Nigel Farage
The Orbánisation of British Politics: Farage and Braverman Headline with Hungarian Prime Minister at National Conservatism Conference
Suella Braverman and Nigel Farage have been announced as speakers alongside Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at this year’s National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) in Brussels next week.
Braverman also spoke at last year's UK event with other Conservative politicians including Michael Gove, Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger. Last year the Byline Times reported on NatCon's links to Orbán, US billionaire Peter Thiel, and the organisations funding this effort to mainstream Christian Nationalism.
The line-up for this year’s NatCon Brussels further demonstrates Orbán’s influence on the right of European politics and also includes many speakers with links to radical right networks in Europe and the US who aim to roll back reproductive and sexuality rights.
Toby Young’s Free Speech Union (FSU) is again well represented at NatCon, demonstrating the organisation's links to the movement.
James Orr and Matthew Goodwin both spoke at NatCon UK and are speaking again in Brussels. Orr was chair of NatCon UK, and is UK chair of the Edmund Burke Foundation (EBF) which is the organisation behind NatCon.
The FSU’s Frank Ferudi is also speaking. Ferudi, formerly of the Revolutionary Communist Party, is the Executive Director of the Brussels branch of the Hungarian government-backed college Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC). Furedi told Politico that his position at MCC Brussels was “a chance to fight back in the culture wars” in an article that labelled him “Orban’s attack dog”.
In May 2022, Furedi also spoke at the US-based Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) hosted in Budapest. CPAC is an annual conference organised by the American Conservative Union (ACU), the foremost Republican organisation in the US.
Another NatCon speaker Ralph Gert Schoellhammer is a Visiting Fellow at MCC Budapest. He is also a writer for UnHerd, Spiked, and the European Conservative and a regular on GB News and Talk TV.
NatCon features several other speakers from institutes backed by the Hungarian Government. John O'Sullivan is president of the Danube Institute, a Hungarian conservative think tank that receives state funding, and Rob Dreher is a fellow of the institute. Another speaker Gladden Pappin is president of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, Hungary’s foreign policy research institute of state.
NatCon has been linked to the brand of Christian Nationalism adopted by the radical right in the US. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation who spoke at NatCon UK 2023 is an author of Project 2025 which sets out the agenda for a second Trump presidency, including policies that would “rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination” and roll back access to abortion and contraception with a “focus on strengthening marriage and sexual risk avoidance.”
Speaking at NatCon 2024, Paul Coleman is the executive director of Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADF) and a lawyer. The Southern Poverty Law Center based in the US which monitors far-right activity has labelled the ADF as a hate group. The organisation was also named in an EU report Tip of the Iceberg (TOTI) as being a key organisation in a Europe-wide network involved in funnelling US and Russian dark money into religious extremism with the aim of rolling back reproductive and sexuality rights. Between 2008 and 2019 ADF spent over $23,000,000 on anti-gender campaigning across Europe.
ADF’s UK entity has recently ramped up lobbying in Westminster, according to analysis by the Observer the latest financial accounts for ADF UK show it spent almost £1m in the year to June 2023, up from £392,556 in 2020, and that its income almost doubled between 2022 and 2023, from £553,823 to £1,068,552.
Another NatCon speaker Ladislav Ilčić MEP is a Croatian politician who represents Hrvatski suverenisti (Croatian Sovereigntists) and is part of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR).
Ilčić also attended the European Congress of Families conference (ECF) held in Croatia in September 2023 which featured speakers from other key organisations named in the TOTI report including Brian Brown of the International Organization of the Family which is directly linked to Russian oligarchs who have been under western sanctions since the annexation of Crimea. In 2014 Brown organised a conference inside the Kremlin palace.
Other ECF speakers included Conservative MPs Miriam Cates and Ranil Jayawardena. ECF was organised by the ECR which contains factions of socially conservative, right-wing populist, liberal-conservative, Christian democratic, far-right, and national conservative parties.
Three other members of the ECR are also speaking at NatCon 2024, co-chairman Ryszard Legutko from Poland, Dutch independent MEP Rob Roos, and Vice President Hermann Tertsch del Valle-Lersundi who is a member of the Spanish VOX Political Party which is named in the TOTI report as being part of the $700,000,000 anti-gender network.
European politicians at NatCon 2024 also include members of the Identity and Democracy Party, Tom Vandendriessche of Belgium's Vlaams Belang party who although described themselves as centre-right are widely considered to be on the far right, and Patricia Chagnon, an MEP representing Marie Le Pen's National Rally party.
Other NatCon speakers include:
Melanie Phillips, columnist for The Times and the Jewish News Syndicate, and regular on the BBC is also speaking at the conference.
So too is Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist and political analyst who is a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, accused of being a hate group and fake news publisher that has received funding from the Mercer Family Foundation run by the billionaire Mercer family who also funded Cambridge Analytica. The Gatestone Institute has ties to the British 'think tanks' the Henry Jackson Society and Policy Exchange as reported by the Byline Times.
Also speaking is German aristocrat Gloria von Thurn und Taxis who worked closely with conservative Traditionalist Catholic leaders within the church and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, with whom she planned to set up a school to educate and train right-wing Catholics.
The conference's special guest is Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a German Cardinal of the Catholic Church who has courted controversy for public criticism of Pope Francis stating that the Pope has “uttered plenty of material heresies”.
Channel 9 Locks In Donald Trump To Host The Roast Of Kevin Rudd
Fresh of the success of their ”roast” of John Cleese which featured a who’s that of Australian comedy, Channel 9 has announced that their next roast victim will be former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Not only that but the roast will be hosted by former President turned multiple time defendant, Donald Trump.
