Watching the interview with Farage about his behaviour at school, a couple of things occurred to me.
Firstly, he looks really uncomfortable – shifting in his seat, perspiring, switching from defensive to aggressive and struggling to work out how to fix this with his normal approach.
Secondly, he is trying to call out around 20 people as liars whilst categorically not denying that he said those things he has been accused of, only that he did not deliberately intend to cause any hurt.
It raises the interesting question of how much bigotry and arrogance is going to be too much for Reform to retain the current levels of support. Is this Farage backstory going to work in their favour or is it going to be a step too far for those floating voters.
Video in the comments.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cgmnvx87xvwo
In the brave new world of ultra right wing / populist / fascist / lunatic* politics, such a minor indiscretion as rampantly racist name-calling some 50-odd years ago would seem to me almost an irrelevance. Elsewhere in the world** it seems quite the norm for racism, misogyny, corruption, fabrication, incitement and criminality of all kinds to pass practically unnoticed amongst the leadership, almost to the point where they are de rigeur and indeed admirable qualities.
I think Farridge is still a dead cert for destroying British democracy in the forthcoming apocalypse.
*delete as applicable
**select country as appropriate
I agree with everything you say Shaker of Bones. Farage will appeal even more to the Bexidiots.
When he next meets with the orange one wouldn’t it be a huge favour to mankind……
But “Bexidiots” are not in the majority these days. There are a lot of Reform voters who have bought into the nonsense in certain newspapers and want to “stop the boats”, but would be horrified to be accused of outright racism. Most are Reform supporters because they feel (rightly) that their concerns have been ignored by the Labour and Conservative parties. Not all of those concerns are to do with immigration.
Pinning Farage and some of his pals on islamophobia and antisemitism is a way forward for those who wish to minimise his momentum. That and his party’s attitude to the NHS.
The number of racists who are happy to admit to being racists would probably fit comfortably on the head of a pin. Which presumably means that they know racism is bad.
There are a number of disappointingly young people on X who now seem unashamedly racist (a taboo has been lifted), but I do not know if they are with Reform. I still cling to the belief that they are largely a social media event and not truly public opinion.
In 2016 a work colleague told me that one day Nigel Farage would be Prime Minister. I laughed at him. I’m not laughing now.
I would still say he has no chance but I do recognise that he is a slippery fucker.
Let’s not pull punches he’s a cowardly t##t just like his fat orange pal
I think you’re allowed to say twat here. Unless you mean tart.
When we watched the 2015 debates, heard the ‘Access Hollywood’ tapes, sniggered at allegations of lurid kompromat, scoffed at the MAGA morons, it seemed comically absurd to believe that this foul mountebank could actually win the presidency, let alone come back in 2024 and do it all over again. Yet here we are.
No matter how much pressure is applied to the odious Farage now – and having been one of two brown kids at prep school in the early 1980s, I can personally confirm he was hardly an outlier – his base won’t mind. If anything, it’ll be taken as a sign of how ‘desperate’ ‘they’ are to discredit him that they’re dragging up silly, childish banter etc etc.
There are certainly a lot of (I assume) bot accounts reiterating his ‘defence’ which boils down to ‘harmless banter a long time ago which Farage can’t remember and people are only bringing to the public now’. None of which stands up. The alleged comments, which were plainly intentionally hurtful at the very least, reflect behaviour and attitudes which have been well known for years. In 2013 Channel 4 exposed letters from his school days describing him as a fascist.
His problem is that he cannot say, ‘I was a racist little shit when I was younger but grew up’ because it invites the follow up question, ‘When did you stop being a racist little shit?’
He’ll ride it out until it drops from the headlines.
Come the next election he’ll laugh it off saying all that was settled years ago. Why are you bothering to bring it up now? Despite it not being settled.
However our craven media will nod, say yes, you’re right and they’ll move on.
As alluded to above the word ‘banter’ is sure to do a lot of lifting. It’s pretty much a Get Out Of Jail Free card in such matters.
OK, I’ll regret writing this in three or four years time, but hey! my football team won last night…
Fromage will not be Prime Minister.
