‘You know what I am! I’m a fighter, I’m a warrior, I’m a campaigner. I stand up against big institutions when they behave badly, whether they’re banks or out of touch bureaucracies based in Brussels. And very often, I win.’
Nigel Farage finished tonight’s BBC Panorama interview by offering his grand theme as a politician. He had some difficult questions to deal with. Yet Farage doesn’t need to worry as much as the other top politicians about his answers, because he is not judged by the same standards. That’s why he didn’t really engage with Nick Robinson on the detail of his £140 billion a year of spending commitments, or indeed on the comments he had made previously about the King and climate change.
It’s also why he was able to dismiss the row about some of the comments his candidates have made as someone else’s fault. He did rather dumped the problem on Richard Tice, by saying he hadn’t been involved in the day-to-day running of the party, as well as the vetting company Reform had engaged.
The most problematic bit of the interview was where he was asked about his previous comments about Vladimir Putin. He pointed out that he did say he ‘disliked’ Putin, but accepted that he had also admired his ability: ‘I admired him as a political operator because he managed to take control of running Russia’. He added that this didn’t mean he supported him, but that he had merely identified one area where the Russian leader was ‘talented’.
Reform is now polling at a level where its supporters are not just those who are still interested in talking about the betrayal of the way Brexit was executed – though Farage made a point of saying that had he been in charge, it would have been very different – and these big questions about who a leader sides with are important for those voters tempted to ditch the Tories. Expect to hear a lot more about Farage and Putin from Conservatives desperate to drive down the appeal of the challenger party.
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