcity isn’t caused by immigrants misses the point if the Reformer’s concern, whether explicit or concealed, is ethnic takeover of their white national identity. For them, immigrants in the care sector for example are a problem, not a positive. No amount of leafletting showing how valuable or long-standing they are, how much tax they pay, or that 95% of them are legal, will calm fears about ‘Britain becoming a multi-ethnic state governed by Sharia law, rife with Pakistani grooming gangs’.

This approach actually risks increasing anxiety by presenting the wokerati as bent on exacerbating the very problem these Reformers want to control. Campaign messaging therefore needs to, for example, be location sensitive. The ‘immigrants welcome’ posters that enhance a community-cohesion initiative in Lewisham will backfire on the walls of Epping or Brumby, Lincolnshire. There they’d act like therapeutic attempts to cure wasp phobias by ‘opening the window next to the patient and letting the swarm in’.

Of course, we want to convey that immigration enriches UK society in multifarious ways. But we should also recognise that, in certain contexts in our polarised society, some campaign messaging risks creating as much Reform support as it diminishes.

A broken promise too far?

Irrespective of their immigration views, Reformers rage at establishment politics for the cost-of-living crisis. We feel we know the solutions – reduce living costs through green levies, renewables, infrastructure investment and nationalisation, cut poverty, not tax, to stimulate growth, stop the ‘privatisation premium’ including the £2bn per year we hand to corporate profiteers.

To this end we want to show how Reform is not a voice of change ‘on our side’, but an unholy mix of yet more self-serving, neo-liberal elitism and sheer incompetence.

But we face powerful political ennui. ‘Starmer loathing’ stems from his personality, his mistakes, and the press’s long-standing penchant for ‘left-bashing’. But it’s also about timing – his arrival after 14 years of political broken promises and shredded public trust. Labour’s biggest failure was to ignore the pathological extremity by 2024 of this disaffection. The policy steps and comms management required to repair it were very different from even a few years earlier.

The Green Party is capitalising brilliantly on the principle that ‘hope springs eternal’. But others, particularly those for whom the cost-of-living bites hardest, view politics through a lens of protracted despair. And despair requires expectation management, seeking endless reaffirmation via confirming events. When Labour increases benefits and the minimum wage, it’s safer and easier to remember the bad press, potholes and rising energy costs - disillusionment protects itself by factoring out ‘the traitor’s achievements’.

But campaigns which seek to cut through this disillusionment by simply delivering facts showing ‘how Reform is not on your side’ fail because the source isn’t trusted or therefore believed. To get across that Reform policy actually endangers Reformers themselves, campaigners have first to counter the Reformer’s preconceptions. This involves, amongst other things, being genuinely receptive to their cynicism and sense of disempowerment, and showing willingness to grasp the Reformer’s viewpoint, including on difficult matters like race and Starmer loathing.

Two-way dynamics

Campaigners are also working against the penetrating flow of radical-right propaganda, constantly destabilising our neat voter categories. For Reformers caught in this current, beliefs still held on Monday about the value of net zero, raising taxes and immigration, may be tottering by Friday.

Beliefs mutate both ways fortunately. UK-wide initiatives to raise awareness about the economy, strengthen community bonds and promote values of tolerance and inclusivity are antidotes to despair that re-ignite a sense of individual and community empowerment and efficacy. But the two-way current is dynamic. To counteract degradation from radical-right influence, campaigns should be outward-facing, constantly widening their net beyond their comfortable left demographic to also draw in Reformers wherever possible.

Cutting through

For the May elections, we must be realistic about success. Only some Reform voters can be reached. We have to set expectations appropriately, toughen up, and aim for constructive interactions where possible. Also, the ‘preconceptions’ problem means that the most valuable campaign approach is to avoid being explicitly linked to left or centre-left parties. A non-partisan approach allows a clearer, more credible focus on deterring people from voting Reform.

The campaign group, Compass Oxfordshire has developed a range of themes, principles and methods to help counter some of the obstacles explored here and to encourage voters to recognise the dangers of voting Reform. For further information look out for our forthcoming presentation.

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