No one took Trump seriously and certainly not for a second term. I’m surprised that Starmer hasn’t gone after the likes of Farage and The Mail for taxes and financial irregularities. Instead, The Mail is being allowed to buy The Telegraph and Farage gets away with suspect house ownership in Clacton. as well as running a limited company as a political party. We saw in the US what happens when it is assumed that the other side plays by the rules and it doesn’t end well.
This is not the USA, where racism and terror of socialism is deeply entrenched in society and the political mainstream was completely in ruins when Trump popped up.
Our political mainstream is in a bad way, but not yet nearly as bad as the USA.
Agreed but Farage and Tice are out of the same mould as Trump, denying or ignoring inconvenient truths about themselves and their cronies, working on the basis that if they repeat something often enough, it becomes accepted as truth.
It feels pretty likely that the allegations against Farage are true, but I don’t think they’ll prevent him winning an election.
15 years ago, these claims would probably have done him serious damage, but we’re in such a different world now. The stigma attached to racism has materially eroded, partly because it’s so much easier to find like minds and a support network for your prejudices online, probably partly because we overstretched the term. Purely anecdotally, I get the sense that the accusation does not carry the same weight it once did, because where once racism meant something truly dangerous and unpleasant, now it also covers micro-aggressions and cultural appropriation. There’s a section of the public that’s grown desensitised to the term, and the concern is that they consequently won’t recognise the immense danger of having a man like Farage – who is very possibly the genuine article – elevated to leadership.
This particular storm also seems likely to blow over because it’s difficult to disqualify a public figure based on things they said and did at 14 years old. I cannot abide Nigel Farage, but in an age of social media we will increasingly struggle to find people who did not say at least something ghastly at that age (albeit not generally as odious as Farage’s reported behaviour), and I think the public probably senses as much.
I would love for all this to end Farage as a political force in this country, but unfortunately I don’t think it’s enough. He’s obviously uncomfortable talking about it, but his primary defence – that it was nearly 50 years ago – is likely to hold. As observed above, the core of these allegations is not new information, and it certainly hasn’t seemed to damage him so far.
I agree that his base will actually be more than happy that he is a racist c*nt. What it might do is make some potential recruits think twice, and it certainly nails Reform as not just another version of the Tories – for all their faults, they wouldn’t have a leader with this background.
A few things have occurred to me – I do believe there is a ceiling to their support and may have peaked too early. The attention to the mess they are making of local government won’t help them. They are finding it difficult moving from being an insurgent party to one who actually has to have coherent and workable polices. They are also totally undemocratic in their setup – the time will come when the ‘members’ will actually want a say. They are also getting a lot of succour and encouragement from Trump and his conies, and they may well not be in power when the next GE comes round.
As it happens, I was was at a school reunion last year and was chatting to a chap I used to know, and he had worked with Farage when he was a commodiies dealer. He said he was actually good at his job, but was a complete arse of a human being.
Being good at his job and a complete arse of a human being is spot on for his Reform and UKIP roles as well.
While you’re right that this might not make much headway with his base, I do think it will ultimately hurt him like it did in Caerphilly recently, where there was a very high turnout, a good chunk of whom were likely voting to keep Reform out. Stories like this are only going to cement that determination
Apart from anything else I find the word “banter” really annoying.
Bants?
Worse!
Bantz?
Top Bantz.
Agreed. It’s an incredibly tedious form of “humour” and why winding people up is supposed to be funny is beyond me.
Top bantz there from the archbishop of banterbury
I’m pretty sure I must have made racist comments aged 14 in the 1970s. I probably repeated Jim Davison’s jokes I’d heard on mainstream TV the previous evening. We had one black guy, one muslim and one south East Asian kid at my school. We were all horrible to them. And the ginger kid, and the one with epilepsy, and the effeminate one. So I can’t really condemn Farage for being a product of the same system. For loads of other things, yes.
A black guy a Muslim and an East Asian … a ginger one one with epilepsy and an effeminate one. And you wonder why your stand up career bombed?