”The Cleese roast was such a success we almost got 20 viewers, that’s unheard of these days for commercial TV,” said a Channel 9 executive. ”The Kevin Rudd one though will be off the hook, we’ll have 100’s of people watching.”
”And that’ll just be the Nation’s defamation lawyers.”
When asked how they managed to secure former President Trump to host, the Channel 9 executive said:”He really needs the cash at the moment, so it wasn’t that hard.”
”Heck, offer him a bundle of cash and a microphone and you can pretty much get him to do anything.”
”Don’t believe us? Wait till you see our new winter show, Don’s Backyard.”
Mark Williamson
@MWChatShow
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Debunking the Debanking Scandal: Is Farage Being Helped by Figures Inside the Conservative Party?
At Prime Minister’s Questions this week, Rishi Sunak was put on the spot by Sir Keir Starmer. He was asked if he would welcome Nigel Farage back into the Tory fold, 30 years after he quit the Conservative Party over John Major’s decision to sign up to the Maastricht Treaty which promised deeper EU integration.
An angry Sunak avoided a direct answer. He is busy trying to persuade Lee Anderson, a former Tory deputy chairman, not to defect to the party Farage now supports, Reform. Tory moderates want Anderson, accused of Islamophobia, to go.
Farage meanwhile, ever the mischief-maker, is keeping his powder dry: he may emerge as the head of Reform and challenge the Tories at the coming election or he may not. If he does, then the likelihood of a major split on the right, with a divided vote, threatens the Tories’ very existence. It’s that serious.
Or the Tories could eat humble pie and welcome him back - better to have him on the inside than out. But that would be tantamount to a takeover by the right, the One Nation rump would be left high and dry. They could quit en masse.
Farage, entrant terrible, stirrer of anti-Tory, anti-Sunak unrest is enjoying every minute. Sunak, it seems, can trust no one. It appears even his ministerial colleagues, those he has promoted, are in private touch with his enemy. Look at Andrew Griffith, who was Economic Secretary to the Treasury – the City Minister responsible for financial services – and played a key role in the demise of the first woman to head a High Street bank.
Alison Rose and the NatWest Non-Scandal
On 18 July last year, Dame Alison Rose was in Downing Street for the launch of the Prime Minister’s new Business Council. The chief executive of NatWest Group, she was one of Britain’s most senior bankers, and a member of the Business Council, the newly created group of 14 British business leaders who would meet with Sunak to help “turbocharge economic growth”. She was photographed, laughing and joking with Sunak in the Number Ten garden at the unveiling.
Rose was already well-known and fondly regarded in Government circles – she was also co-chair of the government’s Energy Efficiency Taskforce and a member of the Net Zero Council.
Yet a week later, Rose was gone, forced to resign for unwittingly confirming to BBC journalist Simon Jack that Farage was a client of Coutts, the private bank owned by NatWest.
Farage had previously gone public, claiming he had been ‘debanked’ by a private bank because of his political views. Suspicion immediately landed on Coutts - the leading private bank was named in the media and on social media - but there was no official confirmation.
Rose was asked repeatedly at a dinner by Jack about Farage’s claim that “the bank says it was a commercial decision, I say it was political.” Rose said it was commercial, not political. In so doing, she acknowledged Farage was a Coutts customer and broke the banking code of confidentiality.
It was a genuine slip. Her board retained confidence in her.
The Government Shareholder Steps In
The Government was NatWest’s biggest shareholder. Griffith, then City Minister, had his officials call the NatWest Chair, Sir Howard Davies, and say the Government wanted her out for having discussed a client’s financial affairs with a BBC journalist.
Rose was a popular, highly-rated CEO, with an impressive track record. This was a first mistake, an inadvertent error. Nevertheless, after the call from Griffith’s office, Davies had to tell Rose: the largest shareholder, with 38.6% of the shares, wanted her out, in which case she was effectively toast.
The whole affair was hugely wounding for Rose. It was highly damaging for NatWest which had to find a successor. It raised questions about Coutts and the bank’s policies. The cause of advancing women in the City was knocked back. Sunak’s prestige Business Council was undermined before it had got off first base.
Griffith, it transpires, was in secret contact with Farage and had known for several weeks what the maverick politician was planning.
Farage privately lobbied Griffith for assistance with his debanking complaint against Coutts, asking the minister for advice “before I go public”.
WhatsApp messages disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act show Farage contacted Griffith, to discuss Coutts’ closure of his accounts because of his politics.
A message sent by Farage shortly before 1 am on 28 April 2023 said: “Thanks for making contact. Yes, a chat would be useful”. A further message sent just before noon the same day read: “Dear Andrew, when you have 5 minutes do let me know.”
Twelve days later Farage got in touch again, saying: “Be keen to discuss my legal position with you before I go public on this.”
The Treasury confirmed that a telephone conversation between Farage and Griffith had subsequently taken place with a civil servant present.
Griffith’s WhatsApp replies to Farage were not available since the minister used the app’s ‘disappearing messages’ function to ensure they were erased.
An independent review by lawyers for NatWest later found that Coutts had a “contractual right” to shut Farage’s accounts and did so because the bank was losing money by keeping him on as a client. It was a business decision, based on his banking activity and not his politics. The lawyers identified “serious failings” but added that it had not discriminated against him.
Soon after Rose’s departure was announced, Griffith sent an early morning WhatsApp to selected members of the media with the message: “I hope the whole financial sector learns from this incident.”
It was reported that to some journalists he claimed, “V for victory”, although this was denied.
Debunking the Debank
Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general, accused Farage and Griffith of secretly plotting together before the launch of the former Ukip leader’s debanking campaign.
“No one who has been following British politics for the last three decades will be remotely surprised to see this Tory government secretly conspiring behind the scenes with Nigel Farage to support each other’s campaigns and attacks,” she said.
