Follow the money and the stench of sleaze claims surrounding Reform is a portent of how Nigel Farage’s Trump-land party would rule Britain should he ever buy his way into Downing Street.
The advice to pursue the cash trail from secret informant Deep Throat to US reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the film All the President’s Men depicting their exposure of Nixon era crimes is as relevant today as it was then.
How deep a hole Nigel Farage is stuck down after explosive accusations and allegations against and about him and his Far Right party over unlawful foreign donations can be gauged by the great interview dodger finally deigning to appear on Laura Kuenssberg’s show.
Picky, cancelling and refusing to be questioned in recent months since exposure of his own £5million personal gift from a Thai-based crypto-billionaire who would benefit financially from Reform policies, Farage’s very appearance confirmed he’s sweating over a scandal where “looks bad” doesn’t do it justice.
The most insightful moment of the footage screened on Channel 4 was Farage key aide James Orr, sacrificed along with even closer aide Dan Jukes to save the boss’s skin, saying unlawful foreign money paying for a Reform poll was something Farage “doesn’t know, won’t know” and was the kind of thing he would “rather not know”.
Ignorance is bliss in this Reform world but leaders create the culture, as we discovered when Boris Johnson presided over a No 10 resembling a nightclub during Covid.
So Farage’s contention that he’s innocent, a victim of the latest bomb exploding under Reform, is laughable.
This time he isn’t saying it’s nobody else’s business, as he did over the £5m, because police are following the money in an existing probe and the latest scandal stinks to high heaven.
Serial quitter Farage hinted he considered walking away during the summer, having “some very thoughtful moments” and his family “begging” him to go after beating a bin wasn’t the Clacton by-election triumph he plotted.
With Reform falling in the polls and inquiries mounting, Labour PM Andy Burnham is fast becoming the luckiest man in politics.