Farage reprises his favourite moans at his latest not-so-special announcement | John Crace

It’s getting to be quite a habit. Reform send out an invitation to attend a press conference with the promise of a “special announcement”. The media attend with high expectations only to be rewarded with a crushing sense of anticlimax. One special announcement turned out to be a 30-minute whinge from Nigel Farage about some local elections being cancelled. Another was the news that Andrea Jenkyns would be standing for mayor in Greater Lincolnshire. Not even Andrea’s friends give much of a toss about that.

Fair to say, then, that expectations were not high for Monday’s latest special announcement. But we travelled to the Royal Horseguards hotel in Westminster in hope. Maybe this time … A fatwa on Rupert Lowe. That would be news. Perhaps the hapless ex-Tory MP Jonathan Gullis had been let in out of the cold. Only a few weeks ago he was saying how hard it was for someone who had gone out of his way to make enemies to get a job. Could it be that Nige had taken pity on him and offered him the chance to return to parliament at the Runcorn byelection?

Sadly not. On entering the Gladstone library we were greeted by the sight of 29 empty seats on a raised stage. Reality cut in. We were going to be offered a handful of councillors who had switched allegiance to Reform. Something that would struggle to make a story in a local paper. There was also a fair chance that some of them regarded Reform as their best hope of retaining their seats at the local elections in May. The Tories are heading for meltdown.

Lee Anderson, Richard Tice and James McMurdock shuffled into the front row seats as the theme tune from the Darts played in the background. They are all very much beta males now. Acolytes who are only tolerated so long as they keep quiet. Relegated to a walk-on role. Dicky is only useful as a man to meet and greet people wearing union jack ties. As chief whip, Lee’s entire job is to make sure that McMurdock doesn’t misbehave.

Reform is now very much the Nigel and Zia Yusuf show. After a brief video in which Nige and Zia repeated “Britain is Broken” again and again, the party chairman came out to open proceedings. Reform was the greatest party of all time, he lied. No party had grown as fast as Reform, he lied. The announcement was going to be very special, he lied.

“Now, I give you the member of parliament for Clacton,” he said. There was an awkward pause. Nige’s constituents aren’t the only ones to forget he is their MP. But eventually Farage clocked that this was his moment and he walked to the lectern. His safe place. His happy place. Nige only knows that he’s alive when he is the centre of attention. Lights. Camera. Action. Mouth creased into his fake crocodile smile. The very essence of uncontained narcissism. The good temper only skin deep.

Nige began with a few words of self-congratulation. Who better to praise than himself? It was entirely down to the Brexit freedoms he had won that Keir Starmer had been a success on the global stage. It was nonsense, but no one was quibbling. He then started on the economy. Terrible. Oddly, he didn’t attribute that to our Brexit freedoms. The Tories? They were a complete waste of space. They had no purpose. On this he had a point.

Next a brief mention of Rupert Lowe. Or rather, “one MP”. Farage couldn’t bring himself to mention Lowe by name. The hate that dare not speak. Though we did get his own, peculiar take on the fallout. One that had nothing to do with Rupert having lurched even further to the right than Farage and getting glowing endorsements from Elon Musk. There’s only room for one prima donna in Reform and it wasn’t going to be Lowe. Besides, Nigel likes to keep his racism under wraps. Rupert wears his on his sleeve with his support for Tommy Robinson.

It was like this. One MP had been doing things that demanded the suspension of the whip and an investigation by a KC. A report would be published in due course. Nige was also horrified by the fact that Zia had been the target of online Islamophobia. Why was it that the media weren’t reporting that many members of Reform were openly racist? It was an unusual request from a party leader. But OK.

All the while, Lee just nodded. Seriously. His amnesia is complete. As is Farage’s. Anderson only joined Reform after he found his remarks about Sadiq Khan, which the mayor described as Islamophobic, were found to be too much for the Tories. Then maybe being racist about Khan is just normal politics. Being racist about your own party chairman, not so much. There was a line. And it had been crossed

Then to the reveal. It had all been desperately underwhelming so far. Just Nige reprising his favourite moans into a microphone. It was about to get even more underwhelming as he finally got round to introducing his latest acquisitions to a seriously unimpressed audience. Even Nigel looked bored. In the front row, only Dicky could manage a perma-smile. Inside he must be dying a little more. Day by day.

Much as predicted the 29 turned out to be mostly a collection of ex-Tories and independents who had already fallen out with other parties. People who could fall out with their reflections. One by one they took the stage to ever-diminishing applause. Like contestants for the Generation Game. Only without the lure of a cuddly toy for a prize. Even their own families would struggle to have cared. All will soon be forgotten. Cast out and discarded like all of Nige’s other toys. There shalt be no God but Nige.

This also turned out to be a press conference without any questions. We were now down to damage limitation. Instead, Nige opted for a pool clip with GB News and a brief huddle. It didn’t go to plan. What did he think of Elon Musk’s remarks about Rupert Lowe. “GOOD, GOOD, GOOD,” he shouted over the female journalist as he tried to escape. Someone else asked about Rupert. “YAWN. BORING. I’M BORED. UGH,” he responded. His passive aggression had just morphed into active aggression.

The famous champion of free speech had just decided he had had enough of other people’s free speech. Nige pushed his way to safety. Chased out of his own presser. The not-so-special one.