Yes, but it surely raises further serious questions. Why did Farage single out Griffith? Did the successful businessman turned Boris Johnson supporter and former chair of the advisory board of the right-wing Centre for Policy Studies, inform his boss, Sunak, as to what was going on? What else was Farage in the habit of contacting him about? Is Farage in private touch with other Tory ministers?
Crucially, why did Griffith not alert Rose as to what was occurring? He clearly had insight of Farage’s plans. Rose and her team could have been better prepared; her conversation with the BBC might have been avoided. Her job and her position on the Prime Minister’s Business Council would have been saved.
Griffith, don’t forget, was not just a minister he was representing the largest shareholder in NatWest. The bank, and with it the taxpayers’ investment, suffered as a result of Rose’s going. Talking to Farage, knowing what was coming and doing nothing – it seemed an odd way for a shareholder to behave.
He was able to witness the launch of the Business Council, and was aware of the value attached to Rose by Sunak and the government yet did absolutely nothing to assist her.
His loyalty is questionable. It must beg the question as to who really calls the shots in this Conservative administration. Is it the beleaguered Sunak, the Prime Minister and official leader, or is there another, in waiting?
Reform UK Limited: The Political Business Brought to You by Billionaires
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid Reform UK Party Limited’s leader Richard Tice, its unofficial doyen-at-large Nigel Farage, and Tice’s deputy Benyamin ‘Ben’ Habib.
On 4th January 2021, the Brexit party's name change to Reform UK was approved by the Electoral Commission. For a party that in the 2023 UK local elections averaged 6% of the vote in the wards where it stood and won just six seats out of the 8,519 up for election, national media coverage of Reform was - and is - highly disproportionate.
Farage and Tice have their own shows on GB News, which is bankrolled by billionaire hedge-funder Paul Marshall and Dubai-based investment company Legatum, founded by New Zealand billionaire Christopher Chandler who made a fortune in Russian gas in the 1990s.
GB News feels increasingly like a space to present uninterrupted Party-Political Broadcasts. That’s despite UK broadcast rules, supposedly enforced by Ofcom, which state that broadcasters - including GB News - must ensure 'adequate and appropriate levels of due impartiality in its presentation of matters of political controversy and current public policy.' In December 2023, GB News breached the Ofcom code for the fifth time, and 12 further Ofcom investigations are currently open into the channel.
Reform ‘Honorary President’ and, according to several reports, its controlling majority shareholder, Nigel Farage, received a great deal of media exposure during last year’s I’m a Celebrity and during the Coutts ‘debanking’ affair.
Reform Leader Richard Tice and co-Deputy Leader, Ben Habib are regularly invited onto national broadcast flagship news and politics shows on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky. All three tend to appear in the pages of the billionaire-owned UK national press every week, and in addition, on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), they tweet regularly to their combined two million followers.
But what - and who - is propelling the group?
Directing Reform
Despite receiving more than £10 million pounds in donations over the past four years, Reform Treasurer and Secretary, Mehrtash A’Zami, stated at the end of 2022 that Reform had net liabilities of more than £1 million, “a significant percentage of which comes from Director’s loans”.
According to Companies House, there are currently just three active directors: Tice, Farage, and Reform CEO, ex-UKIP Chairman Paul Oakden, who has stated that he is worried about the supposed “globalist totalitarian” approach of both Labour and the Conservatives.
In 2008, Oakden became parliamentary agent for then Tory MP, Andrew Bridgen, but was fired after eight weeks, in part for allegedly ‘spending most of his time on a dating site’. A 2016 article in The Sun claims Bridgen had said about Oakden that ‘he shouldn’t be in politics’, branding him a ‘political suicide bomber’.
Since his dramatic exit as UKIP Chairman in February 2018 - unlike his Reform colleagues - Oakden has kept a very low profile.
Reform’s Major Donors
We know from the Electoral Commission donations database that to date, Jeremy Hosking has donated £2,578,000 to Reform UK, giving more than £6 million in total to right-wing parties, including the Conservatives, and since 2019, around £3.5 million to Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party.
Another major donor to Reform is ex-Bullingdon Club member George Farmer (£200,000 in 2019). Ex-hedge-funder Brextremist George Farmer, the former CEO of far-right platform Parler and former Chair of far-right group Turning Point UK - endorsed by Farage, Priti Patel, and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
He’s married to controversial US political commentator Candace Owens, who caused controversy when in December 2018 at a TPUK launch event in London she made comments about Hitler, saying that it would have been “okay” if he had just wanted to “make Germany great”. In September 2023, Farmer joined the board of GB News.
By far the biggest single Reform donor is Chris Harborne, who according to Electoral Commission records has now given around £10 million to the Brexit/Reform party. Harborne made his fortune in aviation fuel and tech investing, and made multiple appearances in the Panama Papers.
Harborne is based in Thailand, holding Thai citizenship under the name Chakrit Sakunkrit. Like Farage, Tice, and Habib, Harborne was privately educated. He worked for five years as a management consultant at McKinsey and is now CEO of Sherriff Global Group which trades in private planes, and owns AML Global, a firm that sells aviation fuel.
In March 2023, it was reported that Harborne, who had also given £1 million to the office of former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, had helped crypto “stablecoin” operator Tether circumvent a block on access to the US banking system.
In November 2021 crypto news site Protos said Harborne had received more than $70 million in Tether tokens in early 2019. These tokens were allegedly paid to an account in the name of an alternative Thai identity held by Harborne, “Chakrit Sakunkrit”. According to Protos, shortly after receiving the Tether tokens, Harborne made large donations to pro-Brexit political parties in the UK.
