Who's Behind Reform Mischief?

What appeared to be an unstoppable surge is being stymied by the usual suspects.

Divide and Conquer. The oldest strategy in the book.

After a dizzying period of unthwarted growth and hubbub around whether Nigel Farage could form the next government, rifts, cracks and wobbles are starting to appear in Reform UK.

Or are they?

First of all, it's worth pointing out that we are a ludicrously long way away from a General Election, however many may will it otherwise. But such is the panic in both Labour and the Conservatives at the threat posed to their legacy monopoly on politics, no fewer than half of councils facing voters in May could ask for a postponement on holding elections.

Why? This isn't Covid. There is no Act Of God event endangering those who might go to the ballot box. The only thing in peril is the vast number of seats around the country that could fall to Reform, thus changing the political landscape dramatically, and perhaps permanently for parties who have held cosy dominance for far too long.

I think we can all see through Angela Rayner's cynical offer to ‘postpone’ the vote so that local authorities can restructure under her devolution plans.

Gerrymandering is nothing new in politics, but this is election manipulation on an industrial scale. To my mind it is utterly unprecedented to prevent democracy taking place so that a Government can hurry through a policy so early in the first term. Surely broad restructuring through greater devolution requires consultation, phased implementation, processes that will take years. Lay the plans in place for a restructure by all means, that is in a Government's gift, but manifest those changes after the due diligence. Instead we have a incompetently obvious Government that audaciously wants to cancel elections for potentially years, so that they can sit and redraw the map (doubtless to their own advantage). It’s Labour 101: using changes to the apparatus of state, be it quangos or council, to bind the successor or even lock them out of any meaningful power. It is the stuff of brazen tinpot dictators and should outrage the commentariat. Yet with legacy media so acquiescent to the manoeuvres of the Left in Britain, Labour have proven that they can get away with a heck of a lot without most hacks drumming up any sort of furore, regardless of public outcry.

Unfortunately local elections rarely invite much excitement from the general populace, with the only people exercised by this crude tactic being elected councillors themselves, whose interests are more likely served by Labour's proposed delay given that they are all potential prey to Reform usurpment.

But this sort of stuff should sound the claxon in the Shires and parishes of England. Send up a flare of warning that our democracy is urgently skidding down a ramp into a quagmire of deceit and delusion by desperate, failing parties that have squandered our prosperity and peace much to the chagrin of increasing numbers of voters.

The legacy media however are more interested in airing the fallout of one post on X from Elon Musk who questioned Farage's leadership over his resolve when it comes to the incarceration of Tommy Robinson.

The same media who decry Musk as dangerous, and openly opine that he should be ‘stopped’ while the UK Government sees fit to investigate him with a Counter Extremism squad as he openly muses over Sir Keir Starmer's fitness for office, then wet their knickers with delight when it was Nigel's position being questioned. The glaring hypocrisy is so typical, it barely warrants note.

John Woodcock, the Government’s adviser on political violence and disruption, said: “Britain’s democracy isn’t a plaything for foreign billionaires” - But of course, it's fine for it to be a plaything for Labour, plummeting in the polls while both they and the Tories could face an extinction level event.

Which moves us on to the case in point. What to say and do about Tommy Robinson.

With a cut throat media corps that still dominates public discourse and manipulates perspective in Britain (in spite of a sweeping revolution in the social media space), the voting demographic tends to be dominated by older people, who still watch legacy news and turn out for local elections, and middle class ones, who not only orchestrate, but perpetuate the perceived zeitgeist from a position of comfort. Any Reform endorsement of Robinson would have the establishment smacking their lips in delight at the opportunity to go on the warpath to spook the electorate. Irrational levels of wanton attack is something that Nigel knows all to well, with a real world impact if May elections do go ahead. In short, he would be painting a target on his back.

