Difficult to know what to say about Reform that doesn’t involve a lot of swearing and looking to the sky in bemusement. If the party and their members were in a book or film, you’d think they were ridiculous, an over exaggeration, a freak show with no basis in fact. But, no, there they are. A bunch of seemingly drug and booze addled lunatics with a remit to say the first thing that comes into their heads. “Hey, it’s all unscripted.” You don’t say. At the recent party conference there were a number of moments which proved the party were unfit for human consumption: one guest speaker declaring that King Charles’s cancer was due to the Covid vaccine (a lie), the party leader declaring that the boats in the channel could be stopped in two weeks (another lie) and one party member singing a song as she came onstage, the chorus of which seemed to be, “I’m an insomniac”, (possibly true). Obviously not qualified to govern, so there’s nothing more to be said, is there? Not so fast: the inconvenient truth is that this bunch of idiots are riding high in the opinion polls. The UK now has its own brand of Trumpists - which encompasses all sorts of anti-vaxers, flag-wavers, culture warriors, transphobes, pot-hole jumpers, climate change deniers - and they may win the next general election. Unbelievable as this seems, there are plenty of reasons it could happen beyond the electorate’s inability to tell the difference between snake oil salesmen and women and a normal politician. It hasn’t helped that the snake oil business (the business of ‘alternative facts’) was magicked up by the establishment, their lick-spittles, and much of the mainstream media, to deflect from the truth that austerity and the subsequent problems in the NHS, schools, people’s pockets were a Tory Party and establishment ruse to protect and enrich their own. Why have the electorate punch up when it’s easier for them to punch down. Dysfunctional NHS? Immigration. Schools falling down? Immigration. High utility and food bills? Immigration. Food banks and child poverty? Yep, it’s those pesky immigrants and asylum seekers again. The oligarchs and the rich folk in this country are laughing all the way to their second homes and luxury yachts. That a sizeable proportion of the electorate have been taken in by this is no surprise as the racist right-wing media and the BBC have been doing the PR/propaganda for Nigel Farage since well before Brexit. Farage just another useful idiot like Putin, Xi, Trump et al. The next front man for big business. Tory Party be damned, Labour too, Reform is exactly the type of desperate rabble who can be relied upon to look the other way while the rest of this country’s publicly owned crown jewels are sold to the highest bidder. The perfect party to rule us as we head inexorably to the end of the world.