Harborne is also the largest single shareholder in UK defence technology Qinetiq, with a stake exceeding 10%. In November 2023, Qinetiq said that its income had been boosted by the Ukraine war, with rising sales of products ranging from battlefield robots to communications systems.
Other Reform donations include £100,000 from First Corporate - a firm owned by Terence Mordaunt, the 13th biggest donor to the pro-Brexit campaign, and a director of Tufton Street’s anti-Net Zero Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The group’s aims are to challenge what it calls "extremely damaging and harmful policies" envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming. Mordaunt is also a patron of Conservative Way Forward, a Thatcherite think tank relaunched in 2021 with Steve Baker at the helm.
Other notable donations to Reform includes £20,000 from Panther Securities PLC, a property investment company whose Chairman, former UKIP donor Andrew Perloff, has blamed rising inflation on climate policies, and defended those who question whether “global warming is happening”, along with £10,000 from Dunmoore Properties, the CEO and owner of which is Jeffrey Hobby. Tice - CEO of the property asset management group Quidnet Capital - and Habib - CEO of First Property Group, which operates in the UK, Poland, and Romania – both became multimillionaires through property.
Despite all the donations, on 31st December 2022, the Reform Party stated in its Companies House accounts document that it “had net liabilities of £1,106,050… these liabilities consist mainly of directors loans from Richard Tice and we have received suitable reassurances from him about the intention for these to help grow the party in the medium term…. There is a Directors loan to the party outstanding at 31 December 2022 for £1,083,000 (2021: £643,000) which is repayable upon request and only if the party cash position allows for repayments.”
Making Enemies and Influencing People
So how come a party polling only up to eleven per cent matters, when the UK's First Past the Post electoral system is heavily loaded against minor parties, and will ensure Reform remains insignificant as a Westminster force? As UKIP demonstrated, minor parties can exert significant sway if they threaten to syphon votes from the major parties.
Arguably, the Government’s obsession with 'small boats' is a direct response to the relentless focus on the issue by Farage, with Reform enjoying significant media support from the billionaire-funded "news" media.
Reform’s emphasis on Sunak’s Parties’ perceived shortcomings – high taxation, a poor Brexit deal, overuse of lockdowns, economically damaging Net Zero, high immigration and lack of border controls, too much influence from the ECHR, and the ever present ‘threat’ from an ill-defined ‘wokeism’ – is music to the ears of the Tory right, relentlessly articulated by fellow GB News presenters and Tory MPs, Lee Anderson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, as well as by Martin Daubney and many other presenters.
Daubney was involved in another recent breach of the Broadcasting Code when Ofcom ruled GB News breached impartiality rules during a programme presented by Daubney, who was standing in for Laurence Fox, in which he discussed small boats with Tice.
Since Brexit, the Tories have been pushed ever further right by fear of populists like Farage and Tice - which has dragged Labour and the 'centre ground' ever further rightward – which is precisely what Reform’s extremely wealthy donors want.
On 22nd November 2019, the then Brexit Party set out its highly predictable proposals for the 2019 UK general election, which despite rebranding, don’t appear to have changed much since. The party received just two percent of the vote in the election, with none of its 273 candidates winning a seat.
Farage stepped down as leader in March 2021, being replaced by party chairman Tice. Former North West England Brexit MEP David Bull (who since 2022 has his own show on Rupert Murdoch’s Talk TV) was appointed as deputy leader on 11 March 2021, joined soon after by co-Leader Ben Habib.
Then in 2021, Reform announced its intention to field a full slate of candidates in the London Assembly elections with Tice standing for election in the latter. However, the party didn't nominate a candidate after making a pact with Reclaim Party leader and then GB News presenter, Laurence Fox.
Empty Threats?
Tice, like Farage before him, has repeatedly pledged to field Reform candidates in every constituency at the next general election.
But given Reform’s current financial position, this seems like another empty threat designed to drag the Tories even further right and to encourage the Tories to adopt policies which the Tory Right, Reform’s donors, GB News’s funders, and the billionaire owners of the Mail, Sun, Telegraph, Metro, Times and Spectator would all welcome.
Farage has also described his admiration for Italy's Five Star Movement, which managed to grow from a fringe protest group into a significant force in Italian politics.
Following Brexit on 31st January 2020, Farage opportunistically reoriented Reform by opposing lockdowns and Net Zero, paralleling global right-wing populist anti-lockdown and anti-climate science sentiments.
Reform company documents reveal a unique structure for a UK political Party which gives almost total control to its leader, Tice. The structure has been criticised for not providing the party's more than 115,000 paying registered supporters with any voting power to influence policy. Perhaps the party’s funders and shareholders have more say.
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Is the Media Helping Richard Tice Sanitise Far-Right Responses to Immigration?
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Life is good for Richard Tice. The leader of Reform UK has it all: money, power, a beautiful girlfriend, and his own TV show. So why is he so angry?
It’s a question not asked by the media. In TV interviews, Tice is never grilled, but merely warmed by the light of the camera. Now Reform UK is polling at ten per cent, the party is being “taken seriously”. What that means in practice is not more scrutiny, but more attention — and the sanitization of a party of the far-right.
When the Office for National Statistics released new immigration data in November, showing a record 672,000 net migration in the year to June, Tice was invited on to the BBC and Sky News to offer his response.
In the same month, Tice was the subject of a respectful profile in the centre-left New Statesman. Nigel Farage, Tice’s friend and Reform UK’s honourary president, was beamed into seven million homes on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!
Tice’s partner, Talk TV journalist Isabel Oakshott, appeared on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’, where she expounded Reform's unique policy of “net zero immigration” and defended Farage’s grumble in the jungle. " Tice was back on the BBC himself earlier this month, talking migration on Newsnight.
