Faragian Farce Day 4: A Deep Dive Into The Nine Bins Of Reformati Arguments
The Farage/Reform response has become a panicked tour of grievance, victimhood, and procedural illiteracy, with one very large question still sitting slap bang in the middle of the room.
I appear to have found a couple of errant hours I didn’t know I had, specifically between 5am and 8am, which I’ll be dedicating this summer to keeping you all informed of the increasingly ridiculous Farage Farce. I’m aiming for at least three to four pieces a week while this nonsense unfolds, so if you’re enjoying the coverage, please do share it, subscribe if you haven’t already, and consider supporting Bearly Politics if you’re in a position to do so.
We officially today find ourselves in day 4 of the Faragian Farce, the drama series that no one asked for, but everyone is, as of now, enjoying rather immensely.
Anyone thinking the absurdity of this pantomime would become even slightly normal is in for a nasty surprise, because honestly, things are only going to get weirder and weirder.
Yesterday, we discussed what the full roster of candidates is going to look like in the Clacton-on-Sea by-election that Farage fannywobbled his way into, and in short, we have a roster of Farage, a few far-right oddities, a few local independents and, of course, the man-of-the-hour, Count Binface.
As a digression here very quickly, Count Binface, as it stands, has a 9/2 chance of actually winning this by-election. While that certainly doesn’t in anyway make it a strong possibility, it does start aggressively nudging into the realms of probability.
And we have to be honest with ourselves, we are a weird little country that, given the opportunity, will go for the weapons-grade piss-take option if allowed, with Boaty McBoatface and an actual monkey not only becoming mayor of Hartlepool, but doing so three times in a row.
Back to the order of the day though, and this morning I would like to discuss, very specifically, the utter batshittery that has been the Reform UK response to the by-election being called by their own monkey mascot, Mr Farage.
And my god, what a response it’s been.
There has been obfuscation, prevarication, self-delusion and straight up gaslighting, so hard, that it’s enough to make anyone roll their eyes so hard they risk losing consciousness.
The Reform line, such as it is, appears to have resolved itself into a few neat little bins of nonsense.
And because this is now apparently my summer project, because I have made several poor life choices, I am currently not sleeping because of heatwave three and am sustained almost entirely by coffee and spite, I thought it would be worth pulling out my old explaining crayons and drawing them out one by one.
1. “Let the people decide”
This is the big one, really. The motherlode. The central organising delusion around which this whole farce has been built.
Farage’s own version was that “the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions” and that this would be “a people versus the establishment by-election.”
Reform’s own write-up then dutifully dressed it up as the courageous act of a man putting “his future directly in the hands of the voters of Clacton.”
Zia “The Great Resigner” Yusuf, Reform’s “shadow Home Secretary1”, apparently went even further, saying Farage had chosen to go “directly to that ultimate source of truth”, meaning the voters.
Now, that sounds terribly grand, doesn’t it? Stirring, even, if you don’t think about it too hard and too deep.
The problem with this is that voters are not an audit committee.
Clacton voters can of course decide whether they want Nigel Farage as their MP. That is their right.
What they cannot do, however, is decide whether a £5m gift was properly declared according to parliamentary rules and standards, whether various benefits in kind should have been registered, whether the timeline makes sense, or whether rules were broken. That is what the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards exists to determine.
Winning an election does not answer an evidentiary question, it very simply answers an electoral one.
If Count Binface won, we would not assume Clacton had voted to abolish fiscal scrutiny and replace it with bin-based governance, although, given the state of things, honestly, tempting.
Likewise, if Farage wins, it does not magically clarify what the £5m was for. It does not disinfect the donor questions. It does not make the paperwork vanish in a puff of patriotic smoke.
It literally just means he won a by-election he called himself, in a seat he already held, against a field that includes a man with a bin on his head.
2. “The establishment is running scared”
The second bin is the one marked “bravado”, and it is currently overflowing.
Reform’s write-up mentioned earlier quotes Zia Yusuf as saying:
“The reason why they are choosing not to field a candidate is very simple; having screamed for a by-election at the top of their lungs for weeks now, having been given one, they are running scared.”
Richard Tice, apparently not wishing to be outdone in the dignity stakes, branded Farage’s political opponents “cowards” and accused them of “clucking away” like chickens, treating us all with his best impression of one of our delicious avian friends.
