Another week, another chance for Nigel Farage to demonstrate his literally hysterical leadership inabilities. For a guy who supposedly valorises the wartime British spirit, Nigel would genuinely have had to have been interned during that conflict on account of his serial predilection for spreading panic and unverified information at any given chance. The weekend incident near RAF Fairford was simply the latest in a long line of occasions that make you suspect the poster on the wall at Reform HQ reads simply: “Lose Cool and Start Shitposting.”
Despite its popularity now, the famous “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster from the second world war was almost certainly never displayed in that conflict. Although more than 2m copies of it were printed, it was in fact held in reserve in case a really serious crisis hit. Which, when you consider even the blitz apparently didn’t clear the bar, it is almost impossible to conceive of in our era where comparatively minuscule incidents force certain party leaders into more than 24 hours of madly irresponsible and emotional online incontinence.
Many of you may find you have a low tolerance for shrieks of “We have the right to know absolutely everything, immediately!” from a congenitally secretive guy who notoriously declined to declare the £5m he was given from a Thai-based crypto-billionaire and, since that weird “gift” has been uncovered, has been in a prolonged tantrum that has caused him to snap at any attempts to discover more about what might have motivated it. “None of your business,” ran one particularly ill-judged attempt by Farage to put the issue to bed. “What’s it got to do with you?”
I do find my finger hovering over the “What’s it got to do with you?’ button with increasing regularity when Farage appears on screen to insert himself into moments of obviously active sensitivity. The clearly nuanced and potentially complex Fairford investigation – still ongoing, despite the release on bail of the five men arrested – was a case in point, although on Monday Nigel did attempt to set it out in a madly precipitous video on what he called “the Fairford plot”, captioned: “Fairford proves my point on Iran and the IRGC.” Does it? OK, thanks Jack Ryan.
Anyone who judges that this intemperate psychological liability should have access to the nuclear codes and other top-level information must have a subconscious wish for their answer to the question “where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” to be “living in Britain’s catacombs and distilling drinking water from my own urine”. It’s unclear whether a Prime Minister Farage would just bottle everything or shoot first and ask questions later, but the most likely metaphorical outcome in any given scenario may well be him shooting the wrong person first, then refusing to answer questions later.
Furthermore, as always with Nigel, it’s worth highlighting his insistence on rising to only the occasions from which he feels he might personally benefit. And so it is that he will have an awful lot to say about the horrific murder of Henry Nowak, but nothing or next to about those of Jo Cox or Sarah Everard. Whatever may or may not have happened at Fairford feeds into what we have to call, with heavy irony, his two-tier approach to public life. After all, for a guy who supposedly worries about illegal activity that could bear the hallmarks of foreign sponsorship, Farage strangely didn’t have a lot to say about the Ukrainian and Romanian nationals who were recruited via a Russian-speaking pseudonymous Telegram user to commit arson on property connected to Keir Starmer and on a car he had previously owned, back when Starmer was prime minister. Even after they were found guilty, the Reform leader didn’t seem to find this sort of darkly intriguing activity worthy of comment. Things he did find worthy of comment that same month included disputes over flying the St George’s cross flag and AI scam videos.
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The thing about attaining the very highest office in the land is that you have to be prime minister of all the things, all the time. It is difficult to see how someone as cynically selective as Farage could somehow become the sort of leader able to speak for a nation. Or, just as importantly, the sort of leader able to realise when it’s time to shut up for a nation.
Far more troubling still is the gathering sense that Farage is too mentally weak for the role, and would go to pieces in very short order once plunged into the realities of life in Downing Street. Perhaps his declining poll ratings mean worrying may be unnecessary. But he’s increasingly a set of walking psychological red flags: emotional, quick to temper, incapable of rising above the self-serving.
Amazing that there is a psychological screening test to determine whether you are up to appearing on a reality TV show these days, but you could ascend to the office of prime minister without submitting to anything similar. At least 20% of would-be Big Brother contestants are deemed mentally unfit to participate during the casting process each year. And looking at the five main party leaders this week, you’d think a similar percentage had the potential to absolutely implode were they to enter the Downing Street house. Perhaps our politics needs new duty-of-care guidelines, so that the office of British prime minister is psychologically guardrailed to the same level as, say, a dating show like Love is Blind.
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Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist. Her new book is What a Time to Be Alive! To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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