How has Tice used this newfound media interest? “These huge mass immigration numbers are changing the nature of our country”, he mused on the BBC’s 'Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday': “It’s making us poorer financially and it’s making us poorer culturally.” Culturally?
“I think that sense of Britishness”, he went on, “who we are, our heritage, our history, our Christian values and ethos.” Over on Sky News’ 'Sunday with Sophy Ridge’, Tice called for a “one in, one out” system of “net zero immigration” (there it is again), and claimed Labour and the Conservatives represent “two different forms of socialism”.
In all of these media slots, Tice was presented as a tough but serious voice on migration and a thorn in the side of Rishi Sunak. With his nice suit and polished media style, one could mistake Tice for a Conservative backbencher — a minority figure, but safely part of mainstream politics. Yet a glance at Tice’s social media, and his output as a host on GB News, reveals a different picture.
EXCLUSIVE
WATCH: Nigel Farage Used ‘Homophobic Racial Slur’ in Personal Message Video
As ITV pays £1.5 million to platform the politician on ‘I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!’, a Byline Times investigation reveals how he charged £75 to use what appears to be a serious racial slur in a personalised video message
Dan Evans and Tom Latchem
The Mask Slips...
It's on GB News that you'll see a hot fury at the state of modern Britain. In videos on Twitter (currently X), Tice glares out of the screen, eyes wide, finger jabbing. Against a Union Jack backdrop, Tice barks about the UK’s “con-socialist” government, “climate change nonsense”, and “open borders” immigration.
On GB News — a channel owned by millionaire hedge funder Paul Marshall and Dubai-based investment firm Legatum Group — Tice often responds to the mildest challenge from guests or interviewers by yelling as if he’s been physically wounded.
When given free rein on GB News, he talks like this: “People want action, they want this stopped. Up and down this country, communities are having their lives, their high streets, blighted, by having these young men of military age being dumped into their communities, and there is a huge amount of suffering, of sadly resentment growing, people feel it’s unfair.”
It’s a bit rich to warn of growing public “resentment” when that’s so clearly your bread and butter. But the key phrase here is “young men of military age” — it smacks of race-baiting and incitement one suspects he would not have tried on the BBC.
When you add Reform’s pledge to “declare a national emergency” over people crossing the Channel in small boats, and its revival of Farage’s “breaking point” poster from the EU referendum, the picture sharpens. (It’s worth recalling that Tice helped to poison the Brexit campaign by co-founding Farage’s Leave.EU with Aaron Banks.)
If Tice is ever too cryptic, Reform’s co-deputy leader Ben Habib will spell it out for you. In a Daily Express article in August, Habib took up the US right’s holy war against Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policies: “They are promoting people from different ethnic minorities, religious backgrounds and sexual preferences even if doing so would be to the detriment of their organisations and the exclusion of the ethnic majority.” Yikes. Habib goes on to call these alleged policies “an extreme form of socialism”.
Chatting migration on GB News the other day, Habib said: “We’re effectively being required, as the dominant culture in the country, to take the knee to these ethnic minority cultures, and ethnic religions.”
Note the term “take the knee”, which again borrows from the race politics of the United States, turning NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s protest against racism into a symbol of white humiliation.
The Right-Wing Blind Spot Over Free Speech
A new report by the Institute of Economic Affairs think tank describes the emergence of the ‘culture control left’ – conveniently looking the other way when it comes to the right of politics
Stephen Delahunty
Repeating the Farage Mistake
None of this should be a surprise from a party founded by ‘I’m a Celeb’ star Nigel Farage, who made a career out of racist scare stories, from his “Romanian crime wave”, migrants with HIV exploiting the NHS, to Muslim rapists attacking British women.
It doesn’t take much digging to find these quotes, which are not easily squared with Reform’s image as a normal party with reasonable concerns about immigration. The same goes for Reform’s claim to push for “common sense” on net zero climate targets, when its leader praises CO2 emissions as “plant food”, and as DeSmog has reported, all Reform’s donors this year are either climate deniers or have business in fossil fuels.
As for being an “anti-elitist” party on the side of ordinary people, how does this fit with its policies to crack down on non-existent electoral fraud by postal votes (another US import), to “abolish inheritance tax for all estates under £2 million, 98% of estates”, or to scrap the windfall tax on oil and gas companies? All of these are easy to find in the party’s manifesto, along with the false claim that “the vast majority of [asylum] claimants are economic migrants or from Albania under the oversight of their criminal gangs”.
But the good manners of British politics have the effect of sanitizing anyone, however crackpotted, who has some claim to legitimacy, whether that’s a job at a think tank or media outlet — or in Reform’s case, a bump in the polls.
Having nurtured the careers of every demagogue and chancer from Boris Johnson to Nigel Farage, hacks are almost eager to repeat their mistake. The media’s learning curve is long, and it bends toward potential fascists.
It’s also an indictment of the post-Brexit ecosystem, which has moved so far to the right that Reform’s racist demagogy and paranoid red-baiting can pass as normal conservative politics.
‘Get Brexit Done’ is now ‘Stop the Boats’: Is the Rwanda Bill the Conservatives’ Trojan Horse?
We again have some members of the Conservative Party arguing that the UK needs to abandon another European institution, writes former British diplomat Alexandra Hall Hall
Alexandra Hall Hall
Changing the Terms of the Debate
In a country where the Government is keeping refugees in a prison ship, and trying to break international law to deport them to Rwanda, the Faragists are both a cause and an effect. Having scared the Conservatives into moving to the right, they shout from the wings and raise their demands.
The mistake was to grant their first premise, so that the question isn’t “Should we crack down on immigration?” but “Have we gone far enough to do so?” As British schoolchildren are taught in history lessons, you can’t appease the far-right. But that hasn’t stopped the British government from trying, and they’ve painted themselves into a corner with nowhere else to go.
