Two truths stare us in the face following the latest Reform UK scandal. First, Reform needs to up its game. It can’t keep shuffling slack-jawed into media stings. And second, the media really are hell-bent on nobbling this insurgent party. ‘Scandal’ is clearly their cudgel of choice for kneecapping populism. Between the amateurishness at Reform and the animus of a panicked press class, democracy really has its work cut out.
The hit job has hit Reform hard. It was the handiwork of a leftish investigative group called Verbatim, working with Channel 4 News. They royally stitched up two of Reform’s top dogs.
A Verbatim bloke posed as the English son of a made-up wealthy Yank keen to donate to Reform. Of course foreign donations to political parties are forbidden under UK electoral law. Yet Dan Jukes, Nigel Farage’s right-hand man, was surreptitiously filmed saying a way might be found to get the American cash into Reform’s coffers. Reform’s head of policy, James Orr, was caught on film seeming to say polls carried out by Reform would be charged to their mythical rich new pals.
Some of what Jukes and Orr said to their entrappers was – to be kind – ill-advised. No one will find out the money came from overseas, said Orr – ‘we could easily get away with it’. He also chuckled that they could ‘literally do the old John le Carré… put it in a brown envelope, drop it off somewhere’. Jukes talked about ‘clandestine projects’ that ‘don’t show up anywhere in public records’. Oof. Both have been suspended from the party pending an investigation. Reform MP Lee Anderson says ‘they’re not coming back’. If true, it’s about as big a loss as Reform could suffer: Orr is the party’s philosopher king, Jukes its chief mover and shaker.
Reform people are calling the sting an act of ideological ‘entrapment’. Sure, but entrapment is like the tango – it takes two. Even people who admire Reform will wonder why Jukes or Orr didn’t do their homework. Shouldn’t they have deployed an army of Googlers to find out about this rich American awash with cash who for some reason loves British populism? Yes, the rattled aristos of the media elite are laying traps for Reform, but Reform is walking into them. Professionalisation is the party’s most pressing task now.
Here’s the main reason Reform needs to sharpen its suss: because the media classes are out to get it. The smug scribes of the MSM who still have sleepless nights over Brexit are weaponising ‘sleaze’ to slay Reform. They hope to achieve with dirty tricks what their class has catastrophically failed to do at the ballot box: tame the populist urge, or at least deprive it of institutional expression. Scandal-mongering has become the weapon of choice of an elite enraged by its loosening grip over public life.
‘Sleaze’ has been the cheap currency of our morally depleted democracy for some time. From the MPs’ expenses scandal of the 2000s to the Lord Alli and Angela Rayner scandals of the Keir Starmer era, hollers of ‘Sleaze!’ have become the chief means of toppling one’s foes. Now, virtually the entire sleaze machine has been turned on Reform. The ‘stench of sleaze’ swirls around that party, says the Guardian. It’s ‘engulfed’ by sleaze, says Labour. Through the lingo of scandal, a party is pathologised, turned from an electoral outfit that speaks for millions into a front organisation for rich-boy corruption.
That’s the role of ‘sleaze’ – to delegitimise democratic opposition, to paint one’s critics less as honest challengers than as ethically bankrupt hustlers. The impact of the cult of anti-sleaze has been dire. Political debate has been supplanted by scandal-hunting. Moral contestation now comes a poor second to predatory smear tactics. Why try to defeat your foes with a better vision for the country when you can just turf them out of office by digging up an old tax return? It will surprise precisely no one that public trust in politics has plummeted under the tyranny of anti-sleaze. Forty-five per cent of Brits think you can ‘almost never’ trust a government – in 1986 it was just 12 per cent.