It’s a good point until you read the detail of what he is being accused of saying. I’m no angel but I stayed quite a way away from the NF “banter” style of claiming Hitler was right and doing sound effects of gassing to anyone let alone a jewish boy some of whose family did not manage to escape the holocaust.
Generally speaking, I got that Hitler was not right at all., even at the tender age of 14. Although I may have sung songs about him only having one ball – but then I went to a comprehensive in Bracknell and not Dulwich College.
Singing songs about Hitler only having one ball puts you on the right side of history, I’d say…
Goebbels has two but very small if I remember correctly.
You misremember – Poor old Goebbels had no balls at all.
Himmler, had something similar.
From the Independent recently about DNA testing of hitler.
Stories from the First World War suggest that Hitler was bullied over the size of his genitals, with his genetic condition meaning he had a one in 10 chance of having a micropenis.
A 1923 medical examination, uncovered in 2015, showed that Hitler did have an undescended testicle, giving surprising credence to the derogatory wartime song about him.
Shame monorchism doesn’t rhyme with anything.
Goering maybe? Someone one had one anyway.
I was never specific but if you say it was on the right side.
Sidelining your drift, it is extremely likely that his descended testicle will have been the right hand one. This tends to hang the lower of the two for most main; this is because of the surrounding blood vessels. (Pauses, as the the majority of the afterword quietly check.) Even with maldescent, the right is likely to make better progress and may thus be palpable or present, albeit maybe riding a little high.
There is absolutely no evidence that any or either of his testicles are in either the Albert Hall of either London or Manchester, it likely remaining, as a cryptorchid, high in his groin, making him at greater risk of developing undiscovered testicular cancer.
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We had one black guy at our school and he was over 6′, Captain of the rugby team and became head boy so no-one gave him any crap. Off colour racist jokes were common on the telly and we shared them quite happily whilst knowing they were bad, me especially as I had two mixed race adopted siblings. I once made the mistake of telling my dad one of these jokes and suffice it to say I didn’t do it again. I think it’s a really positive thing that this is largely eliminated and Twang Jr and pals are very diverse and wouldn’t dream of sharing such “humour”.
It’s no excuse for Farage behaving like that or worse of course but he’s hardly unique.
We had one black guy in our school (total of 1700 kids), he was teased mercilessly and abused. We also had two Asian girls who faired better, possibly because they were attractive. You were also in trouble generally if you didn’t have a Welsh valleys accent.
A few years ago I had a really interesting conversation with my best mate about the banter thing.
As I’ve mentioned before on here, I’m of Latin American descent. Not so much that you can tell to look at me, but half the family are from that neck of the woods. Wasn’t an issue when I lived in London, was an issue when I lived in a small town where everyone was white Anglo Saxon. I got a bunch of racist abuse at school and I reacted very badly to it, partly because it was so unexpected.
Best mate is British Chinese. Far more obviously exotic than I am. Grew up in the North East. I once asked him what sort of stick he got at school and he said that people gave him shit for being Asian, but it never really bothered him because it was a boys school and everyone got given shit for something, that just happened to be his thing.
That conversation was an eye opener for me. It didn’t make me think we should all just laugh off racism, but it was such a different way of looking at two similar(ish) experiences that it gave me pause for though. My mate’s approach probably required a thick skin (and lord knows he’s got one), but it seemed to have been healthier for him than mine was for me. To him, it really was “just banter” and he flowed past it.
This stuff is really, really complicated. The exact same statement can be delivered with different intent, and received with different sensitivities.
None of which is relevant here, because I doubt teenage Farage was being anything other than a deplorable little prick. But as a rule of thumb I always tell my kids to try to discern actual hatred from mere ignorance, because the latter is at least more easily curable and tends to melt away much more quickly.
“I was never directly racist. “
As denials go that’s about as Reform as you can get
Begs the point about what he thinks indirect racism is.
I think his answer to that question is likely to be “acceptable”.
There’s also the fall-out over Nathan Gill being jailed for accepting Russian bribes. Did Gill plead guilty to prevent certain pieces of evidence from being revealed in court?
