“In your case, fine.” It was Wednesday, and Nigel Farage was backing away from his Monday announcement, explaining to a caller on LBC that when he’d said people like her should be deported, he didn’t mean people like her. Not deported.
It was a familiar routine. Across the Atlantic, they have TACO — “Trump Always Chickens Out” — an expression of the president’s habit of backing down when people or reality face up to him. Here in Britain the president’s Mini-Me has his own version, what we might think of as FIBS — Farage Isn’t Being Serious.
The pattern of every Reform announcement is the same: grand statement to the Daily Telegraph, fruity language in The Sun, and then a swift retreat from his own words, sometimes within minutes of them being uttered. Deport people to El Salvador? Send women and children back to Afghanistan? He never said those things. Or, sure, he said them, but he never meant them. You can’t judge a man by the words he writes down or says. They’re just examples! And not real ones! FIBS.
Does anyone know? Can anything be known? Not about Reform’s policies for government, obviously
So it was with Monday’s “mass deportation” announcement. Deportation? En masse? Noooooooo! You misheard. “We haven’t suggested that, or anything like it.” All Farage was talking about was people — other people, to be clear, not you people — losing their benefits.
To some this might sound like incompetence, but it’s actually quite smart. The advance-and-the-retreat style of announcement allows Reform to get a lot of coverage for an eye-catching policy that will excite some of the party’s more — how shall we put this? — extremism-curious supporters, and then Farage pops up the next day to explain that this isn’t what he meant at all, and that the vile media is lying to you by mendaciously writing down the things he says. FIBS.
What about the idea that Reform would end dual citizenship? “Of course not? The reason you’re going to get all this is both the Labour and the Tory parties are terrified of the truth.” Although I read it in the Telegraph in a story that was clearly sourced to Reform. How do these things keep happening, eh? One way to prevent these mendacious misunderstandings would be for Reform to put some of its policy papers on its website, but the party is oddly reluctant to do that.
He was challenged on his estimate of what all this would save, which hadn’t even made it to the announcement. “Whether it’s 180 billion or 260 billion, it would represent a massive saving for the country”. Well, you can’t argue with that, can you? That’s just maths! Although we can all play this game. The Hutton Institute of Numerology in Milan estimates that shooting Farage out of a cannon into the sun would save Britain £389 trillion every month. I won’t be taking questions.
What about Donald Trump’s latest lunatic claim, that paracetamol causes autism? The Reform conference this month heard that the Covid vaccine caused cancer, though the leader subsequently (FIBS) ran away from that claim. Will Farage’s Britain, like Trump’s America, be getting its scientific advice from something your uncle read on Facebook?
“I’ve no idea. We were told thalidomide was a very safe drug and it wasn’t. I don’t know, you don’t know.” Does anyone know? Can anything be known? Not about Reform’s policies for government, obviously. But about anything else? “When it comes to science, I don’t side with anybody,” he said, in what was obviously intended to sound like a super-enlightened tone of voice. Although one can’t help but note that if this were really true, Farage would be a bit less enthusiastic about getting on planes.
Nick Ferrari, the LBC host, played Farage a clip of him, a year earlier, betting £10 that within a month there would be evidence that Haitians in America were eating cats and dogs. A year had passed, Ferrari said, waving a tenner. Where was the evidence?
“Can you prove it hasn’t happened?” Farage asked, which hadn’t been the bet. FIBS, remember? Besides, “if I said to you that swans were being eaten in royal parks in this country,” he said, “by people who come from different cultures, would you agree that is happening?”
Ferrari can be a pretty terrifying interviewer with government ministers, but he tends to keep his claws sheathed for Farage. “I didn’t know about swans,” he said, without apparently wondering why it might be that he had never heard what would, if true, be quite a memorable story. “Well, there you go,” said Farage, though it wasn’t clear what he’d demonstrated, beyond a certain naivety from his host.
The Royal Parks, of course, say that swans are not being eaten by anyone, though what do they know? But anyway, Farage had already renounced himself. “I’m not saying that!” he chuckled, about the thing he had literally just said. FIBS.