Reform can’t be ignored. The issue is not whether its politicians and fans should be “platformed”, but how. If we’re going to be told Reform UK is electorally important, it’s beyond time its spokespeople were asked some proper questions.
For example, does Tice agree with his deputy’s babble about socialist plots against Britain’s “ethnic majority”? Why should anyone buy Tice’s pose as a champion of working people when he is paid by hedge funds and campaigns for dirty air, voter suppression and tax cuts for the rich? And what the hell does migrants being “of military age” have to do with immigration’s effect on housing and public services?
It's not clear whether Richard Tice is an angry man or just plays one on TV. But given his far-right agenda, perhaps it’s time journalists gave him something to be angry about.
WATCH: Nigel Farage Used ‘Homophobic Racial Slur’ in Personal Message Video
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EDITOR'S NOTE
This article contains racially offensive language which readers will find distressing
Nigel Farage told a gay NHS worker they would “get nog dick for Christmas” in a message branded “racist, homophobic and ableist” by its recipient, Byline Times can reveal.
The politician charged around £75 for the recording in which he directed the allegedly racial slur – a reference to a black man’s body part – and another about a mental health condition, at the male mental health worker through the clip-sharing service Cameo.
The personalised message, sent on 23 December 2021, had been paid for by a man whom Farage had, five months earlier, been warned supported “the enforced deportation of Britons, incarceration and sterilisation based on skin colour” and the establishment of an “ethno-state”.
In the scripted 34-second clip, Farage said: “A message from [name], delivered by me Nigel Farage. You are a bit of an old loser. I diagnose you with ‘ID*D’, yes Intelligence Deficit [name] Disorder’.
“Now I’ve been sipping martinis on the beach with all the money from all these videos, which is absolutely marvellous. It’s really great that I am being paid... to insult you.
“That’s what [name] wanted me to do and I don’t find it difficult after all my years in the European Parliament.
“Meanwhile, you will get n*g dick for Christmas.”
The Cameo site and app allows fans to pay for personalised video messages, with more than 30,000 celebrities accessible via the platform. Farage has recorded more than 4,000 videos since March 2021, most recently just before entering the I'm a Celebrity jungle for ITV, grossing around £300,000 and paying him around £225,000 after Cameo's commission.
It was the second time Farage had accepted money from the person to record abusive messages aimed at the same NHS worker through the platform. An earlier message, sent in July 2021, in which Farage used the phrase “paper-thin snowflake” was removed from public view after a complaint.
Byline Times has seen emails in which Cameo confirms that it investigated Farage’s content on that occasion and acknowledged that the recipient – whose name along with the sender’s this newspaper is protecting – felt “harassed”. Cameo also made a private apology.
The recipient said: "In 2021 I, was working with young people… [who] were expressing racist views and I was talking to them via [Facebook] Messenger. I was trying to counter this. I gave up because I was getting nowhere and they paid Mr Farage to do a 30-second online video insulting me… I did email him asking him to steer them away from racism and he didn't reply.
"In December 2021, they paid for him to again insult me, this time saying how much he enjoyed insulting me and saying he hoped I got 'n*g dick for Christmas’. They meant black man’s penis.”
The man – who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and identifies as gay – added: “It was racist, homophobic and ableist. It was deeply offensive. Mr Farage does not know me. I was shocked to see him revelling in it. I could have been anyone. What if I had been 15 years old and struggling to come to terms with my sexuality? These words have real impact.”
He told Byline Times that he reported the matter to his local police station on Christmas Eve 2021.
"I did take it to the police who weren't interested but did say I could complain but would have to show how much he had caused the distress and alarm, which he didn't really, he just annoyed me,” he added.
The complainant followed up with three unanswered emails sent to an official address at nfarage.com telling the former MEP of his concerns about the people paying for the personalised message and their motives.
One email read: “Hi Nigel. You recently took £75 to do this video. I think you should have some context. I started talking to [the sender] because I was concerned [they were] at danger of becoming radicalised to the point of criminality. I stopped talking to them because of their refusal to stop using discriminatory language (including derogatory descriptions of young children based on skin colour). They repeatedly say that black people are genetically inferior and criminal. The solutions they propose include enforced deportation of Britons, incarceration and sterilisation based on skin colour towards and ethno-state.”
The recipient added: “I learned afterward that Farage queried the intended meaning of 'n*g dick’ with the customer before he sent it off. I don’t know what he was told but he is a smart enough person to know exactly how people would receive it.”
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This is not Farage’s first brush with direct-message controversy.
In October 2021, the former UKIP Leader shouted out “up the ‘RA” – a reference to the Irish Republican Army – in a different birthday greeting video on Cameo.
At the time, Farage said he always rejected unsuitable messages – which are written by the person paying – but said that this one had managed to “slip through the net”. His press officer claimed that the former Brexit Party Leader, who was a Member of the European Parliament for nearly 11 years, “probably didn’t know” the inflammatory meaning behind the phrase.
However, another former leader of UKIP, Alan Sked, said he heard Farage using the racial slur 'n*g-n*gs’ during their time co-founding the party. Although Farage has denied ever using the terms, he has been asked about them publicly since.
Sked, who quit the party in 1997 saying it had become racist, said Farage once told him: “There's no need to worry about the n****r vote. The n*g-n*gs will never vote for us."
Farage also addressed the issue in a 2014 interview with the LBC radio presenter James O’Brien.
Byline Times is publishing this article after Nigel Farage’s representatives took steps to publicise the allegations – suggesting they are part of a conspiracy to deny him a chance of winning the ITV reality show.
