On Wednesday’s Today Programme, Emma Barnett – channelling her inner cross-examining QC – lobbed a slow, bouncing grenade at Labour’s Nick Thomas‑Symonds: did he support Benjamin Netanyahu’s nomination of Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize?
A gift of a question. Ripe for demolition. But instead of lighting the fuse, Thomas‑Symonds stood there like a man trying to explain a bus timetable in a thunderstorm. No principle. No wit. Not even a passable dodge. Just a gelatinous murmur that said nothing at all while still managing to sap the nation’s will to live.
Let’s review the facts: Gaza lies in ruins, Ukraine is still fighting for its existence, and Trump – the nominee – spent four years snogging despots, trashing alliances, and treating foreign policy like a game of Risk after five pints. He didn’t sow peace – he destabilised everything he touched.
Netanyahu’s nomination isn’t diplomacy. It’s trolling. A stunt. An insult wrapped in irony and dipped in blood. And what does Labour offer in response? Shrugs and mumbling. Because heaven forbid someone say something that might rile a lobbyist or appear in a Conservative attack ad. We can’t have moral clarity – it’s not “strategic”.
What Thomas‑Symonds should’ve said – if he had a spine or a flicker of timing – was: “What peace?” Or, if he fancied wit: “That’s for the Nobel judges to decide.” Hell, even a wry: “I couldn’t possibly comment,” would’ve sufficed.
But no. We got the sort of soup-brained equivocation that’s fast becoming Labour’s house style – all the charm of a defrosting fax machine. So petrified of saying the wrong thing, they end up saying nothing – and looking daft while doing it. And that’s not just weak, it’s dangerous. Because into that vacuum stride the thugs and charlatans with their “common sense” claptrap and crocodile tears.
Take Sir Jake Berry – former Tory Chairman and now Reform UK’s newest convert – claiming with a straight face that the Conservatives have “lost their way.” This, from the very man who cheered on the destruction of One Nation Toryism, the only version of Conservatism that ever married compassion with competence. Berry didn’t lose the plot – he helped write the ending.
He stood by while pragmatism was swapped for populism, and policy for posturing. Now, after years backing wreckers and grifters, he’s shocked to find the house burning down. So where does he go? Reform – a party with fewer policies than a fridge magnet and more rage than reason.
Reform isn’t a political movement – it’s a pub tantrum. Climate denial, anti-immigrant hysteria, tax cuts with no arithmetic – it’s not a manifesto, it’s a mood board. A shouty man with a pint and half a newspaper article, convinced he could run the country if only the woke would shut up.
And at the centre of it all? Nigel Farage. Yesterday he branded Emmanuel Macron “arrogant” for pointing out – correctly – that Brexit has hamstrung the UK’s ability to return asylum seekers. According to Nigel, Britain’s been “humiliated” by agreeing to take back fifty migrants a week. Fifty! The way he howled, you’d think Macron had marched into Dover and demanded our surrender.
But it’s classic Farage – full bluster, no ballast. He’s never once put forward a workable solution to the migrant crisis. Just noise. Rage against the ECHR. Refusal of any returns deal. Empty threats to “turn boats back,” as if dinghies can be shouted into submission.
He's even demanding back the money we pay to the French for stopping 40-50% of crossings, so, he's basically saying he wants the numbers to double.
When pressed for actual policy? Nothing. No treaties. No infrastructure. No legal mechanism. Just the fantasy that if we scowl hard enough, the Channel will sort itself out. He isn’t interested in fixing the problem. He’s here to flog outrage like a market stall barker with a sack of rotting rhetoric.
And yet – somehow – this man is polling high enough to become Prime Minister. That’s right. Nigel Farage, our own Alan Partridge of politics, may yet find himself in No.10. The man who built an entire career on not winning might be forced to do the one thing he’s always avoided: govern.
And you just know he’s absolutely crapping himself.
Because this was never the plan. The plan was to lob grenades from the sidelines, cash the media cheques, sell a bit of dodgy crypto, and retire to the GB News studio for a nightcap. But now the dog’s caught the car – and he’s realised the car is on fire and full of spreadsheets.
Let’s not forget his record as an MEP: two decades of Brussels-bashing, low attendance, no legislation, and an expenses tab longer than his list of achievements. He didn’t build Britain – he built a brand. A Union Flag in one hand and a microphone in the other, he turned anger into currency.
Even being an MP bores him. Constituents want housing advice. He wants to rant about dinghies and Brussels while flogging cufflinks between ad breaks.
And that rotating Reform leadership? It’s not democracy. It’s a witness protection scheme for failed cranks. Nigel appears for the cameras, disappears for the scrutiny, and leaves the paperwork to someone else. The party is a grab-bag of conspiracy theorists, tax exiles and men who think buttered toast is under threat from immigration.
If it still looks like he might win? He’ll self-destruct. Guaranteed. He’ll drop a clanger – something too racist even for Reform Facebook groups – and remind the electorate why he’s never been trusted to run a bath, let alone a country. Because Farage doesn’t want to be Prime Minister. He wants to look like he could be – long enough to sell books, drive clicks, and keep the grift alive.
Running the country means explaining monetary policy, not screaming about migrants on TikTok. Not nearly as sexy. Victory would mean the end of the act. And Farage, above all, is a performer. Loud, garish, and never aimed at anything useful.
He is the political firework: dazzling, noisy, and mercifully short-lived. And anyway – there’s not enough brandy in the Foreign Office for that man to survive a single Cabinet meeting.
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