For over a decade Tommy Robinson has been the ideal bogeyman, the manufactured personification of an equally fictional ‘Far Right’ threat to Britain. Harnessed by both wilful elites and their blind acolytes, and paraded as polite ideologies in order to silence discourse over topics or shroud them in shame, the powers that be have determined it is far better to try to curate the reaction to their self-made crisis rather than address an increasingly complex crisis itself.

We all know the terms Far Right, Nazi and Fascist are casually thrown around as mufflers on any debate over immigration. And Nigel knows this all too well.

For too long Farage has been demonised and ostracised, yet as the Overton Window shifts, he has found himself finally in the realm of the realistic and the acceptable. This is played out by the huge uptick in support for Reform as it becomes clear Labour will not address multiculturalism while the Conservatives stuck it on steroids. Back of the net for Farage, even if at the cost of the country he has been trying to save for so long.

And that opportunity must not be squandered. For realistically there is only one political force that has stayed true to its word on the topic of immigration and would bring about the sort of radical policies to deliver real change, whether leaving the ECHR or scrapping the Gordian Knot of farcical and misnomered Human Rights legislation (which advantages the villain over the victim) or, of course, the repatriation of economic and border control through Brexit; Nigel Farage’s big life achievement to date.

But try to sell all of this now to a largely brainwashed population who have been gaslit into believing such acts are tantamount to an evil dictatorship and Reform would be about as close to power as Mrs Miggins behind the till in the local charity shop.

I have no doubt, Dear Reader, that you do get it. You also know that only by enacting previously unconscionable programmes of Government in the future can we wrest the nation from the jaws of disaster. But the fact of the matter is, most of the population doesn't get that…yet.

Try to make the case we are abandoning anything with the absurd label of ‘Human Rights’ and most people will believe the confected narrative that this is the sort of thing only Pariah States do. It takes a sizeable amount of time to unpick decades of deliberate public opinion manipulation. And the people most likely to cling to established views are also the ones more likely to consume those views from the established media and, here's the pinch, then vote. At least for now, if Reform is to make waves in a favourable tail wind, those voters simply cannot be alienated.

But what about the 40% of voters who don't turn out on polling day? The Left Behind demographic who are more likely to consume their news on social media and think favourably of Tommy Robinson? It's a huge caucus of would-be ballots that has been neglected and untapped for a generation. Nigel knows this. When they have turned out to vote, they have voted for him. So it stands to reason they numerically should not be alienated either, and could also be encouraged to become first time voters, as many were during Brexit, who finally see a sense of hope in turning up and taking part in democracy, for much needed radical change to be delivered.

So Reform UK are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and their political opponents know this. But they also fear that Nigel will tread where they dare not.

Elon Musk's intervention would have delighted the arrogant elites, ironically calling for Musk himself to be censored after he pledged millions to Reform, only to seemingly backtrack on the offer and throw Farage under a bus. And the salivating media are poised to opportunise and maximise any little crack they see appear.

At this stage in the electoral cycle, Farage needs to go for the voters most likely to turn out and build strong footholds at local level. Former Reformists who publicly disavow this strategy (I won’t name names) and worse still, egotistically critique it from the wings, are simply pissing all over the very project they purport to promote. I'm afraid people like that are better off flushed out. The public knows only too well how harmful self serving factions playing parlour games inside political parties are, following the disgraceful Conservative debacle during the last Government.

But what about Mr Robinson? Well, he doesn't get to have any sort of say while he's in solitary. But neither has he ever been on the record saying that he wants to be part of Reform UK, either. The entire debate is a straw man. Those voicing disapproval of the current situation on his behalf may have their own agendas to serve, too.

Well, it is no secret that I have spoken to him. The conversation is posted on this site.

In conversation before our interview I explained the political landscape when we discussed Reform, and unlike what his detractors may suggest, I think he gets it.

Nigel is a wily politician, more practised than most in navigating a hostile media, while reading the political tea leaves.

But his hardest challenge yet will be trying to build enough of a comprehensive range of voters to really break in to Number 10, from where the real work can begin.

Do not be surprised, therefore, if he is proceeding with caution.