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After weeks in which the Reform leader has become an increasingly lesser-spotted creature in British politics, Nigel Farage finally emerged from hiding this morning.
The manner in which he did so – via a pre-filmed “emergency address” to camera, without any journalists presents – was particularly telling.
As questions continue to grow about Farage’s secret £5 million bung from a crypto billionaire, and his claimed hacking by Russia, the previously publicity-hungry Reform leader has become remarkably camera shy.
Yet it was the content of Farage’s “address”, even more than the manner in which he delivered it, that was most striking.
Responding to the recent fatal stabbing of Henry Nowak, Farage declared that the case showed that “the rights and privileges of white people matter less than ethnic minorities”, adding that “white lives matter…” and there needs to be “an end to anti-white prejudice”.
Farage’s speech comes amid a deliberate ramping up of racialised language from Reform UK. In another recent post, Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf declared that “White people are now demonstrably the biggest victims of racism in Britain”.
Now I’m not sure what definition of “demonstrably” Yusuf and Reform are using here, but official figures demonstrate that black people in the UK are around 16 times more likely to be the victims of racial hate crime, per head of population, than their white counterparts, with Asian people being around nine times more likely.
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Of course anti-white racism does exist in the UK, but all of the evidence suggests that it is a vanishingly small problem compared to that of racism against non-white people.
And while there probably will be lessons for the police and others to learn from the Nowak case, the fact that Farage and Reform are jumping on it as undeniable evidence of endemic racism against white people is both deeply irresponsible and frankly grotesque, given how little we still know about his tragic death.
Yet what this ramping up of racialised rhetoric really demonstrates is quite how desperate the Reform operation is now starting to look. Faced with an upcoming by-election in Makerfield, which on paper the party should be able to win at a canter, Nigel Farage’s party is currently facing yet another humiliating loss.
According to the latest betting odds, Reform’s candidate Robert Kenyon is likely heading for defeat against Andy Burnham. Meanwhile, Kenyon’s long history of racism, sexism and homophobia, much of which was exposed by Byline Times, appears to have caused him to follow his leader into hiding during this contest.
Of course Reform’s defeat in Makerfield is far from assured and the only polling of the constituency we have so far suggests that it is still a very close race, but there are increasing signs from Reform and others that what initially looked like an easy win for Farage’s party is now anything but.
The fact that things are not going to plan for Reform can be seen in the rising political and media panic about the influence of Reform’s rival far-right party Restore Britain on the contest.
A series of articles and editorials from Reform-sympathetic newspapers over the past week have urged voters in the constituency not to split the right-wing vote by backing Restore – something that has been picked up in increasingly shrill terms by a number of senior Reform figures.
Yet with Restore securing the loud support not just of X owner Elon Musk, but much of the far-right social media sphere which first helped propel Farage’s party to prominence, there has been a noticeable panic emerging from Reform quarters.
And with that panic has come the sort of ramping up of racialised rhetoric that we saw from Farage on Tuesday morning.
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Of course this ramping up should worry everyone who cares about the state of British politics. The fact that the party which is leading in all of the national opinion polls is now using the sort of rhetoric previously reserved for the very fringes of the far-right is deeply alarming – as is the fact that this rhetoric is being publicised and normalised by Reform’s media supporters.
Signs of this normalisation could be heard on the BBC’s Radio 4 Today Programme this morning, where Farage’s opponents were asked a series of questions by the presenters about whether the “rights and privileges” of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities.
Yet what this episode mostly demonstrates is that a party which once felt secure enough in the broad base of its support to distance itself from the far-right, is now being forced out of sheer desperation to scramble for every last vote on the furthest reaches of its electoral coalition.
This scrambling comes not just amid the rise of Restore Britain but also as Labour prepares to potentially select a new Prime Minister in Andy Burnham, who opinion polls suggest is much more popular than Farage himself.
Squeezed from both the left and right, Reform and its leader face the real possibility of losing their perch at the top of British politics.
It is this fear – rather than any confected claims about a surge in anti-white racism across the UK – which is really driving what we are now hearing from Farage and his party.