On X, the GB News clip went further, with Tice opening an interview by asking: “Can you hear the chickens and cowards clucking away?!”
Which is, of course, deeply normal behaviour from the deputy leader of a political party and not at all completely and utterly deranged.
The big issue for me (and many others) is that this line only really works if you accept wholesale Reform’s preferred framing that not standing is fear rather than strategy.
But why in all that is holy would the major parties stand?
Farage was desperate for a giant symbolic contest. He was gagging to see Labour, the Tories, the Lib Dems and the Greens lined up opposite him so he could bellow loudly about the establishment, point belligerently at the horizon, and claim that any victory over them was a national vindication.
Instead, they took one look at the total irrelevance and dodginess of the whole situation and politely declined the invitation.
It completely strips away the grand showdown and leaves the thing exposed for what it is: a self-triggered ego referendum designed to interrupt an active standards process.
The establishment is not running scared, it’s just refusing to give any sort of validity to a by-election that is nothing more than a scam.
3. “It’s a kangaroo court”
This argument was always going to arrive, of course, because it is where these people go when process starts asking awkward questions that make them feel icky inside.
Farage has now claimed in an interview with the ever illustrious and never biased Daily Mail that the Commons standards committee cannot judge him fairly, saying:
“There are people on that standards committee who will judge me, who have reported me for Islamophobia. It is going to be a completely subjective judgment. There’s no objectivity in this.”
Farage is not the only panicky politico saying this either, with Robert “Generic” Jenrick saying on his cringeworthy LBC Call In slot that:
“[Farage is] holding the byelection because it was inevitable there was going to be one. All the political party leaders have totally prejudged the situation.
Kemi Badenoch put out a tweet saying that they wouldn’t field the candidate in this byelection, but they would in the next one. Well, how does she know there’s even going to be another one?
She’s obviously hoping, planning for there to be one, and so Nigel, not unreasonably, concluded that it’s a bit of a kangaroo court. It’s a stitch up. They’re going to call a byelection at some point. So for his sake, but also for his constituents’ sake, let’s just get it done.”
This to me doesn’t feel like a defence, it feels like a giant old flare into the sky ahead of what is potentially a massive impact incoming.
The whole point of the standards process, and this is something that is being ignored by the Reformati like a cow in front of a closed gate, is not to provide Farage with emotional comfort. It is to establish whether rules were followed. If he has evidence, provide it. If declarations were correct, show that. If reporting is wrong, correct it. If the gift had no relationship to his political activity, explain in detail exactly how and why that is.
Instead, we are getting pre-emptive delegitimisation of the referee.
Which is always funny from people who insist they are brave enough to “let the people decide”, but apparently not brave enough to let the people see what the standards process decides first.
The Guardian’s live coverage made an important point here as well: attacking the committee can itself make things worse, because committees have previously treated attacks on their legitimacy as an aggravating factor.
Boris “Barefaced-Liar” Johnson discovered this to his dismay when his “kangaroo court” routine over the privileges committee contributed to the proposed severity of his sanction.
All in all Farage’s strategy appears to be: I am definitely innocent, the process is illegitimate, the committee is biased, the establishment is plotting, and also please give me a mandate before anyone gets to the evidence.
Ja, no, sounds watertight to me!
4. “Nigel is not establishment”
This is my own personal favourite of all the bins, because it requires a straight face usually only seen on waxworks and people trying to get through airport security with six Toblerones in their hand luggage.
On Newsnight, Laila “London is a hellhole” Cunningham, the prospective mayor of London was clipped saying: “Nigel is not part of the establishment at all.” Victoria Derbyshire’s response, gloriously, was: “Come on, you said that with a straight face.”
And that, really, is the whole thing.
Nigel Farage, a man who is a privately educated former City trader, long-time MEP, party leader, broadcaster, property-linked, donor-backed, Trump-adjacent political operator, who has spent decades shaping the direction of British politics, is apparently not establishment.
He is, somehow, still just the bloke outside the pub with a pint, despite being surrounded by crypto wealth, aristocratic fixers, wealthy donors, friendly broadcasters and a £5m “lottery win” that most people would struggle to fit into their entire financial imagination.
At some point, the anti-establishment costume becomes less a disguise and more a cry for help.
