Farage says Reform isn’t a rescue charity for panicky Tory MPs.
Correct. It isn’t a charity. It’s a recycling centre.
And we know that because he said it, then immediately took another one. Rosindell turns up with a speech about “managed decline” and Farage is already calling him “a great patriot”. So the “no more defectors” line isn’t a principle, it’s a press release. It’s what you say while you’re still opening the door.
The Conservatives are in this state because Boris Johnson purged the One Nation lot and replaced them with the career-seeking clappers who’d sell their grandmother for a ministerial car. He didn’t just change the party’s direction, he changed the quality control. Personal loyalty mattered. Competence didn’t. Shame was treated as a hobby.
So now we get the inevitable second act. The very people Johnson promoted because they were pliable and loud are looking at Reform like it’s the last lifeboat off a sinking ship. No principles, no loyalty, no embarrassment. Just that frantic little scramble to stay on the payroll, while still insisting they’re “serious” and “experienced”. They’ve been “threatening to defect for months”, denying it as recently as Saturday, then suddenly discovering conscience the moment a turquoise rosette appears.
Rosindell’s excuse is the usual defector theatre. The Conservatives are “irreparably bound” to their mistakes, so his solution is to join the party that is currently collecting those mistakes like Panini stickers. He even drags in Chagos, because it sounds statesmanlike and patriotic and saves him from mentioning the NHS, housing, or the fact most voters are mainly worried about whether they can afford the weekly shop.
But the real irony is this: the Conservatives have spent years chasing Farage with their policies. They’ve borrowed his framing on Europe, immigration, courts, protest, “woke”, and national decline, then acted surprised when it all went wrong. Brexit has damaged trade and investment, the state is frayed, public services are brittle, and the party looks unserious because it has behaved unseriously. Yet the surviving Tory leadership still seems convinced that implementing even more of Farage’s politics is what will rescue them. It’s like watching someone try to cure a hangover by ordering another bottle of gin.
And that’s why Reform works. Farage isn’t building a governing machine. He’s running an outrage engine.
Governing is where slogans go to die. It’s budgets, courts, treaties, civil servants, procurement, and the awkward reality that you can’t “common sense” your way through trade-offs. The moment you grab the levers of power, you own the consequences, and half your policies evaporate on first contact with reality. The other half end up in judicial review.
Farage’s business model depends on never getting pinned down. Permanent outrage, permanent blame, permanent campaigning. Every week a new enemy. Every month a new betrayal. Every time he’s asked for details he points at a dinghy, mutters “woke”, and waits for the cameras.
That’s why the Tory defectors are useful. They’re not joining a team, they’re joining a performance. Farage gets to parade them as trophies, make them confess that the Conservatives “broke the country”, and then use them as props in the next round of grievance politics. If they cause trouble, he purges them and claims it proves he’s “different”. Either way, he wins.
And here’s the bit people keep missing: Farage doesn’t need to win a general election to win.
His real job is to poison the centre ground and drag everyone else to the right. Keep the country in a constant state of manufactured panic so Labour spends its time triangulating, tightening, “getting tough”, and chasing the right-wing headline of the day instead of fixing the plumbing. Immigration, protest, policing, “British values” - the carousel never stops, because the moment it stops people start asking awkward questions about living standards, public services, and who’s hoovering up the money.
That’s what he’s paid to do. Not necessarily with a brown envelope and a wink, but in the way the outrage economy works. Media platforms, donors, backers, grifters, think tanks - everyone gets rich and influential off a politics that never threatens wealth and power, but keeps the public furious about boats and flags.
So yes, he’ll happily drain the Conservatives of the last scraps of credibility. He’ll strip-mine them for names, money and attention. Then, if Reform ever gets too close to actual power, there’ll be a nice controlled detonation. A row, a purge, a scandal, a mad pledge. Anything to keep Reform as the loud disruptor, not the boring administrator.
Because if Farage ever had to deliver, the act would die.
The sad part is the defectors don’t even see it. They think they’re marching into government.
They’re marching into a studio.
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