You’re not convincing me that I should get out of my American bubble, UK. What’s this I hear? You might end up making Nigel Farage your prime minister? Haven’t you noticed how the US is self-destructing after electing a flaming buffoon to the presidency? Don’t repeat our mistake.
The latest revelation is that Farage’s behavior as a schoolboy. He was a goose-stepping bully singing Hitler youth songs!
When he was 17, a teacher wrote a letter protesting the prospect of Farage being appointed prefect at his school. She was in disbelief that he was even considered for the role.
She wrote: “You will recall that at the recent and lengthy meeting about the selection of prefects, the remark by a colleague that Farage was a ‘fascist but that was no reason why he would not make a good prefect’ invoked considerable reaction from members of the [staff] common room.
“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views, and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set that he had to be removed from his lesson …
“Yet another colleague described how, at a [combined cadet force] camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler Youth songs; and when it was suggested by a master that boys who expressed such views ‘don’t really mean them’, the college chaplain himself commented that, on the contrary, in his experience views of that kind expressed by boys of that age are deep-seated and are meant.”
The letter concluded: “You will appreciate that I regard this as a very serious matter. I have often heard you tell our senior boys that they are the nation’s future leaders. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that these leaders are enlightened and compassionate.”
He was, of course, appointed to the position anyway.
We should all learn from this: don’t let young people with fascist impulses get away with it. They don’t get better, except in the sense of getting better at concealing it for a time, but give them a little bit of power and the viciousness reemerges. Nigel Farage is the UK’s Stephen Miller wearing clown paint.
The letter expresses dismay that Farage hasn’t even apologized. I don’t give a damn whether he can put up a facade of regret — his actual identity as a racist and anti-semite was exposed, and no amount of “I’m sowwy” would make up for it.
Some UK citizens are retaining a sense of humor about it all, though.
“APPARENTLY it costs the NHS over E300,000 a year to remove foreign objects from people’s rectums. Why aren’t we removing British objects instead? was Brexit all for nothing?
– Gerry Paton, London”
Humor seems to be all we have left, unfortunately. This is the era when entire countries turn themselves into a joke.
We’ve already had Boris Johnson and Liz Truss as Prime Minister, thanks to the lunacy of Tory Party MPs and members, propped up by the tribalist adherence to Brexit.
Unfortunately far too many people think that shifting further right will solve all the problems introduced by 15 years of right-wing governments, because they are mind-numbingly stupid. Maybe the fact that Tory MPs and donors are jumping ship to Reform will eventually sink in, but I don’t expect Farage’s racism will make that much difference. A few more reminders that Farage wants to introduce an American-style health insurance system might help, though.
“APPARENTLY it costs the NHS over E300,000 a year to remove foreign objects from people’s rectums. Why aren’t we removing British objects instead? ”
That is pretty damn funny. But Nigel Farage supporters wouldn’t get it anymore than Republicans here would. I suspect Farage has a few more active brain neurons than Trump. Though I’d want to see how his bathroom is decorated to make sure.
I had the impression(s) that Farage is identified with Brexit, and Brexit is recognized as a disaster.
Some Britbody please explain to me what I’ve missed.
The problem is that there’s pretty slim pickings left. The Torys are obviously out, and as long as Labour insists on being a Tory Light (ring any democratic bells, anyone?) there isn’t much hope for them either. Can Corbyns new party get the traction needed to offer up an alternative?
this does seem like the perfect moment in history for third parties to supplant tories & labour, from an outside view, but i imagine those crusty old parties have systems in place to make that harder than it should be, like what we have here.
ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:UK_House_of_Commons_composition
KG: I’m sure seeing a version of the MAGA playbook.
Farage and Robinson are supposedly mutually antipathetic, no?
(Robinson is Bad Cop and Farage is Good Cop? Too cynical?)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/28/tommy-robinson-says-he-found-jesus-in-prison-churches-disagree-about-how-to-respond
↓
Since Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, emerged from prison last May, bearded and wearing a wooden cross around his neck, churches have been uncertain how to respond to incipient Christian nationalism on the far right of British politics. Some church members have wanted to push back unequivocally against racism and xenophobia, saying it has no place in Christianity; others have warned that any direct response risks amplifying the far right’s message.