I don’t think Gill is the type to take a fall to protect others except, possibly, close family.
Not bright enough or savvy enough to cover his tracks at the time, he was bang to rights and he knew it. May have been instructed to watch what he said “for his own good” of course.
Pleaded guilty in the hope of leniency, most likely.
This is possibly a more fruitful line of attack. He worshipped Enoch Powell and thinks Putin is great. He has worked for Russian TV spouting the same sort of support of Russia as Gill.
I would ask him if he disagrees with any of the propaganda Gill was paid to repeat. I’d also like to know if he supports Ukraine or not. I’m not clear.
The third weak spot is funding. Why are oligarchs who live abroad, connected to the oil industry or cryptocurrency, donating huge sums to his party. If I was Labour, I’d cap donations to political parties, but they won’t want to take a hit themselves.
If any of this debacle causes Farage any damage it will not be the allegations of racist bigotry from his teenage days it will be the half-arsed way he and those around him have tried on just about every excuse to get him off a hook of his own making. Nothing will dissuade those of a similar persuasion as him from continuing to support him or his latest political grift of course but hopefully having his pants publicly pulled down may put a few off from lending his odious little project their vote.
Economics beats politics, doesn’t it? From Blair to Cameron, there seemed to have been a consensus to let neoliberal economic policies ruin free and unfettered, (spending freely on health and welfare under Blair and Brown), while putting the focus on political/cultural matters – progressive politics that Cameron paid lip service to. Not to everyone’s taste, but the good times were rolling.
Then came austerity with its partner of quantitative easing, and the rug was pulled out from under an increasing number of people. Who cares about progressive politics if your livelihood is threatened and the UK is experiencing a reduced life expectancy for the first time in generations?
Until and unless the growing levels of inequality are reversed and there are visible signs of infrastructure investment, an economy based on powerful asset holders paying government- subsidised minimal wages, (while bringing on ever greater number of AI replacements) doesn’t look rosy for the majority, however you spin it.
Farage and his party are selling tasty, tasty, ultra processed snake oil. Very unnourishing and health hazardous but more appealing to many, I’m sure than what Starmer is serving up. The acrid racism, from now or then, is an irrelevance, I suspect. It’s the poor performance in positions of power that will damage their reputation more seriously.
It isn’t inequality, it’s lack of economic growth/opportunity.
You can ensure a fair share of an ever decreasing pie and you’ll still find that people are too hungry to care about racism. Or inequality, for that matter. You have to grow the pie (or at minimum maintain it at the same level). It’s the precondition for every other good thing you might want to do.
I’m approaching the matter from the Spirit Level/Dorling approach that greater levels of equality bringing better quality of life for all, rich and poor. The ultra rich suck liquidity and function out of an economy for no good purpose. Growth and opportunity are functions of/outputs from a healthy society, not the necessary causes. To think otherwise is to put the cart before the horse and to expect it to push it.
Hmmm… I think it probably depends what you mean by growth and by healthy society.
We have certainly seen a few societies that have prioritised equality and that haven’t left people all that happy with their resultant quality of life. I don’t think it’s a magic bullet – everyone having nothing is equality but it isn’t an attractive proposition to most people.
I may be wrong here, but it feels like the suggestion is I’m inspired by Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao, with a side order of Honecker.
Greater equality doesn’t mean total equality (of opportunity or outcome).
There’s total inequality, (the sort of technofeudalism the world seems to be moving towards), and there’s total communism, but somewhere between the two, there’s a sweet spot, where investment in good housing, hospitals, schools, universities, libraries, transport systems provides the security and launch pad for people of all backgrounds to make the most of their abilities.
I’m thinking more Atlee than Thatcher, Keynes not Friedman.
Not at all, Sal. I know you’re a lovely man and that there’s zero chance your idol is Pol Pot.
I’m just reacting to the statement “greater levels of equality bringing better quality of life for all, rich and poor”. It sounds good, but – clearly – it isn’t always true. You can be more equal and less happy.
