To Reform’s Nigel Farage, who managed to dominate headlines today after he took a pop at the Beeb on Thursday afternoon. But that wasn’t all he was there to discuss: he blasted the Labour government’s decision to delay mayoral contests until 2028, he made another barb about Sir Keir Starmer’s digital-ID scheme and insisted he was completely comfortable with accepting a £9 million sum from generous donor Christopher Harbone. And the Reform party leader also dished out some advice for his political opponents…
When quizzed by Mr S why he had not yet appointed a leader for the Welsh and Scottish Reform parties ahead of the Senedd and Holyrood elections next May, Farage responded:
For the moment, I’m going to spearhead [these campaigns]. I’m going to lead this. And I’ve got 30 years of experience, and nobody else in Britain knows how to start and build a political party from scratch. If Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana would come to me, things might be very different for their organisation…
Fancy taking him up on the offer, Jezza? From what Steerpike has heard, Farage would be doing better than Your Party organisers if he managed to get their co-founders into the same room…
The Clacton MP took issue with the suggestion that he wasn’t picking devolved leaders for fear of being overshadowed:
If you watch broadcast media, you’ll see I rarely appear. I’m more than happy for Richard Tice to Zia Yusuf, Leila Cunningham, David Bull and others to go out and appear on TV debate programmes, phone-in radio. Sarah [Pochin] does quite a bit of it too…
Although Steerpike would note that after Pochin’s, er, ‘ugly’ remarks on TalkTV, where she said it drove her mad to see adverts ‘full of black people, full of Asian people’, she hasn’t actually been on much, if any, broadcast media at all! How curious…
Farage will appoint Welsh and Scottish group leaders at some point, he said – he’s simply waiting to find the right person. ‘I want as much talent in the party as possible and I absolutely can’t wait for somebody who’s better looking, younger, more intelligent, and more articulate than me,’ the Reform leader asserted, ‘And when that person comes along, I recognise it, and I will know it.’ Talk about a slight to his current group members, eh?
Comments