Robinson was “led to Christ” while in prison, according to Rikki Doolan, a minister at the Spirit Embassy church in Tottenham, north London, which has a large component of worshippers with west African heritage. Three weeks before his release, Doolan – a former Ukip candidate in local elections – paid Robinson a visit. “We spoke about the gospel, and he received Jesus Christ as his personal lord and saviour, right there in the prison,” Doolan said later.
After his release, Robinson told the far right Visegrad 24 media platform that he had “looked deeply over the past few years about what we are fighting for and what made Britain, and it is Christianity. We are a Christian culture”.
Mr Paton has part of the right idea, but isn’t emphasizing the NHS’s best role. The NHS has not concentrated nearly enough on removing British heads from British rectums. There is, admittedly, a diagnostic difficulty with members of the
National FrontReform UK party, including Mr Farage, that might explain this: Their heads are so deeply embedded in their rectums that they’re coming back out of their shoulders.If you really want to understand UK politics, invest half an hour of your time in this:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0526722/
which, although played for laughs, is distressingly accurate (from the perspective of one who lived in a former rotten borough, and agreed by two politics faculty at the University of London).
I do notice slant, mind you:
“Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night”
Not one of those busy noisy Sussex villages very late at night, presumably.
The global rise of the reichwing and the way the Overton window has been pushed out so that candidates who were once utterly unthinkable are now taken seriously as possible national leaders is truly disturbing and a seriously toxic trend.
^ Farage is just one example out of many here.
The Brutish elite school system is a breeding ground for born to rule fascists. The strong feeding on the weak is encouraged. You have to ask what kind of a school admin would appoint an obvious Nazi as a prefect. Sounds a lot like my school where my final 3 years were a reign of terror with floggings, often public, as an intimidation tactic. You could be caned for trivial offenses such as being on the end of a line or wearing a tie the wrong shade of blue. The reign of terror came to an end 2 years after I left. A mother who was particularly angry at the repeated caning of her son confronted the headmaster in his office. When he proceeded to insult and abuse her son in front of her she did what any mother would do, grabbed the sadist by the head and slammed his face into his desk breaking, his nose. The main daily newspaper of the day did a page 3 story on the event and other crimes against the children in their care.
The one good thing about the school apart from some teachers who did their best to protect students from him was the prefects. Nazis were not allowed. I was in my senior year there when the first moon landing happened. We had all waited in the assembly hall for the live broadcast until it was delayed and everyone was sent back to class. Except for us. The prefects had a TV set in their room so we all decided a flogging was worth the risk to see history being made so we all locked ourselves in and watched it.
I resolved that when I had children any teacher that laid a hand on them would not be able to again. Thankfully by the time my son started school the cane was banned.
‘fascist but that was no reason why he would not make a good prefect’ invoked considerable reaction from members of the [staff] common room.
Good! A pity the crazies held the power though.
@12 garydargan: ‘grabbed the sadist by the head and slammed his face into his desk breaking, his nose’
‘No, don’t, violence is bad. I shake a stern finger at you’ I say. Once. Quietly.
The problem is the BBC and most of the rest of the British media have decided Farage as PM is the outcome they want.
Jommelbourne @ 14
The BBC is now run and operated by pro-Tory wankers. The question is, do they feel loyalty to the old bastard party or will they embrace the new bastard party?
“The BBC is now run and operated by pro-Tory wankers.”
No. This factually false.
Actually, it is true.
https://www.compassonline.org.uk/self-censorship-at-the-bbc-exposes-the-power-of-right-wing-narratives/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bbc/
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/10/11/bbc-institutional-culture-of-brexit-self-censorship/
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/celebritynews/andrew-marr-bbc-impartiality-insane-self-censorship-b1082960.html
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250228-the-bbcs-surrender-to-pro-israel-lobbying-a-history-of-censorship-and-bias/
Oh, and I’d like to point out one very disturbing example buried in the Andrew Marr interview — the resignation of a BBC director after it was revealed that he had personally brokered an £800,000 loan guarantee for Boris Johnson — and another in the Byline Times article — in 2021 both the BBC Director and Chairman were very public about supporting the Tories, with the Director donating over £400,000 to the party.
Is it really true, chrislawson?
Care to name the alleged pro-Tory wankers that supposedly run the BBC?
Wait, are you telling me Monty Python’s Upper Class Twit of the Year skit was a documentary?!
It never fails to weird me out how long that took – one of the few things eastern germany did right was to outlaw this kind of shit right at the beginning, mostly because it was associated with nazis and imperials, but still.