The flat cap, my friend, has slipped, and your donor list is showing in its full glory.
5. “He’s doing it for the country”
“3-Party” Lee Anderson’s version of the line, as trailed in a Times Radio clip, was:
“He is doing this not for Nigel Farage - he’s doing it for the country.”
In the clip, he continues on to emphatically tell us to mark his words, “that he Farage win handsomely.”
For the country. How terribly, terribly moving.
It is at this point that I should remind everyone that the man already had the seat in Parliament. He already had a platform. He already had endless media access. He already had the ability to answer the questions. He could have cooperated fully with the standards investigation, produced the relevant information, allowed the process to run, and then made his political argument off the back of the result.
Instead, he resigned from the job he wants to keep, triggered a by-election that pauses the investigation, demanded the public treat an electoral contest as a substitute for scrutiny, and then complained when the other parties declined to take part in his little martyrdom pageant.
For the country, apparently. Not for Nigel. Never for Nigel. Nigel would never!
6. “They’re insulting Clacton voters”
This one is also doing quite a bit of very heavy lifting.
Zia Yusuf said he took “real exception” to those speaking about people in Clacton as if they were “some sort of nefarious body”, then added:
“No, Ed Davey, they are the voters. They are the people who actually matter with regards to Nigel’s performance as an MP.”
Again, this is classic Reform UK misdirection.
There is no one serious saying that Clacton voters are the problem, the criticism is very obviously aimed at Farage.
Farage called this by-election. Farage chose the timing. Farage is under investigation. Farage is the one trying to convert a standards issue into a popularity contest. Farage is the one asking voters to provide him with political absolution before the evidence has been properly tested.
But if Reform can turn criticism of Farage into an insult against Clacton, then every question about money becomes snobbery. Every question about donors becomes contempt. Every question about declarations becomes the sneering metropolitan elite looking down on ordinary voters.
It is manipulative as hell, and also increasingly tired and very, very transparent.
7. “If they thought they could win, they would stand”
This is the tactical cousin of “running scared.” Yusuf’s line on BBC Breakfast was:
“The only reason that they are not standing a candidate is because they know that they believe themselves that they have no chance of beating Nigel.”
Possibly.
Or, and stay with me here, they realised “at the speed of light”, using Yusuf’s own words that standing gives Farage exactly the stage he wanted.
Kemi “The Pugilist” Badenoch, not a politician I usually find myself quoting approvingly before breakfast, put the Tory position as:
“We will be standing a candidate in the real by-election, which will follow the standards investigation into Nigel Farage’s fishy finances. We will not be standing a candidate in the fake by-election that Farage is causing to distract people from what is happening.”
That is the trap Farage tried to set. Run against him now, and he gets his “people versus establishment” tableau.
Don’t run, and he shouts “cowards” while standing opposite Count Binface and Laurence Fox, looking increasingly like a man who ordered a full-blown war and instead got an underfunded village fête.
Honestly, I think the second option is by far the funnier one.
8. “Nigel wasn’t even a politician!”
In what has to go down as one of the most cringeworthy attempts at a defence of her dear leader (presumably a job requirement to be part of the “Farage Fillies” splinter group within Reform), Laila Cunningham was doing her level best to convince Tom Swarbrick on LBC that her Nigel wasn’t even a politician when he got his bungs, despite him being the Chairman and CEO of Reform UK and telling every Tom, Dick and Harriet to vote for Reform, saying that:
“Well, no. I mean, being the chairman of a political party is like an honorary role. He was not politically active and you know, the chairman of a political party.”
Cunningham, contorted herself into near injury trying to argue that being chairman of a political party is somehow not political activity.
Which, I will give it to her, is brave - I for one would not go onto a national radio programme and embarrass myself to that extent, and my Pride outfit this year featured denim cutoffs.
Now at this point I would probably clarify that most of us, using our ordinary human brains, would tend to think that being chairman of a political party is about as political as a role can get without someone physically stapling a rosette to your forehead.
Yet, somehow, this is the defence now: Farage wasn’t really political. He was only chairman of Reform UK. Only CEO. Only telling people to vote Reform. Only hovering around British politics like a cigarette-scented weather system. Only being, you know, Nigel Farage.
Ja, no. That does not work for me, hey.
The whole point of this line is not to clarify anything, but to obfuscate and create fog.