Having first instructed London law firm Carter Ruck to try and delay the story, in response to a request for comment, Farage’s team leaked its own version of events to the Daily Express newspaper.
The Express did not approach Byline Times for comment or any background information before publishing its own story – which claims, uncritically, that the Cameo message was a “set up” by “remain supporters to embarrass Nigel”.
It is not known whether Farage’s camp made the Express aware of the racist views held by the man who commissioned the Cameo video or that Farage had been emailed in clear terms about the man, his extreme beliefs, and that he saw Farage as a “leader”.
ITV is paying the former City stockbroker £1.5 million to appear in its primetime ITV series, and he is currently sitting as the fourth-favourite to be crowned ‘king of the jungle’.
Farage has calmly tackled the show’s Bushtucker trials, with viewers voting to watch him eat camel udder and crocodile teat as well as pizza topped with sheep penis, pig penis, and bull and crocodile penis – during which he even managed an unlikely ‘mmm’ for the cameras.
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He also got caught in a tense exchange with campmate Nella Rose, an influencer born in Belgium to Congolese parents before arriving in the UK in 2009, on the subject of immigration.
Farage claimed Britain's population had risen by 10 million since 2000, adding this was making it harder to get an NHS appointment or a 'filling' with a dentist. But as Rose said a lack of NHS funding was to blame, an exasperated Farage said: “Stop it. Stop. Nella, you're not listening to a single word I'm saying.”
Rose then asked Farage: “Let's get everything out in the open. Apparently you're anti-immigrants?” Farage asked: “Who told you that?” Rose said: “The internet.”
Farage replied: “Oh, well there we are then it must be true,” while Rose asked: “It must be! okay, but then why don't black people like you?”
Farage replied: “You'd be amazed, they do” – to which Rose reacted: “Nigel! Nigel!”
'Real Threat and Fear’
Farage has repeatedly denied being racist and has claimed that black people, in areas such as Catford in south London, stop him for selfies.
Farage also denied being anti-immigrant. He told campmate Rose: “No, no, all I've said is we cannot go on with the numbers coming to Britain that are coming.” To which Rose replied: “I'm one of the numbers.”
Farage remains active on Cameo and was posting out greetings as recently as 11 November.
His account – in which he describes himself with the words 'they call me Mr Brexit... some people say I am controversial, and I couldn’t care less’ – is “temporarily suspended” while he remains in the Australian jungle.
In one message from 3 October this year, Cameo user ‘Massimo’ thanked Farage for a quick two-hour turnaround on a message when the site says it could take up to seven days. Praising Farage for having also “embellished my script”, Massimo gave the politician a five-star rating.
Farage will return to his prime-time presenter role for GB News at a time of great uncertainty for a Conservative Party preparing for a likely period in opposition after the next general election.
Farage led UKIP from 2006 until 2009, and again from 2010 to 2016. He joined the party – which campaigned for the UK to leave the EU – in 1993 after leaving the Conservatives, and was elected to Brussels as an MEP in 1999.
As UKIP Leader, he campaigned claiming that European migrants were depriving British people of jobs. It made him popular among certain parts of the electorate, but while UKIP enjoyed European election and local council success, Farage was never able to replicate this in general elections, despite himself standing seven times for Parliament.
He stood down as UKIP Leader weeks after the 2016 EU Referendum, claiming that he had achieved his "political ambition" – and later formed the Brexit Party, now Reform UK, of which he remains honorary president.
Westminster sources have told Byline Times of the “real threat and fear” felt by centrist Conservatives should Farage win a by-election and force his way into the Conservative leadership, backed by media allies at GB News, a major investor in which is Sir Paul Marshall, the investment fund magnate.
“The more fuel Farage gets to maintain his profile, through GB News and shows like I’m a Celebrity, the more of a threat he is to the party if he gets a parliamentary seat in a by-election,” said one political source.
Labour MP Clive Lewis told Byline Times: “No one should be surprised at his use of racist language. This is, after all, the same individual that pleaded with Enoch Powell to [endorse] UKIP. The same individual that was described by one of his teachers as having 'publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views’. What’s actually more concerning is the fact ITV are now playing their part in normalising his voice.”
Byline Times asked Farage’s office for a comment.
His spokesperson told the Daily Express: “When Nigel first joined Cameo, there was a concerted effort by remain supporters to hijack the platform to embarrass Nigel by getting him to read out obscure rude words and in-jokes between friends.”
Claiming the scripted request had “slipped through the net”, the spokesperson added: “In the video, Nigel was asked by a customer on Cameo to read a message they had written for a friend. Had Nigel known that the message he was asked to read contained an obscure offensive word, he would not have made the video.”
Cameo did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Surrey Police could not confirm or deny the 24 December 2021 report.
The full version of the racial term was only used in the first line of this article to clarify to readers, for accuracy, what the term is.
Additional reporting by Adam Bienkov
‘I’m A Non-Entity Get Me Out Of Here’
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In recent decades the once very separate fields of politics and entertainment have fused into something dubbed ‘politainment’ that has made it near impossible to divine where one begins and the other ends. And nowhere has this trend been more in evidence than on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.
Across 22 years the show has had a record of fielding ghastly, blood sucking creepy-crawlies against innocent parasites and the former has included Veritas founder Robert Kilroy-Silk, the Lib Dem’s Lembit ‘Cheeky’ Opik, latter day Dr Frankenstein Stanley Johnson, egg-botherer Edwina Currie, peerage-hopeful Nadine Dorries and Matt ‘hands’ Hancock.
Jungle politainment appeals to TV producers and politicians alike. Watching a member of parliament getting slimed plays to the basest instincts of the public and thus makes good TV. For the contestant, there is both the lure of the fee and the hope that such primetime appearances will raise their profile. Some – most notably Matt Hancock – are also engaging in a latter-day act of performative penitence that they hope will wipe the political slate clean.
