[Andy McDandy]

5 years more on the gravy train. In all honesty, I don't think he plans anything further forward.

[Bones McCoy]

5 years more on the gravy train. In all honesty, I don't think he plans anything further forward.

Since his "main income" appears to be in the form of gifts, that £200K+ expenses per annum is all free extras.

Bung a few of his "bad boys" on the payroll, and he's counting the geld all the way to Threadneedle.

[Crabcakes]

The thrower ("Victoria") made a fairly bland statement. Just "Yeah, I did it, felt like it". If it had been a set-up, she would likely have been more strident and projecting an image of an overreacting young person.

The Mirror says she said a bit more than that - that he doesn’t represent the town, he’s not from there etc. Not the most inspiring speech ever, but definitely anti-Farage. Despite the admittedly strong resemblance, I think it’s legit.

[Bones McCoy]

What would Conan Doyle make of it?

The airborne beverage and the identikit THOTs

[Tubby Isaacs]

Anything in this?

If it's true, Holden is quite a piece of work. Tom Hunt is toast in Ipswich anyway, he might as well defect.

[Bones McCoy]

Colin from Portsmouth comments on Farage's candidacy.

[satnav]

Apparently there are half a dozen Tory MPs weighing up the idea of defecting to Reform, presumably the best time to do this would be just before nominations close making it very hard for the Tories to come up with an alternative candidate.

[Youngian]

Reform voters discuss the Middle East. As long as they’re starving the rag heads we’ll give the Yids a pass for now.

[mattomac]

Apparently there are half a dozen Tory MPs weighing up the idea of defecting to Reform, presumably the best time to do this would be just before nominations close making it very hard for the Tories to come up with an alternative candidate.

Apparently that seems like a struggle anyhow.

[Youngian]

Can find any evidence this is a wind up. They still walk among us.

[Rosvanian]

Smokey bacon crisps.

Out of my cold, dead hands.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Fargle seems to have boosted Reform.

[davidjay]

The last thing this country wants is Farage leading any sort of significant party in the Commons.

[Youngian]

The last thing this country wants is Farage leading any sort of significant party in the Commons.

Or he could be leading the Conservative Party, boom boom.
He’s one hell of a wild card at the moment, winning Clacton or a busted flush with an empty shopping bag are both plausible arguments.

[Andy McDandy]

If he wins, if he stays Reform, he'll likely be part of the awkward squad on the opposition benches. Disrupting well-meaning private members' bills for shiggles, and carrying on rentaquoting while doing nothing for his constituents (and blaming everyone else for his lack of personal engagement).

If he moves to the Tories, he's basically saying that Reform was just a vehicle for him to do so, that he has no interest in remaking the system, and that it's all a personality cult for him. I suspect many of his supporters know that anyway, and don't care.

If he loses, he'll be back to doing e-greetings for money and being conned into wishing all the best to Emma C Hunt.

[Crabcakes]

The last thing this country wants is Farage leading any sort of significant party in the Commons.

Oh I dunno. I think him actually being held to task and having to make an effort if, say, he was LOTO outside of absurd grandstanding like his antics in the EU parliament might finally make people realise he’s nothing more than a less charismatic, more fag-stained version of Johnson. A lazy, self-interested bullshitter.

He’d be shit at PMQs. His party have got nothing outside of unworkable policies that blame other people. And he’d get bored and quit like he has literally every other time things have got tricky. He’s like a self-throwing boomerang made entirely of turds.

[Philip Marlow]

‘In the land of the bloodless technocrat, the pub bore is king.’

Most of this LRB blog from James Butler is about the Keir v Rishi showdown, but A Problem Called Farage does get a walk-on part towards the end.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/june/de ... -v.-stolid

Liberal commentators bring up Farage’s serial failure to win a seat. But his successes have never relied on electoral victory so much as the effects he has on the entire political field, and the issues – nationalism, migration, general chauvinism – and resentments he forces into national salience. He ratchets everything to the right. The animating neuroses of the Conservative Party, the lines along which it will fracture in defeat, are largely of his making.

[Youngian]

‘In the land of the bloodless technocrat, the pub bore is king.’

The left sometimes needs to explain how they became empirical dullards in suits. We did populist poetry and ‘taking back control’ on steroids in the post war years with Mickey Mouse nationalist economic experiments. The march back to power and credibility was a long one.

[Youngian]

Churchill was a woke globalist. Here we go again. Farage will expel him and do his stock quote that people like him aren’t welcome. But strangely keeps attracting this dross.

A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two.
Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care".
In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In July 2022, Mr Gribbin posted on the Unherd website: "Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality…. but oh no Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people."
The same month he wrote: "In Britain specifically we need to exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognize that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko

[Philip Marlow]

‘Hitler bad’ feels very much like an entry level requirement for a prospective member of parliament.