Well, thanks to UK libel law (with which I’m quite familiar) I think it would be a very poor idea to actually name any pro-Tory wankers who are running the BBC. It would also disserve our host. Aside from the obvious ones — those appointed to their posts prior to the last election, who were (at least according to both a wide spectrum of British press and their own public statements) not just pro-Tory, but actual Tory. And not wets.
The BBC — like any large organization based on “acquistion, control, and/or dissemination of information” — has an incredibly diverse management. Despite the best efforts of every government to have ever tried (and I don’t exclude either the “commie bastards” or the Middle East), those who are good enough at handling information and/or the people who do directly to avoid being sacked for incompetence within months no matter their political backing are just not uniform. This is why pointing at senior manager X as a counterexample to “run by pro-Tory wankers” is at most a distraction. As an illustration, remember who the lead voice of the BBC for Burma (and, partially, India) during WW2 was — a former colonial policeman in Burma named Eric Blair, who had only a couple years previously been fighting (and seriously wounded) in Spain on behalf of the leftist/communist opponents to Franco. He’s much better known by another name,† but it’s difficult to even imagine a less-Tory individual at a time that the UK government was far more Tory (and far more class-obsessed) than even the Johnson government was.
So, this longwinded answer to Morales’s debater-style demand for specific identifications is “this is not the place for that discussion; and even if it was, there are plenty of other credible sources backing up both the general tendency and some individual identifications, even those that don’t specifically identify any individuals as pro-Tory wankers.” And all of that said, the BBC is still far less captive to particular ideologies than any of our equivalent media organizations, whether “broadcast” or broader-based.
† You’re already on the ‘net, looking this up (if you don’t already know) will be educational.
TBH Farage’s behaviour as a schoolboy would be irrelevant if he hadn’t, as an adult, denied everything and lied about the string of well documented incidents. (If he’d said something along the lines of “We all do bloody stupid things as teenagers and if my behaviour caused anyone distress then I apologise unreservedly” it would have blown over in days).
The strikes against Farage are legion and far too numerous to list here. Suffice to say that the Chancellor alluded to him being a Russian asset during her budget speech and he’s been a bit quiet since Nathan Gill got banged up for 10 years for accepting Russian bribe money to come out with the same pro-Russian lines as Farage.
My personal opinion is that he’s a traitor who is unlikely to get into high office because there are far too many skeletons rattling around in his closet. (Not that I think he wants it – I think he’s mainly in it for the money).
But then again, people said much the same about Trump.
Jaws.
Fair enough.
True.
That’s the nub of it.
The insinuation is that it is biased, but, well, for your amusement:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/11/third-of-public-believes-bbc-has-left-wing-bias/
Nigel Farage… even as an adult he has left a slimy trail that shows who he really is.
Did you say “needs to go away”?
.
“The 2028 Presidential Election Based on Trump’s Approval Rating”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=u_KTwOpMLGI
-Let’s bury them so deep they are beneath the MOHO discontinuity!
There seems to be some confusion about the forces involved in the rise of Reform as a politically viable institution.
I will start by saying that I’m no expert, but unfortunately the experts in anti-fascism tend to be academics in the field of sociology, and therefore irrelevant to any discussion of actual events. If you are baffled by the fact that manifestly incompetent, racist fools manage to rise to positions of prominence in this political era you are, I believe, fundamentally misunderstanding the animus. None of what is happening in the US or the UK, or Europe more broadly, has much to do with reason. It’s driven by a general, pervasive feeling that things are bad and getting worse and somebody has to take the blame. Fascism as an ideology arises from the id, the part of all of us that recognises those close to us as being good and right, and strangers as suspicious and wrong. All a leader has to do is identify himself as ‘one of us’, to project an aura of bonhomie, or me-ness, and everything else follows.
These things happen when people are tired and scared and squeezed until they’re desperate for salvation. The thing is, tired and desperate people are easy to control, so inevitably any regime is going to want to inculcate those traits in the population. It’s a devil’s bargain which results inevitably in this kind of right wing mob politics. It’s a horrible cliche, but honestly it falls directly out of the analysis that the only way to prevent the rise of fascism is to materially improve everyone’s lives. This of course is impossible, because it would limit the rates of return for investors, which would legitimately undercut the foundations of the global economy.
Short version – capitalism leads to fascism and the actual people involved are irrelevant to the process.
I’m not across the BBC enough to properly comment there.
