“What the fuck are you doing here?” says the cab driver. Fair to say he doesn’t get that many pickups from the Gurnos estate on the edge of Merthyr Tydfil. “It’s fucking rough round here. Everyone’s fucking mental.”
Say what you like about Nigel Farage but he gets to parts of the country that other politicians don’t. You wouldn’t have caught the Tories, Labour or the Lib Dems launching their manifestos on a rundown estate in Wales.
The kindest thing you can say about the Gurnos social club is that it is unloved. The building looks as if it is in need of urgent repairs and the grass outside hasn’t been mown for weeks. Inside is little better. The tiles are falling off the ceiling and are coated brown with nicotine. Things fall apart.
Not that Nige’s intentions are wholly honourable. Old dogs, new tricks. He hasn’t come to the Gurnos to make anyone’s life better. Rather, his plan is to park his tanks on Labour’s lawn. Having ripped chunks out of the Tories in recent weeks, he’s now got his eyes set on Keir Starmer. His message on Monday is simple: Wales has been under a Labour government for 25 years and all it has achieved is to turn the place into a shithole like this.
It’s not the most winning of opening gambits. Most people don’t like to be told they are living in a shithole. They take pride in their surroundings. But Nige is not bothered. It’s not as if Merthyr is a target seat for Reform.
Understandably, there are precious few local people in the hall. Maybe a dozen at most. The others are all Reform candidates, supporters bussed in from Cardiff, party apparatchiks and the media. There are only eight rows of seats laid out and even then there are plenty of empty spaces. Clacton, it isn’t. There are no hordes of adoring acolytes following Nige around. This is a strictly transactional, one-off visit. The Gurnos is as indifferent to Farage as he is to them.
There are copies of the manifesto laid out on every seat. Only this isn’t a manifesto, we are told. Manifestos are what other parties do. All lies. So what Reform is offering is a contract with the people. Because it says it will honour its promises. Only it obviously won’t.
Because this is basically a free hit. Just shove in everything people don’t like about Britain and say you’ll somehow fix it with five or six MPs at most. History lessons where children can learn that black people were every bit as beastly to us as we were to them. The civil service decimated. Free tax cuts for everyone. Anything you want. Ditch the BBC. Like most things Nige, this is an article of bad faith.
The contract isn’t even that subtle or plausible. It looks very much like the sort of 15-year damp-proofing guarantee that you know isn’t worth the paper it’s written on as the company will have been liquidated within months. The cover is a giveaway. A photo of Nige outside No 10, looking as if he’s just nicked someone’s wallet. A picture of Farage and Dicky Tice at the back after they’ve just had the most almighty row over Nige’s expenses. Increasingly, Dicky is only here to sign the cheques.
But then none of this really matters. Nige isn’t here to sell his fantasies. He’d be horrified were he ever to be taken seriously. Imagine having to do the grubby work of running the country. Far too much like hard work. Rather, he’s here to have his ego massaged. To feel as if he’s needed. All he’s really selling is himself. Along with disaffection and division. Nor does he care what Labour or the Tories say about him. They still cling to the life raft that people will turn against Nige if only they were to understand him better.
This is a category error. Everyone worked out Farage long ago. They know he’s a posh boy playing at being a bit of political rough. That he’s a fraud through and through. A member of the establishment who uses that protection to kick against it. But the thing is, his supporters don’t care. It’s enough for them that the main parties have right royally fucked things up and they want to give them a kicking. Nige likes to claim he’s not a protest vote. But if not that, what is he? He’s just a conduit for people’s rage.
Nige wanders in through the back of the room. Looking even more orange than he was last week. Dicky’s sunbed must be doing overtime. “Guess who’s back again?” he smirks. A narcissist is going to narcissise.
He then tells us that Britain is broken. In a sane world, this would have the audience collapsing in hysterical laughter. Because few people have done more to break it. Always the first to stoke up hatred. One of Brexit’s founding fathers, though he now likes to pretend it was nothing much to do with him. He bears some of the blame for the country being on its knees.
But we’re in an irony-free zone. Because Farage goes on to claim that people’s disillusionment with Brexit is nothing to do with him. Just as he insists his manifesto – sorry, contract – is binding while admitting that none of it is ever going to happen because Reform isn’t going to form a government any time soon.
So fill the vacuum with your 10-minute hate. Stamp out all crime. Don’t ask how. Forget net zero. Much better for the world to burn. Chuck out all immigrants. Don’t worry if the NHS collapses in on itself. Then, you know all this. As do his supporters. It’s just that they don’t care.
It’s not even clear if Nige believes any of this himself. Public speaking is normally something he does well, but now he seems relatively disengaged. As if his heart isn’t in it. No audience on which to feed. The closest he gets to applause is when a few Welsh people gave pantomime boos when he mentioned the 20mph speed limit. That bad. He seems almost relieved to finish. Strange for a man who lives for the attention.
Farage is delighted to hand over to Tice to deal with the money side. Dicky is in possession of a small fortune. Largely because he started with a big one. If he is Reform’s banker for shadow chancellor then now is the time to run for the hills and hide your cash.
His grasp of economics is laughably bad. His proposals make Liz Truss look like a pillar of reason. Trust me, no one’s mortgage is safe with him. Hard to know if Tricky is just deeply cynical or incredibly dim. The jury’s out.
Then the taxi ride back to the station. You couldn’t help feeling the driver had it arse about tit. The people of Gurnos were more in need of protection from Reform than Nige and Dicky were from them.
