Sleepwalking

In February I developed some simple questions for Reform Ltd supporters which I posted as a blog. I've been lobbing them into the online Reform echo chambers on Facebook of late. Just polite queries, really. Thought-provoking, evidence-based, politically neutral, you might say – the kind that prod gently at the contradictions and cognitive knots tying Farage supporters to their man.

You’d think a movement so proud of its "common sense" would relish the chance to set the record straight. They don’t. In fact, most can’t even get past the first question. That one’s on Brexit, naturally. The second they see the B-word, the shutters come down. “Brexit wasn’t done properly,” they chant, like it’s a magic spell. When asked what "properly" actually means, the answer – if you’re lucky enough to get one – is usually something so spectacularly daft it would have made Liz Truss look an economic genius. Bring back border checks! Scrap EU standards! Cut ourselves off entirely! It's the political equivalent of sawing off the branch you're sitting on, because you don’t like the tree.

None of this is surprising, really. What’s clear from these encounters is that the average Reform supporter has never read a Reform policy in their life. Not one. They couldn’t tell you what the party would do with the NHS, with pensions, with the cost of living, with foreign policy. Ask about tax, and they mumble something about “flat rate” without realising it would gut public services and line the pockets of the already wealthy. Ask about climate change and you’ll be met with a grunt or some lazy meme about "woke nonsense" from someone who didn't even pass physics GCSE. Dig into immigration and it becomes very clear, very quickly, what’s driving this particular political bus.

Because when all else is stripped away, what’s left is ugly. Reform’s rise isn’t fuelled by economic theory or social cohesion. It’s not about sovereignty or global Britain or any of the slogans they bandy about. It’s racism. Plain and simple. Dressed up in patriotic bunting and wrapped in a Union Jack, but racism all the same. A fear of the other. A knee-jerk reaction to brown faces in high places. They’ll say it’s about "culture" or "British values", but that’s just the polite veneer on the same old poison.

And here’s the real danger. By supporting Farage and his merry band of populist grifters, these people are sleepwalking into fascism. Not jackboots and sieg heils – not yet – but a softer, subtler version that eats away at institutions, demonises minorities, and sneers at the rule of law. A movement that wraps itself in "freedom" while quietly dismantling the freedoms of others. That wails about democracy while undermining it at every turn. That calls itself “Reform” while offering nothing but regression.

It’s all very Weimar, isn’t it? The economic turmoil, the demagogues, the scapegoating, the hollow promises. And just like then, the people most at risk of being crushed by the system are the very ones cheering it on, convinced the enemy is their neighbour, not the crooks pulling the strings.

Reform is not a political movement. It is a marketing strategy aimed at the angry and misinformed. It offers no answers. It offers no hope. Just a target to hate and a flag to wave. And if we’re not careful, it will drag this country even further into the mire than Brexit already has. Reform voters don't seem the have the mental capacity to work out the consequences of Farage's policies - all they hear is; "Stop the boats!" and that's what captures them, regardless of the fallout from the other policies. Those policies get in under the wire.

So yes, I’ll keep asking my questions. And no, I don’t expect many answers. Because if they actually stopped to think – if they read, listened, considered – they might have to face an uncomfortable truth. They’ve been had. Duped. Conned by the very people they think are on their side. And once that penny drops, it’s no longer just ignorance. It’s complicity.