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Alas poor Dicky. Put not your trust in Nigel. For in him there is no salvation.
It’s not easy being Richard Tice. A man who has spent much of his recent life in Nigel Farage’s shadow. Pushed around. Made to feel worthless. Losing what self-respect he may have had by the day.
Before the last election campaign began, Dicky had been the leader of Reform. A party that had been going nowhere very much under his charisma-free control. Dicky would speak and no one would listen. Then Nige decided to rise from the dead. To elbow Dicky aside. No consultation. No apology. Dicky was told to consider himself lucky he had been demoted to the near meaningless title of deputy leader.
All of which Dicky duly did. He sucked it up. Because that was always the nature of their relationship. Nigel first, Dicky nowhere. It’s almost painful to watch them together sometimes. The desperation in Tice’s eyes. His gratitude when Farage stops ignoring him and deigns to condescend to him instead.
Dicky has learned to feed on scraps. You can see his desire to ride the Nige wave. To pick up whatever crumbs might come his way. He longs to be Farage’s shadow chancellor designate. Dreams of living next door to him in Downing Street. But Nigel can’t even give him that. Can’t offer him the satisfaction of knowing he figures in his plans.
For months Nige has been playing Dicky off against his other Reform wannabe, Zia Yusuf. Leaving each one to guess who is most in favour. A fight to the death. It would be very on brand for Farage to eventually decide to disappoint both of them by giving the job to the latest ex-Tory derelict to defect, the half-witted Jonathan Gullis. Leaving Tice to gently sob himself to sleep on his regular trips to Dubai to see his girlfriend. At times like this, sharia law can be a great comfort.
Yet the worse Nige treats Dicky, the more needy Dicky becomes. And on the Today programme on Thursday we reached a new nadir. The point where he would say anything – ANYTHING – to defend his leader. All the while knowing that if the roles were reversed, Farage wouldn’t hesitate to drop him at a moment’s notice. Safe to say, this was 10 minutes of life that Tice would not be saving for his showreel.
The interview began benignly enough with Emma Barnett quizzing him for Reform’s response to the government’s decision to cancel four mayoral elections until 2028. Dicky was unimpressed. And fair enough. Labour’s argument that it wasn’t technically a cancellation as these were inaugural elections always looked like semantic spin. And taking another two years to agree the financial package and the necessary statutory instruments sounded like an administration on cruise control.
This was all a plot to stop Reform. A denial of democracy. Given that all the other local elections were going ahead as planned in 2026, this sounded like a conspiracy theory too far. Mistaking incompetence for something deliberate. “It’s only dictatorships that cancel elections,” Tice suggested.
Barnett’s ears picked up at the word dictator. Funny he should mention that. But didn’t Farage have a relationship with Hitler, she said. In a manner of speaking. While at school hadn’t 20 or more other pupils heard him make jokes about the gas chambers? That Hitler was right and putting black students in detention for the hell of it was just laughs?
“It’s all absolute made-up twaddle,” said Tice. Everyone was lying through their teeth just to discredit Farage. Nige was a much-wronged Messiah. He would never have said anything like that. Even though he had previously admitted he might indeed inadvertently have said things that may have been offensive. But they had all come under a separate category of non-racist racism. AKA top bantz. He had never intentionally been racist. Which opened up a whole new world of unintentional racism.
Emma couldn’t quite believe her ears. Dicky had never been at Dulwich College with Nigel. Had never met Nigel till much later in life. And yet somehow he knew for certain that Farage had never made any antisemitic remarks and that all of the 20 or so fellow former pupils hadn’t just made a mistake but had deliberately gone out of their way to tell lies to damage Reform.
“Let me be clear. You are saying they lied?” Barnett asked. Always best to double-check these things. Just so there would be no mistake.
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“Yes,” said Dicky. “It’s made-up twaddle.”
So there we had it. Dicky going over the top. Beyond the call of duty. Ready to lay down his life for a friend. Some might call him foolhardy. Calling people you’ve never met a liar on something like this could attract the interest of libel lawyers. Tice’s small fortune could be about to become a little smaller.
It was an act of friendship that wasn’t reciprocated by Farage later in the day. Mainly because Nige does not regard Tice as a friend. More a useful idiot. Expendable. At a hastily called press conference to double down on claims the cancelled elections were all a plot against Reform, Nige was asked if Dicky had been right to call his Dulwich accusers a liar. Something he noticeably declined to do. No point in him also getting dragged into a libel court. Dicky was on his own.
Instead Farage went into a long tirade against the BBC. Emma Barnett was disgraceful. Despicable. The BBC itself was guilty of double standards. Just look at some of the shows it had done in the 1970s. The Black and White Minstrel Show. It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. Till Death Us Do Part. Riddled with racism. So why wasn’t the Beeb apologising for its own output?
It sounded very much as if Farage was a believer that two wrongs make a right. Almost an admission he too had been in the wrong. That if the BBC could broadcast all this as light entertainment then it was surely fine for him to have made a few Hitler gags to Jewish people. He ended his rant by producing a letter he claimed to have received from another former pupil. “Nigel was one hell of a funny guy. He never said anything nasty to anyone. We all luv Nigel.”
The questions briefly turned to Tory defections. Was there anyone Reform wouldn’t take? Definitely, said Nigel. We will only take people we value. How does that explain Jonathan Gullis? He’s never been of use to anyone. We ended with a journalist asking if Nige was planning to sue Barnett. Nige equivocated. These things could get expensive. Still, if nothing else it had been a good day for the lawyers.
