Martin Jay
Farage's cash scandals and fragile ego are imploding Reform - leaving Britain's far right in ruins and Kemi Badenoch smiling.
It is looking increasingly unlikely that the far-right movement in the UK will get its chance to govern, despite a palpable move across Europe which is showing real signs that its countries are ready to embrace populist movements in government. In France, it has just emerged that Marine Le Pen will in fact be allowed to run as president in 2027 and, by most accounts, is expected to win, given that both the left and right are in tatters and the centrists have lost most of their popularity under Macron. It's a similar story in Germany too, as the AfD appear to be on course to lead the country. Within the EU itself, certainly in the European Parliament, having far-right governments in power in France, Germany and Italy would install even more MEPs on the right and possibly might even lead to a majority in the house. Such a set-up would be the end of the European Union as we know it, as power would be taken away from its main executive - the European Commission - and its champion of fascism, Ursula von der Leyen, who has done everything she can since taking the job as Commission President to anti-democratise the EU, making Brussels an autocracy modelled on 1930s Germany under Hitler. Her determination to completely control media is chillingly similar to what the German chancellor did once sworn in, in 1933; we should, in hindsight, be grateful she has not simply done away with the European Parliament.
Populist leaders like Trump and Meloni aren't having an easy time. In fact, it could be argued that they are doing everything to make populism unpopular, as voters see that beermat, quick-fix policies seldom work. Trump's second term, in economic terms, has been a catastrophe from the word go, but it has served one purpose at least in the UK. People who would normally vote for a far-right group are now wising up and realising that figures like Nigel Farage are wholly unsuitable to lead and will only make all their efforts about making money and not much else. Trump is estimated to have made over 50,000 trades on the markets since entering the Oval Office, and Nigel Farage's investigations - both by parliamentary groups and by the media - are rapidly exposing him to be Britain's version of the Donald. Recently, he resigned as an MP in a juvenile attempt to take the wind out of the sails of a parliamentary graft investigation, which was due to punish him for taking a £5 million bribe from a UK crypto tsar who asked Farage to lobby the Bank of England to change current rules on crypto. It's unlikely the ruse is going to allow him to wriggle out of the probe, though, as even the police are examining how Farage appears to be too chummy with criminals or billionaires who all want something from him in exchange for filling his pockets. The stunt to call a by-election in the community where he is the incumbent MP is likely to backfire, not least because after he has re-won the seat, there is every chance that the graft probe against him will insist that he holds a by-election again. Even his own supporters in Clacton see through his scheme, and there is a very real risk that a joke candidate who wears a plastic bucket over his head might even win the ballot. It has taken at least a decade for the British press to work out who Farage is and why he is in politics, but finally they've cottoned on that he has brought the US model of politics to the shores of the UK and, if elected as PM in three years' time, would be Britain's first billionaire PM.
But does the UK want a billionaire in Downing Street ? Is the country - and the parliament that it puts so much faith in - going to allow Farage to continue with his coin-operated model of politics and use cash from billionaires and criminals to push agendas ? There seems to be real resistance to it, as even opinion polls from Farage's own support base suggest his support has taken a beating, as has his party Reform. Farage's relentless resistance to law and rules seems to have finally caught up with him, as his unique stubborn, arrogant ego continues to direct him to dig himself out of the hole that he alone has created. In many ways, it looks like he's a busted flush, and my own prediction on Andrew Eborn's talk show in March 2025 - that he wouldn't make it to the next general election due to his own firebrand personality - is ringing true.
Many political experts in the UK are predicting his downfall now and are writing Reform off as a leading light in what many believe will be a right-leaning government in three years' time. There are just so many Houdini moves that Farage can pull off and so many lies he can peddle to the cameras before the inevitable car crash happens. At the time of writing this, police have discovered that not only has he been taking money from a convicted felon whom the UK press are calling "posh George" (who the FBI jailed for wire fraud at one point), but there are even more irregularities of sponsorship which police are examining. The theme seems to repeat itself, which isn't doing Farage any favours. Increasingly, those close to Farage who are funding him are either criminals or billionaires who are looking to use him to manipulate the system. And all along, the entire right in the UK is expected to keep a straight face while Farage pretends that he is being "hounded" by the "establishment" - when in fact, this is his greatest lie of all his lies.
Farage is the epitome of establishment and privilege, and it is hard to imagine even among his hardcore base of MAGA-type supporters that anyone believes his snake-oil banter about representing poor people and their fight against the elite. The game's up when all of the Tory press seem to have turned on you, and the likeliest thing to happen at the end of summer is for him to step down as party leader, probably bringing down the whole Reform UK circus with him - which will suit him and his narcissism well. Building a political citadel based on one man's personality always ran the risk of swift obliteration when the fireworks go off. The bigger you are and the more you break the rules, the more you monetise the system, certainly the harder you fall. For Farage to stand in front of two Union Jack flags at a podium which made him look like he was already running the country, while whimpering on about the establishment being out to get him, was both delusional and juvenile. And no one in the UK bought it.
But what is interesting is the lack of patriotism. For Farage, it was always all about money and gentrification, and if he can't have it, then certainly he will make sure that no one close to him in Reform will either. So my second great prediction is that when Farage falls, he will take Reform with him, leaving no longer a mainstream far-right party standing and all eyes on the Conservative leader to step up to the mark. Farage's sleaze scandals and his own painfully frail personality are literally building Kemi Badenoch's profile to lead the right. In three years' time, once again, Britain will be the odd man out in Europe thanks to Farage and his Icarus curse, leaving this author wondering whether it will ultimately be Germany or France's far right who offers Farage a job at some point.