That’s the thing about ‘sleaze’ – the obsession with it is far more lethal to the body politic than the thing itself. The bloodhounds of the bourgeois media hunt for scandal in Reform’s ranks not because they want to ‘clean up’ politics but because they want to muzzle the masses, and they couldn’t give a solitary toss about the distrust and apathy their sleazemongering spawns. They’d kill democracy to kill Reform. And they have the gall to doll it all up as an exposé of the filthy rich, when we know it’s the Brexit-loving ‘lower orders’ who really revolt them.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer. This article was first published HERE
A Verbatim bloke posed as the English son of a made-up wealthy Yank keen to donate to Reform. Of course foreign donations to political parties are forbidden under UK electoral law. Yet Dan Jukes, Nigel Farage’s right-hand man, was surreptitiously filmed saying a way might be found to get the American cash into Reform’s coffers. Reform’s head of policy, James Orr, was caught on film seeming to say polls carried out by Reform would be charged to their mythical rich new pals.
Some of what Jukes and Orr said to their entrappers was – to be kind – ill-advised. No one will find out the money came from overseas, said Orr – ‘we could easily get away with it’. He also chuckled that they could ‘literally do the old John le Carré… put it in a brown envelope, drop it off somewhere’. Jukes talked about ‘clandestine projects’ that ‘don’t show up anywhere in public records’. Oof. Both have been suspended from the party pending an investigation. Reform MP Lee Anderson says ‘they’re not coming back’. If true, it’s about as big a loss as Reform could suffer: Orr is the party’s philosopher king, Jukes its chief mover and shaker.
Reform people are calling the sting an act of ideological ‘entrapment’. Sure, but entrapment is like the tango – it takes two. Even people who admire Reform will wonder why Jukes or Orr didn’t do their homework. Shouldn’t they have deployed an army of Googlers to find out about this rich American awash with cash who for some reason loves British populism? Yes, the rattled aristos of the media elite are laying traps for Reform, but Reform is walking into them. Professionalisation is the party’s most pressing task now.
Here’s the main reason Reform needs to sharpen its suss: because the media classes are out to get it. The smug scribes of the MSM who still have sleepless nights over Brexit are weaponising ‘sleaze’ to slay Reform. They hope to achieve with dirty tricks what their class has catastrophically failed to do at the ballot box: tame the populist urge, or at least deprive it of institutional expression. Scandal-mongering has become the weapon of choice of an elite enraged by its loosening grip over public life.
‘Sleaze’ has been the cheap currency of our morally depleted democracy for some time. From the MPs’ expenses scandal of the 2000s to the Lord Alli and Angela Rayner scandals of the Keir Starmer era, hollers of ‘Sleaze!’ have become the chief means of toppling one’s foes. Now, virtually the entire sleaze machine has been turned on Reform. The ‘stench of sleaze’ swirls around that party, says the Guardian. It’s ‘engulfed’ by sleaze, says Labour. Through the lingo of scandal, a party is pathologised, turned from an electoral outfit that speaks for millions into a front organisation for rich-boy corruption.
That’s the role of ‘sleaze’ – to delegitimise democratic opposition, to paint one’s critics less as honest challengers than as ethically bankrupt hustlers. The impact of the cult of anti-sleaze has been dire. Political debate has been supplanted by scandal-hunting. Moral contestation now comes a poor second to predatory smear tactics. Why try to defeat your foes with a better vision for the country when you can just turf them out of office by digging up an old tax return? It will surprise precisely no one that public trust in politics has plummeted under the tyranny of anti-sleaze. Forty-five per cent of Brits think you can ‘almost never’ trust a government – in 1986 it was just 12 per cent.
That’s the thing about ‘sleaze’ – the obsession with it is far more lethal to the body politic than the thing itself. The bloodhounds of the bourgeois media hunt for scandal in Reform’s ranks not because they want to ‘clean up’ politics but because they want to muzzle the masses, and they couldn’t give a solitary toss about the distrust and apathy their sleazemongering spawns. They’d kill democracy to kill Reform. And they have the gall to doll it all up as an exposé of the filthy rich, when we know it’s the Brexit-loving ‘lower orders’ who really revolt them.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer. This article was first published HERE
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