The ABC in Australia (our public boradcaster, not to be confused with the US ABC network) is not so much Liberal (our Tory/Republican equivalent), but more just cowed by many years of conservative governments holding the purse-strings to the point that it fals to the ‘balance’ fallacy between facts on the one hand and howling right-wing lunacy on the other.
Whenki comes to the BBC and bias British journoo Owen Jone shas some things to say here – BBC In MELTDOWN – For All The Wrong Reasons and recently~ish also also here – Why Trump REALLY Wants To Destroy The BBC – His Plan To Create Dictatorship EXPOSED
Oh and then when it comes to Farage, Owen has this
@ ^ .. titled ‘Nigel Farage OVERWHELMED By Scandal’ & lasting 20 mins.
Clarity fix : When it comes to the BBC and bias British journo Owen Jones has…
Plus there’s also via Owen Jones “Anti-Israel BBC” Lies DESTROYED By Ex-BBC Presenter Karishma Patel which is just under 45 mins long.
Trump wanting to destroy BBC video is 12 mins long.
The BBC in meltdown clip has a temporal length of 21 mins.
@3 Pierce R. Butler: Over 50% of the public now think Brexit was a bad idea (https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-poll/). However, an aspiring prime minister doesn’t need a majority of the popular vote (indeed, isn’t personally voted for at all, except as an MP for their own seat), but only to lead the party with the most seats; or failing that, to assemble a coalition or otherwise be appointed to lead a minority government, and it’s the latter possibilities that are apparently deemed most likely.
Farage has also been careful in recent years to avoid talking about Brexit (as well as the imprisonment of one of his party’s most senior figures for taking Russian bribes), and has focused on other issues like immigration.
The silver lining here is that Zack Polanski’s Green Party are also showing massive popularity in polling, often beating Labour and the Tories at the moment. I live in hope that we will see the badly needed leftward swing, and I am encouraged by how openly and witheringly inept the Reform operatives at all levels are proving to be.
Unfortunately, the Green Party in the US is a shameful wreck. Jill Stein? Fuck Jill Stein.
@30,
I hear and read a lot about Polanski, but not much about his party and other people in it. Would like to know a bit more before judging if them getting up would be a net good. Watching from the outside, it’s quite staggering to me how Reform can even be viewed as an alternative to anything. Farage, who was knee-deep in the Cambridge Analytica manipulation to get to Brexit, should not even be able to be eligible for any public office.
As to the media in that country, it feels a bit like Australia, the main public broadcaster is at least cowed, if not worse, and if you’re not on socmed to read independent media outlets, you just think your country is being overrun by Schroedinger’s migrants, who at the same time take all your jobs, and get all the social security benefits. It’s a mess.
A different bias :
“What’s Behind Reform UK Poll Collapse?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=WXpAcM3ANj0
@PZ #32: Is there any room for a third alternative in the US? Or will the “winner takes all” system favor the current two party system?
peacerich100water @ # 30 – thanks!
…an aspiring prime minister… isn’t personally voted for at all, except as an MP for their own seat…
In the US, when state legislatures picked senators, most voters marked their state ballots according to which senatorial candidate they favored (which led to some really slapdash state laws) – doesn’t that apply to UK MP elections?
Farage has also been careful in recent years to avoid talking about Brexit…
And don’t Labour politicians (et alia) and maybe even a few of the braver journos remind the voters of that foremost claim-to-fame?
Or have we (US) exported enough of our national-amnesia germs that y’all have succumbed too? We certainly don’t seem to be missing much of that commodity…
@36: I don’t understand the senatorial election process. How does the popular vote for senators influence the choice of president? In the UK, each of the 650 parliamentary (specifically lower chamber) seats goes up for election, and what’s on your ballot is the list of people vying to represent your seat. To influence who becomes PM, the most you can do is vote for the candidate whose party you want to form the next government.
(The upper chamber isn’t elected at all, but a mix of appointed and hereditary.)
Labour has been criticised from the left for not talking about Brexit enough, or not pinning it on either Farage or the Tory party that let it happen. Possibly they don’t want to bore/alienate people by “re-litigating” a “settled” issue, and possibly they believe that many of their potential voters, in the UK’s equivalent of the rust belt, are still Brexit supporters. However, they have lately been slightly more vocal about the economic damage, and made some small moves towards restoring some of the UK-EU links that Brexit severed, like the Erasmus student exchange programme.
