The Biggest Rally in British Politics: A Look Inside Nigel Farage’s Reform Party Event

Nigel Farage called it the biggest rally in British politics. There must have been many present.

The same could be said of Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978, when the Reverend Jim Jones persuaded his fans to drink a cyanide-laced soft drink.

Onward, brothers and sisters, to self-destruction. Let us carry out the glorious extirpation.

There were around 5,000 believers in the Nunday Hall of the National Exhibition Center in Birmingham.

The event was bigger than any major party conference, even last year’s Labor Party conference, which was packed with lobbyists.

Anne Widdecombe’s hair has gone Julian Assange-style blonde and her left breast has a reformer rosette so large it might once have been a badminton racket.

The reformers, who pay £5 a head, take a different approach. Without their cartoonist, there was no bond to fulfil; some baseball caps, ink on bare skin.

Some brought their children, others seemed to be going on dates.

At the entrance, the only angry people I saw were some anti-apartheid protesters. Even they were a bit Sunday morning.

One greeted me like a priest greeting someone at the door of a church.

Ann Widdecombe, in a warm-up speech, had the crowd screaming like nudists in a sandstorm.

He was wearing a gentlemanly houndstooth suit that could have been one of Sir Les Patterson’s discarded items.

Her hair has turned blonde like Julian Assange’s and her left breast has a reformist rosette so large it could once have been a badminton racket.

She swayed to the front of the stage and crooned in a voice that combined the lower notes of Margaret Rutherford and the upper register of a pink Vespa motor.

“We will bring common sense back to Britain,” shouts Ann, absorbing a chorus of whistles as if she has heard the sounds every time she passes a construction site.

“All I want to do is get rid of WAKE.” Around 10,000 feet of drums on the ground is what you hear at Edinburgh Tattoo.

Hundreds of sky-blue signs reading “Voting Reforms” were held aloft and punters couldn’t decide whether they were happy or angry.

They mentioned Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer, they hated Channel 4 and they absolutely hated the BBC.

Nigel Farage called it the biggest rally in British politics. There must have been a lot of people there. The same could be said of Jonestown in Guyana in 1978, when the Reverend Jim Jones persuaded his fans to drink a cyanide-laced soft drink.

There were around 5,000 believers in the Nunday Hall of the National Exhibition Center in Birmingham.

Hundreds of sky-blue posters reading “Voting Reforms” were held aloft and punters couldn’t decide whether they were happy or angry. They talked about Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer, they hated Channel 4 and they absolutely hated the BBC.

The biggest joy of the day came when Mr Farage called for the Beeb to be scrapped. But all this hatred made them quite naughty. There’s nothing like anger to make you smile.

“Make Britain great again,” Trump’s motto was Reform chief executive Paul Oakden.

Sweaty, shaved client, Oakden. This short and sexy coat should not have been worn. Her eyes rolled back in her head, she sniffed a lot, and her fingers fidgeted as he spoke.

Rummaging through the newspaper, he said, “We don’t care what you write anymore.”

This was probably not entirely true, as last week Sanskar hired well-known libel lawyers Mr Carter-Ruck.

Another speaker, Zia Yusuf, a savvy tech entrepreneur, wanted to “put the British people first”.

Mr Yusuf has just made a huge donation to Reform. He talked a lot about “Britain” and boasted about having paid “millions in taxes”. We all know the feeling, mate.

In a line worthy of a psalm, he added: “We will crush those who seek to destroy us.”

And then, after a dose of rhetorical anaesthesia from party chairman Richard Tice, the prophet Nigel was among us.

After revealing that he had become a grandfather (precisely on June 23, Brexit Day), he focused on his rivals and enemies. We have heard of “slippery dips.”

Sir Keir Starmer was condemned, like Herman Van Rompuy before him, as “a charisma of wet anger”.

Farage declared himself an electoral optimist and then lamented how abandoned modern Britain was.

There is something slightly schizoid about this match.

There were hardly any detailed policies in the party. They were general, personality-cult stuff, peppered with self-pity by the rotten media.

The car’s wheels will run for four more days. Then we could be five years away from parliamentary supremacy, thanks to the socialism that reformers dislike.

I fear for a man’s own glory.

2024-06-30 21:29:25
#Quentin #Letts #Ann #Widdecombe #crowd #swaying #nudists #sandstorm