I totally agree that there’s a sweet spot in the middle. As usual, I think we agree, we just take slightly different routes to get there. ❤️
Thanks, Bingo. I think you like winding me up, and I quite enjoy it myself, tbh. Makes me examine my ideas and try to come up with some sort of persuasive narrative to justify them.
I do think there’s such a mistrust of government to do anything effective or worthwhile, with a concomitant magic faith in the invisible hand of the market, without realising that the marketplace is either created and rules set by governments, or there’s a laissez faire approach that leads inexorably to monopolies and profiteering.
I don’t expect greater equality to automatically bring greater happiness, which is a quasi-undefinable utopian quality. But I would prefer a society at ease with itself, rather than one in conflict with itself as seems to be the case
He could always just rebrand Reform again.
Brexit Party, UKIP, Reform, how many is it now?
NF has a nice ring to it
I see what you did there…
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https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/744215
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I do wonder if Farage really wants to be PM. He’s not stupid and he doesn’t seem obsessed with power like his orange chum. Its a terrible job these days and he would be terrible at it. He likes, and is good at, sniping from the sidelines. He likes his grift. He likes pressure free attention. Those things would be harder to come by as PM. And he might actually have to do some work and his honeymoon period would be short because they would be so shit.
I mean, he probably will win as things stand (and I doubt this will make much difference), though Reform probably wouldn’t without him. But does he actually want to? Maybe a few months, a pension for life, and then he could take to the right wing lecture circuit to recount how the msm and establishment stitched him up. Be more lucrative for him than Truss of course.
I agree with this. I don’t think he wants to be PM at all. Too much like hard work.
May not want the hard work but wants the benefits.
I think he knows that where he is he has as many if not more of the benefits (many of them dodgy no doubt) of that job and zero of the problems.
I’m inclined to agree.
He wouldn’t want the responsibility.
His performance as MP for Clacton shows his lack of interest in actual politics. Disruption, the attention it gains him and personal profit are what he wants.
Why endure the responsibility of actually leading the country when, with minimal effort, he already has the benefits that being an ex-PM could bring him?
Bloody scrounger! Doesn’t want to work but just exist on benefits
I don’t think he’s on the ropes. He’ll rebrand the allegations as desperate – referring to them as ultimately harmless playground events. I can hear him now.
“Yes, I dare say I also probably sang “ring a ring a roses” – I suppose I should be up in front of some inquiry because I was disrespectful to those that died of bubonic plague!”
I knew some shitty people at school and I steered clear of them in later life. Even now, I would struggle to have a pint with them and let bygones be bygones. I’m guessing he was like them, but the attack line must be on what he clearly is now. His mate taking Russian money and being jailed for it is a much bigger story. This is why he’s happy to talk about his school days.
‘A week is a long time in politics’, so said Harold Wilson.
Apparently the latest date for the next election is Wednesday 15th August 2029. That’s a long, long, long (George!) time to navigate… about 200 weeks.
Forget Fromage having half-a-dozen seats in Parliament, effortlessly the most remarkable political achievement this century in the UK is Starmer becoming PM. If I’d come on here after the 2019 election and suggested that he’d be PM in 2024 no one would have given him a prayer.
They’d have been wrong, and he is.
I don’t think Fromage, even with the full might of the right-wing press behind him and Reform, has the stamina or will like Starmer, and he has so many nut-jobs in his party that something will have to derail them… or maybe it’ll just be death by a thousand cuts.
His best bet to become PM is actually to join the Tories.
Given the craven way he backed down on last year’s long overdue
Cutting back of the UK’s out of control welfare system, “will”
is not normally a word associated with Starmer.
He’ll be gone after next May’s local elections if not before.
He is a racist and I will never vote for him.
The allegations against Nigel Fascist are as far from ‘jokes’ and ‘banter’ as it’s possible to get, and in any other time would be way beyond anything acceptable from the leader of a British political party.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2025/nov/18/deeply-shocking-nigel-farage-faces-fresh-claims-of-racism-and-antisemitism-at-school
I expect he’s been more careful about racism/antisemitism since his schooldays, but I bet he has some more recent skeletons just the same.
Hopefully these current revelations will lead to more recent stuff being uncovered.