A majority say in polls that it was a mistake, but it’s not a huge majority – those still favouring it (often on the grounds that it hasn’t worked because we didn’t invade France, retake Calais, and dump all migrants and their descendants there – I jest, but not by much) still outnumber those saying they would vote for the British Union of Faragists (I use this name, abbreviated BUF, because it can stand for all three of Farage’s successive ego-vehicles – UKIP, Brexit Party, Reform UK, and because the coincidence of the initials with the inter-war British Union of Fascists is apposite).
Probably not. Corbyn and his co-founder, Zarah Sultana, have spent much of the time since the idea was mooted biting lumps out of each other, including threats of legal action. Those aligned with Corbyn include 4 Muslim MPs elected on anti-genocide platforms, but to varying degrees, “socially conservative”, i.e. sexist, homophobic, transphobic. Those aligned with Sultana include various head-banging sectlets such as:
1) The Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), who make a practice of setting up front organizations and joining “new left parties” set up by others, then if they can’t control them completely, signing up as many new members to the SWP as possible (they burn out activists at a tremendous rate) and pissing off to do the same again. A number of years ago they had the “Comrade Delta” scandal: the eponymous “comrade” was a rapist they refused to report to the police, instead convening an internal enquiry that cleared him. Anyone on the left with any sense recognises the SWP as undiluted poison.
2) The Socialist Party. Another band of merry entryists, who also think they are the “Vanguard Party” destined to bring about The Revolution. Once known as the “Militant Tendency” when they were busy parasitising Labour.
3) The Communist Party of Britain (I think – could be wrong.) They publish a rag called the Morning Star, and are viciously transphobic.
These three all say Mr. Putin was very naughty to invade Ukraine, but Ukraine shouldn’t be given any assistance to defend itself because it’s a “proxy war” for NATO, and “The real enemy is at home”. By contrast:
4) The Communist Party of Great Britain is cheering Putin on, parroting the Kremlin line (they hardly bother to translate it) that Ukraine has been taken over by Nazis.
Sultana won significant victories at the founding conference at the end of November – first, that members of “Your Party” (yes, it’s kept the silly name) can also belong to other parties (AFAIK, there’s currently nothing to prevent them being members of the BUF); second, that there would not be a single elected leader, but a governing committee of “lay members” i.e. those not holding any public elected position such as MP or local councillor. Elections for that committee are ongoing, I think, and all the sectlets will be fighting to get their members onto it.
I’m friendly with a number of people who have joined YP, or are “YP-curious” – none of them have much time for either Corbyn or Sultana. Undoubtedly there are a lot of well-meaning people at the grassroots, but at this stage it’s hard to see it doing all that much. In Scotland, and I think in Wales, there’s also the issue of the extent to which there will be autonomy at Scottish/Welsh level, and what attitude YP will have to independence (all my YP or YP-curious contacts are pro-independence, but that’s largely because I am, and have got to know them through a non-party left-indy group).
Much more promising are the Green parties, as cartomancer points out @31. The big one, the Green Party of England and Wales, recently elected as leader Zack Polanski, who got 85% of the vote, including mine – I joined specifically to vote for him and his allies. Since then it’s trebled its membership, and risen markedly in the polls. The GPEW has long been well to the left of Labour – I’d say left of Corbyn, and the Scottish Green Party (I’m a member of both, but the SGP is my political home as I live in Scotland) is further left again, being explicitly ecosocialist. Polanski hasn’t actually changed GPEW policy – it’s not in his power, or that of the SGP leaders, to do so; in both cases party conference decides policy on a one-member-one-vote basis. But he’s got the party talked about, and as Oscar Wilde said… The (Irish) Green Party/Comhaontas Glas stands in both parts of the island of Ireland, and is more centrist. Don’t confuse any of them with the hot mess that is the Green Party in the USA – I’m not sure we (SGP and GPEW) still have any political ties with them. The UK Green parties have their weaknesses – the membership is largely white and middle-class (but probably the same is true of YP); we’ve had some infighting in the SGP (3 councillors and a few other prominent members recently defected to YP, which may reduce the tensions, though I’m not saying all the blame was on their side); and the GPEW did have a worryingly strong transphobic wing, but Polanski has made clear he won’t tolerate transphobia, and my guess is that most of the new members are both well to the left, and sound on trans rights (as well as on both Palestine and Ukraine, where we’re certainly in line with public opinion).
