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1 day ago
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Curious. Nigel Farage has devoted decades to trying to get elected as an MP. His victory in Clacton in 2024 followed seven unsuccessful attempts in other constituencies. And now he is finally an MP, he seems reluctant to spend any time in the Commons chamber. The one place where we, the public, now pay him to be.
It’s as if the reality of his new position is a disappointment. A reality check. His entire career had been a narcissistic celebration of self and it feels as though he had expected the rules of engagement to be changed to accommodate his need for constant attention. He had come to parliament to make himself heard, not to sit and wait his turn as the leader of a party with just five MPs.
Rather than shrugging his shoulders and getting on with life, Nige has taken to hissy fits. Demanding he should be treated with the respect he feels he deserves. So he regularly chooses to sit in the gallery during prime minister’s questions rather than his allotted place on the opposition benches. For the first Wednesday of the new year, Farage went one better. He skipped the session entirely, choosing instead to do a slot commenting on PMQs on Times Radio. What better way to make the session all about him?
First though, Nige had grabbed the media limelight by holding a marathon press conference – one hour and 40 minutes – in London. A presser that was not time sensitive and could easily have been held on a slower news day or on his usual Monday morning slot.
But a narcissist has got to do what a narcissist has got to do and Nige was desperate to be back in front of the TV cameras for the first time this year. You could sense his relief as the withdrawal symptoms dissipated. This was his time. His place. His chance to shine. And he was going to enjoy every minute. He would also later say he would have two PMQs a week if he became prime minister. Please no. Enough is enough. Nige is yet to realise the world can have too much Nige. For him that is a category error.
What Nige wanted to talk about most today was the London Mayoral election in 2027. No one seemed to have informed him that the election was actually a year later in 2028. London had turned into the most dangerous city in the world under Sadiq Khan, he said. People were literally too afraid to walk the streets. You could go outside and find no one. They were all cowering in their safe rooms at home. Waiting for Nige to give them the signal that it was OK to come out. At least three of the journalists who had been expecting to attend the press conference had been gunned down on their way over from Westminster.
Having made the case for why no one should ever consider living or working in London, Nige went on to introduce Laila Cunningham, Reform’s prospective London mayoral candidate. It turned out that she too hated London. A city where foreigners were either raping women or stealing phones. But she was going to do us all a big favour and make it better for us. There were going to be policemen on every street, she was going to scrap the Ulez and congestion charges, sack all tube drivers, and make us all rich by building new houses for a few hundred quid each. She sounded clueless. And she was going to pay for all this by making sure that the 500,000 close friends of Sadiq who had all been earning £150k a year for doing nothing were taken off London’s payroll. Somehow Cunningham expected to be taken seriously.
The questions went on even longer than the initial presentation. Some on London. Nige wasn’t at all pleased to hear that crime surveys had shown London was a great deal safer than most other large cities. Fake news, he insisted. Though he was at a loss to explain why so many people still wanted to live in the capital. It must be because most people have a death wish and go out each morning hoping they are going to be stabbed at some point.
There again, Nige is prone to confusion. He seemed to think that were Donald Trump to seize Greenland it would be a demonstration of the US commitment to Nato. It’s a view, I suppose.
But maybe we shouldn’t take too much notice of anything Nige says because his answers are ever changing. He has now decided he has navigated the discomfort of the 28 Dulwich schoolboys with clear memories of his racist and antisemitic behaviour. Asked to apologise, he refused. All 28 of them were clear fantasists, he said. People should just learn to lighten up a little. Nige did look rattled when asked about the £13k he has made from X. Given it’s a platform for AI porn, shouldn’t he return the money? What was the point of being a politician if you couldn’t earn a few quid on the side, he shrugged. Plus, think of all his overheads.
Still, maybe Nige did have a point about staying away from the Commons because the first PMQs of the year was something of a non event. With Venezuela, Greenland and Ukraine grabbing the early headlines, it was perhaps inevitable the session would be dominated by foreign affairs. It’s customary on these occasions for politicians on all sides of the house to show a united front. Something that shouldn’t have been too hard for Kemi Badenoch as the Tories are basically in agreement with the government on all things Nato.
Only there is no accounting for Kemi. The Tory leader has long been on a personal mission to pick a fight with absolutely anyone and she tried to take on Keir Starmer. She thought she was looking prime ministerial: in reality she looked unhinged and childish. Attacking the PM for not having had a phone call with Trump even though he had been negotiating with his top team. Blaming Labour for not having done more to stop the Tories from screwing up when they had been in power. Making a big deal about a Commons statement that would have been a sideshow at best.
Their exchanges ended badly for Kemi. She didn’t seem to realise there was a huge difference between the cases the attorney general had done before he joined the government and the shadow attorney general advising a Russian oligarch while part of Kemi’s team. A Tory spokesman later clarified that Lord Wolfson would now recuse himself on all things Russian. Yup, the shadow attorney general silent on the most serious issue of our time. But maybe it will start a trend. Perhaps Honest Bob and The Philpster could be the next to back down. Here’s hoping.