9. “The smears are the real scandal”
This is the final bin, and probably the one that tells you everything you need to know about the psychology of Reform UK.
The basic argument here is that all of this is just a media pile-on. Farage, in the previously mentioned Daily Mail interview said that:
“If there’s a daily media pile-on saying that I’m dishonest on this, that or the other, it leaves me in a position of paralysis. So I’ve done this to try and break that.”
He also asked, in relation to George Cottrell allegedly helping pay for filming and related support:
“If George Cottrell helped a bit with paying for the film crews and stuff, so what? What’s that got to do with anybody?”
“What’s that got to do with anybody?” is a helluva position to take.
A politician asking what support from a wealthy ally has to do with anybody is not an answer. It is the entire problem wearing a name badge.
It has absolutely everything to do with everybody.
Money in politics matters. Gifts matter. Benefits in kind matter. Donations matter. Declarations matter. The question of who funds politicians matters because, in public life, money is never just money. It brings access, influence, proximity, leverage, obligation and power.
That is why the scrutiny matters.
The scandal is not that people are asking questions, nor is it that journalists are finally digging.
The scandal is that a man who received millions of pounds, by his own account as a “reward for campaigning for Brexit”, now appears to believe the real outrage is being expected to explain it.
And that is quite something.
Farage wants the question itself to be treated as the smear. He wants scrutiny to be seen as persecution. He wants the public to believe that asking who paid for what, when, why, and how it was declared is somehow a grubby attack rather than the most basic expectation in public life.
The line to take
To pull this all together, all their defences really boil down to:
Let the people decide.
The establishment is running scared.
It is a witch hunt.
Nigel is not establishment.
He is doing it for the country.
They are insulting Clacton voters.
The other parties would stand if they thought they could win.
He wasn’t even a politician.
The smears are the real scandal.
Each of these is just the same line being repeated with slightly different wording.
Every part of it is designed to move the eye away from the money and towards the performance. Away from the rules and towards the crowd. Away from the evidence and towards the vibe. Away from the register of interests and towards a man standing near a microphone insisting he is being persecuted for loving Britain too much.
Which is exactly why the whole thing is falling so flat for Farage.
Because for all the noise, for all the “cowards clucking away”, for all the “kangaroo court” gibberish, for all the brave talk of voters as the “ultimate source of truth”, the actual truth remains stubbornly procedural.
A standards investigation is not a general election, a by-election is not an audit, a majority in a seat you already hold is simply not a receipt.
Farage wants this whole damned charade to be a great moral reckoning, he wants the country to watch Clacton and see him vindicated.
That is just not what’s happening in any way or form.
What we have instead is a man under scrutiny for undeclared money, triggering a by-election to pause the process, then watching his allies flop around live on various media with the frenzied confidence of people trying to sell a used car that is actively on fire.
The next few weeks are going to be incredibly noisy. Reform will repeatedly scream persecution. GB News will reach levels of grievance previously only observed in recently divorced men at airport Wetherspoons. Tice will continue auditioning for the role of Britain’s angriest poultry impersonator. Yusuf will keep insisting the establishment is running scared while the establishment appears mostly to have wandered off. Anderson will call it courage. Jenrick will call it a kangaroo court. Cunningham will completely debase herself on any channel that will have her. Someone, somewhere, will insist Farage is the only man brave enough to face the people, while quietly hoping nobody asks why he did not simply face the investigation.
The question, however, remains, and tt has remained through the resignation, through the press conference, through the donor rows and it will remain through the desperate attempt to turn Clacton into a constitutional Battle of Helm’s Deep with Count Binface standing in for Gandalf.
What was the money for?
And until Reform can answer that without screaming “establishment” every six seconds, this is not a fight for democracy, it is a panic attack with a rosette.
This is absolutely not a thing. They are not, despite what they’ve convinced themselves, the official opposition.
🎶 Nine bins of stupid
Sitting on a wall
Nine bins of stupid
Sitting on a wall
And if some stupid bins
Should accidentally fall
We’ll still be here laughing
At the stupidity of them all 🎶
🙄
Phew! A precious couple of hours and you want to spend them on the biggest waste of space in Britain next to Tommeh ten names? Ok then.
I might just wait till the end of the process and blast the idiot for doing this to lengthen the time it will take.
Btw your turn of phrase is exquisite xx