This season Nigel Farage has added his talents to the fray and after a lifetime of spouting bollocks the former UKIP leader has pitched up in the jungle to ingest them instead. Man of the people Farage is being paid £1.5 million to appear – the largest fee in the show’s history.
Loathe him or detest him, Farage is one of Britain’s best known political players and one of its most divisive. His very appearance was likely calculated to stir controversy, grab headlines and spawn amusing interactions at the work water cooler. To that end, the producers have afforded him a lot of screen time and over the last week viewers have been subjected to Nigel Farage bathing naked (twice), eating a pizza covered in cows udders and telling the ‘bush telegraph’ that he would ‘never say never’ to being Prime Minister, much as I haven’t ruled out one day playing test match cricket on the Moon.
His very presence has led some Remainers to call for a boycott and while it is impossible to judge how effective that has been, figures appear to be down on last year. On opening night, GB News’ man on the ground the Ben Leo, having mistakenly read last year’s press release – reported the exact opposite – generating much hilarity. But having been obliged to watch hours of the show while researching this piece, I can report that laughs have been thinner on the ground than a jungle celebrity.
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There has been trauma too. Witnessing Nigel Farage’s naked torso once might be considered a misfortune, viewing it twice left me scrambling for the telephone number at the Hague. And as I’ve watched him, and the other contestants go through mind-numbing hours of repetitive tasks, challenges and pots boiling on a fire, I’ve come to conclude that those boycotting Remainers have nothing to worry about. Indeed, the only people who should be worried are the producers and their star signing – Nigel Farage.
I’m not one of those who thinks that ‘Farage doesn’t matter’ or that we should ‘simply ignore him’. As a great political thinker, the former UKIP leader might rank as a minnow in a land of Lilliputians but his simple, dangerous, brand of ‘common sense’ populist politics cuts through, with the result that we are all now living in a Faragist Brexit Dystopia. Hate him all you like, but he has a ‘common touch’ and one which has unleashed dangerous, downright stupid, ideas into the mainstream.
Farage has got a well-practiced act. He knows how to play a crowd, when to deploy that disarming cigarette infused laugh and his well-worn catchphrase ‘wouldn’t you agree’ that makes it almost impossible for anyone talking to him not to.
So, whether standing before a home crowd of Brexiters, or sharing a pint with Jacob Rees-Mogg on GB News – it works. He comes across effectively and for some – even impressively. But put him in the jungle, away from that context, alongside Jamie Lynn Spears, or the charismatic Italian jockey Frankie Dettori, or the enigmatic YouTube sensation Nella Rose and the whole act not only falls flat – but apart.
In the promo for the show Farage told the cameras: “I’ve dealt with snakes in the European parliament, I think I can deal with this too...(and) in the jungle you’re going to find the real me.”
And sure enough, we have. But behind the curtain there is no mighty Wizard of Brexit but rather a meek, middle-aged man who worries about the shape of his bottom. He might get away with that if he had something else to bring but the architect of Brexit can’t even list any proper Brexit benefits. On Sunday night’s show, Nigel was challenged by French-born maître d'hôtel Fred Siriex to ‘list three’ and his answer, which included ‘self-government’, ‘taking back control of our territorial waters’ and the ‘nuclear submarine deal with the Australians’ was thinner gruel than even that on offer on the campsite stove.
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Farage has few interests beyond fishing, pointing at the English Channel and a very narrow knowledge of military history – and unlike many of his fellow contestants, he lacks an interesting backstory and comes across as anything but charismatic. Tellingly, come Sunday the public was no longer voting for him to do tasks – not because they had warmed to him but rather, I suspect, because he brings nothing to them.
In short, I’m A Celebrity… has revealed Farage to be the worst of all things – boring – and ‘boring’ does not make good TV. He might well make it to the end, but in retrospect I suspect that both he and ITV will come to rue the day he ever agreed to appear.
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As the general election scuttles closer, the campaign grows more confusing by the moment, so it’s good that last week’s seven-way leaders’ debate brought some much-needed mayhem to the situation. Not so long ago we were bemoaning the lack of choice in a two-party system. Now we’ve got option paralysis.
It had its moments. Nigel Farage complained about foreigners with HIV who enter Britain and immediately start wolfing down expensive medicine: greedy as well as sick. You’d think Farage might welcome immigrants with grave illnesses on the basis that they’re less likely to hang around as long, but apparently not. Say what you like about him – say it, write it down, daub it in 3ft-high cherry-red letters up the side of a prominent overpass on his regular commute if you must – but it’s undeniably refreshing to see a politician determined to speak his mind, indifferent to the absurd constraints of spin or basic human empathy. Never mind HIV sufferers – how much is Britain spending on refugees with cancer? Maybe he could put that statistic on a sandwich board and patrol the country in it, perhaps while ringing a bell and loudly commanding passersby to picture a nation under his command.
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This week it’s the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, an annual opportunity for tech companies to unveil their latest gizmos during January’s traditional slow news week, thereby picking up precious coverage that might otherwise be spent detailing something – anything – more important than an egg whisk with a USB port in the side.
At the time of writing, the show is yet to kick off, although some of the offerings have already been unveiled – such as “Belty”, the world’s first “smart belt”, which monitors your waistline and tells you when it’s time to lose weight, just like a mirror or a close friend might. More excitingly, it adjusts to your girth (again, like a close friend might), and will tighten or loosen itself according to your current level of blubber. No word yet on whether it’s possible to pop a Belty round your neck and order it to squeeze you into the afterlife, but there’s no reason they can’t incorporate that feature in Belty 2.0, except maybe on basic ethical, moral and humanitarian grounds.