The Heat Is On!

A new national poll has put Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s Labour ahead of Reform for the first time in a long while, and Nigel Farage’s obnoxious, divisive, racist and Trump-like world is beginning to crack.

In Keir Starmer land, Farage was strutting around like a PM in waiting peacock. Ahead in the polls, a handful of MPs including himself in Parliament, Tories defecting to him in droves and wallowing in the Government’s increasing cock-ups.

But things are changing. The heat is most definitely on and slippery ol’ Nige is feeling it big time.

First, the £5million gift scandal that won’t go away. An undisclosed gift from a crypto-millionaire which stinks of sleaze and pay-off dosh. Farage self-styles as the ‘man of the common people’ but not many of those get that sort of back-hander. Then Andy Burnham sweeps into power after winning the Makerfield By-Election over Reform by a mile, a whole new wave of optimism and long-awaited grit fires up Labour. Then, even more revelations about Farage’s finances and some murky ne’er do wells he has been supported by in secret and various inconsistencies about what he said and when.

Life suddenly isn’t so sunny for this chancer who was the key player in bringing us the national social, economic and political disaster which was Brexit. So, reeling under the media and Parliamentary investigations into his conduct and character, Farage has resorted to stunts and his one-trick pony policy.

He has resigned as an MP and sparked a By Election in his constituency Claction so the people there can apparently ’decide’ if he is a good guy or not. A mere stunt to try and evade scrutiny, which has patently failed. The main parties are not playing the election game by not fielding candidates and even with even more financial revelations being uncovered, Parliamentary investigations are only on hold until after the election.

Then with a badly-timed ‘Press Conference’, Farage has once again tried to play the only policy hand he knows - ‘stop the boats’. This time announcing that as PM he would chuck the Royal Navy at stopping any boats coming from France and if the French won’t take the passengers back then Royal Marines would apparently dump them back on their beaches anyway. So that’s the UK invading France then as PM Farage’s first move. What next? Annexing Austria perhaps.

Farage has, in effect, only one answer on Reform’s policies - ’stop the boats’.

He and Reform seek to play the next General Election the same way they played Brexit - racism. Stop the boats, the UK is being invaded, millions more will come, we need our Nation back etc is the only tune he plays.  It succeeded in 2016 with Brexit when the racism vote across the UK clearly tipped the balance and he hopes it will win again. Until recently it looked like this would happen. Now, he’s not very sure but as it is the only thing he has up his sleeve he still pours out the venom.

The worrying thing is that the racist vote out there in the country is still very strong. Scratch the surface of so many people and their inherent racism shines through. However the next polls play out, even in a fresh Andy Burnham world, the depth of concern over immigration etc whipped up by the right wing media and the Farage types for so many years, is still a major factor. However much Farage is under attack and scrutiny now, that mentality out there in the country will not go away.

With Andy Burnham’s arrival, Farage and Reform’s hoped for free-ride to No 10 has gone. He and his ‘party’ - basically a private business - are looking shakier by the minute and, hopefully, more and more people are waking up to that now. Reform’s poor showing at the Manchester Mayoral election a case in point.

Coupled with ever-mounting questions about finances and dodgy dealings things look like getting worse for the Clacton Caliban.

Let’s hope so.