J’accuse opposing the Online Safety Act is hardly Nixon goes to China – it’s almost a waste of column inches to explain why we fight anything created by Theresa May and then celebrated by the Centre For Countering Digital Hate from a point of principle – let’s leave it at the fact that Huw Edwards will not spend a single day in jail for possessing Category A child pornography including an image of a child aged between seven and nine. You do not need to concede any rhetorical ground on this issue of child protection in a country riven with paedophile grooming gangs which are aided and abetted by parts of the state.
The more interesting development in the last week has been Nigel Farage’s unequivocal opposition to this legislation, which he has vowed to repeal as soon as he is in power. This is the latest piece of evidence that has addressed one of my concerns about the party; that Farage’s natural ‘libertarian’ instincts are being diluted by post-liberalism as part of the so-called ‘realignment’. Opposing the Online Safety Act is a much more meaningful rejection of this mistaken course of action than a few opportunistic populist pledges around the Winter Fuel Allowance.
You cannot have fiscal rectitude until the immigration problem is resolved – ‘we want our country back’ before we are willing to cut spending on pensioners – but the élan of this anti-establishment movement is dependant on the very platforms which the Online Safety Act is intended to hobble. Without a free internet the BBC will revert to portraying protests outside of migrant hotels as extremist drug-addled thugs moaning about ‘Islamic rayguns’. That Reform is protecting its own dialectical infrastructure instead of being drawn in by moral pandering around children’s safety is to be celebrated. The actual ‘populist’ position appears to be, as with Lockdown, in favour of these authoritarian measures (69% in favour, YouGov). It is a sign of progress that Farage did not make the same error on this issue as he did with bogus Covid-19.
Reform increasingly looks like a plausible option for readers who believe in a democratic solution to the situation we find ourselves in. I will address arguments I have myself made in previous articles to explain this case. The first challenge against putting a store of faith in Nigel Farage which made sense a year ago was that he had some sort of ‘electoral cap’, meaning he would eventually have to do a pact or his presence would simply enable more Starmer. Before Diddy Dom Cummings’s failed attempt to infect reform with his polycule he was telling interviewers that Farage had a ‘cap’ of 15% electorally. This has been the SW1 consensus, of which Cummings is a part, for years. We now know from subsequent polls and the local elections that this hackneyed trope is completely wrong.
Farage has a very clear path to a majority without entering any grubby deals with the Tories. The average ‘SW1’ insider, including figures in Government, concluding about three months ago that Farage is going to be the next Prime Minister. They will make some half-hearted attempts to ‘combat Reform’, but even the Labour MPs know from their own constituencies that it won’t work. Farage is perceived as the ’anti-establishment’ figure, and when the establishment is wrecking people’s living standards and housing foreign rapists next to secondary schools they will vote for the ‘anti’ figure. Starmer is too weak and ideologically blinkered to resolve any of these problems.
The second objection to Farage is that Reform is not a ‘serious party’ - this is the line of attack adopted by Kemi Badenoch and her various blue-jumpers outriders on X who are oh so desperate for a place on the candidate selection list. I am pleased to observe that Reform appears to have adopted the course of action advised by J’accuse in May this year – to appoint a cabinet comprised of political appointments to the House of Lords instead of relying on his own MPs. According to the Financial Times, in late June, Farage was making the rounds with business leaders in the City ‘wooing’ them with offers of Ministerial positions - he’s also stated on LBC that Cabinet ministers should not be politicians. The FT also profiled Zia Yusuf on Friday:
“There is, Yusuf estimates, a 70 per cent chance that Reform will win the next general election with an outright majority. And Farage would put together a cabinet, the majority of whom are likely not to be elected politicians, but from the “real world”. “We want to have cabinet ministers for whom this is the lowest-paid job they’ll ever have.” He’s confident that there will be an “embarrassment of talent” lining up to take these roles.”
Yet another trophy for J’accuse. This decision alone should put to rest the idea that Reform are not ‘serious’. The Tories have completely mangled it’s own talent pipeline thanks to the desperation of modernisers in the 2000s imposing women and ethnic minorities into associations - who then, in response, insisted putting forward ‘local candidates’ (useless, often mildly corrupt councillors) to Parliament.
The Tory Shadow Cabinet is comprised of complete non-entities - Reform could have someone Mervyn King heading up the Exchequer instead of ‘Mel Stride’ now that they have made this commitment. The Tories are the party comprised of variations of Jamie ‘trans road accident’ Wallis and is led by a woman who has been managed out of every professional job she has ever had. The ‘Credibility’ pitch was already wearing thin but, heeding J’accuse, Reform has aptly countered it.
The third is that Nigel Farage is insufficiently radical. Now, clearly Farage is no meritocrat but I will address this to the mainstream online right - there has been a significant change in his rhetoric in even the past month. The policy of deporting foreign criminals to El Salvadorian jails is a substantial push at the Overton Window, it goes beyond what the ‘New Right’ within the Tory Party is calling for. Farage has also begun to openly connect rising immigration with rising sexual crimes and defended protestors outside the Epping hotel as ‘concerned families’.