Nigel Farage and the Politics of Incompetence and Incapacity
From Boris Johnson to Nigel Farage, how confusion, busyness and bluster replaced accountability.
Nigel “Five Jobs” Farage1 has been surprisingly quiet lately. Or to my mind at least. The last time it felt like he was really gagging hard for the spotlight was when he pitched his London Mayoral candidate in the form of Laila Cunningham. Even with the defections of Jenrick and Rosindell from the Conservative Party to the Conservative Party 2.0 Reform UK in the past week or so, he’s been oddly lowkey2.
This might just be the impression I’m getting, what with the political stage being nearly fully occupied by a burgeoning orange Fascist3 throwing the world into complete disarray, but the point remains that he has been annoying me a lot less lately.
That is, until late last week, when it turned out that Nigel Farage had breached parliamentary financial disclosure rules seventeen separate times, involving roughly £384k in undeclared or late-declared income, and would face no formal consequences whatsoever.
Now, before we all do that thing we’ve been conditioned to do - the big sigh, eye roll and soul-weary “of course he did” - I think it’s worth slowing down for a second.
Not because the breaches aren’t expected or serious (they are very much so on both counts), but because Farage’s explanation for them, and pretty crucially, the way that explanation was received by the body politic at large, tells us something that’s more important than just the specifics of this case.
Nige’s explanation, to summarise somewhat generously was that he was simply too important, busy, in demand, far too overwhelmed and computer illiterate to comply properly with the rules that, by and large, apply to every other MP in the House of Commons. He told anyone that would listen4, that his inbox was just unmanageable, his political life has exploded, his team was stretched and that the systems used in parliament were just not designed for people “in business.”
I mean, when he explains it like that, doesn’t your heart just bleed for the poor man’s misfortune? Also, to be fair to the man, he is rather busy. Not only is he, of course, the MP for Clacton, but also a party leader, broadcaster on telly, brand ambassador for gold bullion, Cameo personality, semi-professional X troll, Telegraph columnist, Facebook personality… well, you get the gist. His life is hectic.
That, however, is not an exculpatory argument of any sort - it is, if anything, the complete opposite.
The basic premise of parliamentary disclosure is hardly obscure or particularly exotic, and the whole process basically goes like this:
You earn a lot of money outside of your full time job as MP.
Tell people about it promptly through the agreed channels.
That is not a hard or overly burdensome process. You make extra money, you disclose it. Not when reminded to do so. Not once the paperwork starts niggling at the back of your mind that something needs to be done. Not as soon as you finally learn how to use computers.
You do it within the rules, you do it on time. A repeated failure to do so - especially seventeen fucking times, no less - is neither quirky admin mishap or something you get to say “whoopsie-daisy” about. It’s a pattern of behaviour.
More interesting than this pattern of behaviour that we’ve seen in the busiest MP in the land with the most lucrative side-hustles is just how incredibly smoothly and easily the system gobbles it all up.
His explanation is accepted, apology noted, commitment to do better is recorded, and just like that - BAM! - file closed. Not a single sanction in sight, an escalation completely absent and a referral not even considered. Just a public report and a polite request that he must try harder next time.
Which is the exact point where my sigh of “he’s done it again”, turns into positively effervescent irritation. We have seen this film before. We have seen it multiple times. Not even just with the leader of Reform, but with numerous other characters in the psychodrama that has become public life.
It feels like over the years, politics in the UK has somehow developed a tolerance for what I can only describe to be “strategic incapacity.” Rules are seen to be broken not through cunning precision (though they are), but through sprawling disorganisation and what feels like a refusal by people to learn the systems they work in.
This is also, I hasten to note, not a novelty that’s specific to Farage or Reform - the Tories have, in particular, mastered this maneouvre for well over a decade. Just think back to the multiple ministerial code breaches under recent Tory governments?
The main incident coming to mind being when Boris Johnson was found to have broken COVID regulations and then insisted, repeatedly, that the guidance had been misunderstood. That he had “unknowingly” breached restrictions. That every attempt had been made to follow the rules, but you must understand, just how terribly busy and important he and his team were. We must truly have sympathy for the poor aides who were having a piss-up in Number 10 Downing street, mustn’t we?
That whole damned situation is when a precedent was really set, when senior politicians learned that confusion functions very well as cover and that incompetence can be pleaded as mitigation.
The rules themselves hadn’t changed - they’re the same as they’ve always been - it’s just that the consequences started becoming far more absent, and now every time a senior politician is found to have broken the rules it’s framed as “regrettable, but understandable.” Serious, but terribly complicated. Wrong, perhaps, but never quite wrong enough to warrant a serious sanction5.
And this all happens not necessarily because anyone consciously decides to go easy on politicians, but because enforcement bodies have become structurally cautious and explanation hungry. They seem to much prefer a digestible narrative over anything that could be seen as public drama.
Which is how we got to this point. Which is how Nigel Farage can point to an aide as being incompetent, and himself as being pretty much incompetent, and get away with not doing a very basic function of his role as MP.
Farage, in this case, hasn’t necessarily exposed a different system - he’s demonstrated just how well it works for people like him. How accountability is now truly for people who aren’t as busy, whose lives aren’t as complicated and who can’t bluster their way out of consequences quite like he does.
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I would like to thank the Lib Dems for that specific moniker - who said they weren’t good for anything?
To be fair, I also wouldn’t want to advertise that Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell had joined my team, so there is that.
I realise I wrote a piece only a few weeks ago saying that wasn’t an accurate descriptor, but recent events on the world stage and in Minnesota have changed my tune.
AKA, the whole of the Westminster Media Lobby.
Unless of course you’re a working class woman, in which case a mistake does result in you having to stand down as Deputy Prime Minister when many other politicians will just brazen it out until it all goes away.
Clearly the old 'ignorance of the law is no excuse' no longer applies..... Unless you're a day late with your self assessment submission and a regular joe.
I was going to comment on “…every time a senior politician is found to have broken the rules it’s framed as “regrettable, but understandable.”
But then I saw footnote 5 🙄