The Clacton Brethren

I heard a Reform voter on the radio the other day, full of evangelical zeal. Totally mesmerised by Farage. Said he believes him implicitly. Doesn’t trust any other politician - “they’re all elites” - but Farage, the public school educated ex commodity trader who has never gotten anything right? Farage is the truth-teller, the prophet, the bloke at the bar who Really Gets It. When asked how Farage would have made Brexit work, he paused and said, “I don’t know, but I guarantee it would work.” If that’s not cult behaviour, I don’t know what is.

And that’s what makes this movement so dangerous. It’s not just wrongheaded politics - it’s religious in intensity. Total faith. No questions. No plan. Just trust in the man with the pint and the permanent sneer. You’re not dealing with voters anymore. You’re dealing with disciples. And I gave the cult a name:

The Clacton Brethren.

Their gospel is grievance. Their hymn sheet is printed in the Mail. Their miracles involve imaginary trade deals and boats turned back by sheer willpower. They believe Brexit didn’t fail - it was sabotaged. That the NHS is collapsing because of migrants, not years of austerity. That Farage, who’s failed upwards for decades, is somehow the only honest man left.

They don’t want policy. They want vengeance. They don’t ask for solutions. They ask, “Who can we blame today?”

And when you try to speak to them - when you calmly ask, “What’s the plan?” —-they bark slogans. “Take back control!” “Enemy of the people!” “Leave means leave!” Ask for details, and the buffering symbol starts turning behind their eyes.

This is where the deprogramming comes in. You don’t argue with them to change their minds. You argue with them for the audience. For the onlookers. For the people who haven’t swallowed the doctrine but might be tempted.

Facebook, despite being an asylum of the unwell, is a perfect place for this. Not because the cultist will listen - they won’t - but because others are reading. Watching. Lurking. And when you hold up the contradiction, calmly, with facts and wit and just enough scorn, you show the others: this emperor isn’t wearing anything at all.

Take the recent DOGE debacle in Kent. Reform UK announced some Musk-style “efficiency audit” like they were about to storm the council chambers with clipboards and AI. In reality, they hadn’t even had a meeting. The accounts were already public. It was performative nonsense. But the Brethren lapped it up. Because it sounded like action. Like disruption. Like Farage knew something the experts didn’t.

That’s the power of the cult. It's not about results. It's about theatre. But the moment you expose that theatre - when you show the audience that there’s no stage, no props, and no plan — the spell starts to break.

We won’t reach the zealots. But we can reach the ones watching. The tired, the frustrated, the almost-gone.

So yes, respond. Post. Argue. Not to win them over - but to let the quiet ones know that not everyone is buying this nonsense. That someone still remembers what reality looks like. That patriotism isn’t a flag and a grievance. It’s building something that works.

The Clacton Brethren will keep marching. Keep chanting. Keep praying for the second coming of Saint Nigel. But the rest of us? We’ve got a country to rescue. One deprogrammed scroll at a time.

I tackled one of the Clacton Brethren who was spouting nonsense and who added at the end of his tirade; "I might get put in jail for what I'm saying." The response from me? "Appeal to the ECHR - it's what they're for." That went down like a lead balloon.