3 hours ago
10
It’s a classic from the Donald Trump playbook: everything’s been going a bit tits up, so you create a distraction. Get everyone looking in the wrong direction. Last week was the worst in months for Reform. First the party was pegged back in the opinion polls, then the Guardian revealed Nigel Farage had been given a £5m handout by Christopher Harborne, a Thai-based crypto dealer. A donation that Nige had never thought to declare.
Not the best look for a party leader who claims to be a man of the people. I mean why don’t we all get by on multimillion-pound handouts from our friends. The best you can say is that at least Nige wasn’t trying to defraud the state by claiming universal credit. Since then, Reform has been on the back foot. Sending out countless press releases trying to explain the situation away. Ones that often contradicted each other.
Nige had had no thought of becoming an MP when he was gifted the money. All he had wanted was a secure retirement, so there was no need to declare the dosh. It had been a total coincidence that he had chosen to stand for parliament just a short while later. The money wasn’t just for his personal spending. It was for his security so he could resume his political career. Though obviously not nearly enough. In the two years since Nige has been MP for Clacton he has done very few constituency surgeries. Largely because he says he doesn’t feel safe.
Time to change the dial. So who better to call on than his own pet rottweiler, Zia Yusuf? The man Farage calls his “shadow home secretary”, though he has yet to be brave enough to stand for parliament. Zia is a strange man. Someone who actively enjoys being disliked.
While others in Reform, such as Dicky Tice, Danny Kruger and Honest Bob Jenrick (Sarah Pochin is too dim to know what she wants) have an urgent desire to be loved – even if you think they have an odd way of going about it – Zia is at his happiest when he has alienated the whole room. Only his therapist knows quite why. Put it down to childhood trauma. He makes Kemi Badenoch look like an abject people pleaser.
So over the weekend, Yusuf took to social media to announce a new policy. One that was so high and wild, he’d never need to deal another. One that was so batshit mad, it would go viral on a slow news day. And it worked an absolute treat. Zia hadn’t had so much fun all year. He had had no idea that so many people would take the idea of building detention centres for “illegal immigrants” exclusively in areas that voted Green so seriously.
But the more he had thought about it, the more he liked it. Though he was a bit concerned the Greens would like the idea so much – after all, they were the ones who claimed to want to be nice to foreigners – that it would increase their vote at the local elections on Thursday. And there would be no problem finding places to build these detention centres. There was plenty of space. I mean, imagine if Lewisham was to turn Green. Then you could just dig up the whole of the South Circular and put up a massive prison. Most of the Greens wanted to turn Lewisham into a car-free zone, so no harm done.
There were a few issues though. What about creating some incentives for all those Reform voters who quite liked the idea of foreigners being banged up and having a miserable time on their doorstep? Though obviously all these detention centres would be empty in days as Nige would be deporting hundreds of thousands of migrants every 24 hours. So they would be a total waste of space by the time the construction was finished. But hey, logic was never Zia’s strongest suit.
And what about those Reform voters who happened to live in areas run by a Green council? No problem, there. All that was needed was for voters to take a photograph of themselves placing their X next to Reform candidates and Nige would promise to sort them out. Or rather Dicky could. Since the war in Iran, there were rather more empty apartments in Dubai than usual and Dicky had promised to subsidise the rents of anyone moving to the UAE with the money he had saved on his tax bill. Fair’s fair. And with any luck, Dicky could persuade his fiancee, Isabel Oakeshott, to host a coffee morning for any new arrivals.
This was the start of something big. A new bold future. Where a Reform government would only feel obliged to look after those who voted for it. Just think how that would reduce the welfare bill. No pensions or disability payments for those lefties who voted Green, Labour or Lib Dem. As a special show of compassion, those who voted Conservative would be given a five-year exemption on the proviso that they promised never to do so again.
The NHS could also be transformed into a world-class service by refusing to treat any Reform refuseniks. Oh, so diddums has had a heart attack? Well, you should have thought about that before you voted last time out. Yes, I know you’re sweating and have chest pains. But stop making such a fuss. Just leave the hospital now and find somewhere quiet to die.
And I hear your partner has cancer. No more chemo or treatment for her. We only want the right people to survive. In any case, we’ll probably have to sack 90% of the NHS staff for voting the wrong way. We can’t have people who want to help others less well off than themselves. But I’m sure this is just a teething problem. We’ll work something out. Just not for you.
Zia couldn’t have been more pleased with himself. On days like this, he reckoned he was a genius. And Dicky and 30p Lee had been reposting his tweets. As if they were meant to be taken seriously. Perhaps they were. Perhaps he really was on to something. A masterstroke. The moment Reform was taken seriously. Nige was also thrilled. No one had mentioned the £5m he had trousered for a couple of days. Perhaps it had been forgotten.