The polling averages at my link suggest that Polanski has largely been taking votes from Labour, while the BUF seems to have peaked, at least for now, and the Tories have made a slight recovery. We’ll know a lot more after the elections in May: local elections in much of England, and elections for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd. I think the BUF is bound to take a lot more council seats, and get seats in the Scottish Parliament (although it’s polling is considerably lower, at somewhat under 20%) and Senedd. In Wales, it looks likely Labour, which has been the dominant party there for decades, will come a poor third, with the BUF and the pro-independence, leftish Plaid Cymru fighting for first place; the likely outcome is a Plaid/Labour coalition or a Plaid minority government. In Scotland the SNP has lost significant support, but is unlikely to lose many seats (it’s currently just short of an overall majority), because the unionist vote will be split four ways (Labour/Tory/LibDem/BUF). Labour and Tories will lose seats, but beyond that, the electoral system (modified d’Hondt – I’ll explain it if anyone wants), the possible participation of YP and other small andor new parties, and the small amount of polling that’s done, make predictions difficult.
birgerjohansson@34,
The title to your link is absurd – the BUF vote has dropped, but it has certainly not collapsed, nor is it even a “dramatic drop” as Phil Whatsisname says: it’s about 3% on average, from 31% to 28% on Wikipedia’s calculations. A considerable amount of wishful thinking there. The Green polling figures, even more than those of the BUF, differ a lot between polling companies – in particular, I suspect “Find Out Now”, who I’ve read are a cheap option and are certainly new – tend to overestimate the figures for both, and underestimate those for Labour and Tories, although some othe companies, notably YouGov, are showing similar figures. Conversely, I suspect “More In Common” of overestimating the two previously-dominant parties’ shares.
@23
‘The insinuation is that it is biased, but, well, for your amusement:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/11/third-of-public-believes-bbc-has-left-wing-bias/‘
This kind of idiocy needs to stop. You can’t just show that both right wingers and left wingers claim the BBC is biased against them, and assume that means the Beeb must actually be balanced. In doing so you’re assuming that nobody is either (a) honestly mistaken or (b) lying.
I have no problem believing that Reform or Tory supporters believe the BBC is biased to the left. That doesn’t mean they’re correct to do so.
peacerich100water @ # 37: Until about a century ago, US senators were chosen by state legislatures, so the top issue in many state legislative races was who would they support for the federal senate. I had thought that UK voters would ask first about any Parliamentary candidate who would they choose as PM, with every other issue as secondary – not so?
Possibly they don’t want to bore/alienate people by “re-litigating” a “settled” issue…
It does seem y’all will face a lot more than just repealing Brexit to return to the status quo ante, not to mention rebuilding the damaged economic sectors – even without the sniping & sabotage to be expected from nationalists/Putinists. Though such a plan would seem necessary for any realistic long-term recovery, I can see why only a brave and serious statesperson might dare to bring it up in public, and such are an endangered species globally.
KG @ # 38: … those still favouring it … still outnumber those saying they would vote for … BUF…
Sounds like the Denialist Party reigns supreme, there as here. Interesting that they manage to do so without a central figurehead…
rjlangley, I think you misapprehend.
“This kind of idiocy needs to stop. You can’t just show that both right wingers and left wingers claim the BBC is biased against them, and assume that means the Beeb must actually be balanced.”
Precisely. That’s why I did not do that, outside your imagination.
That refers to #16 which occasioned the Jaws retort I was addressing.
I suppose they must truly be wankers if those Tories allegedly running the BBC make the BBC be perceived as per that article.
Pierce: “It does seem y’all will face a lot more than just repealing Brexit to return to the status quo ante, […]”
It can’t: the UK had bespoke perks that no other member state held, and it lost those forever by opting out.
New accession won’t redo that; the EU has not forgotten those concessions and will not replicate them.
cf. https://www.lewik.org/term/17596/uk-opt-outs-from-eu-legislation-14-the-great-repeal-bill-white-paper/
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/31/french-public-broadcaster-under-parliamentary-inquiry-into-neutrality-workings-and-financing-udr
↓
The French public broadcaster is at the centre of a political row as a parliamentary inquiry examines the “neutrality, workings and financing” of state TV and radio, while the media are expected to play a significant role ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
The rightwing UDR party, an ally of Marine Le Pen’s far-right the National Rally (RN), set up the inquiry amid far-right claims that public TV and radio has a bias against them. Le Pen, whose party is expected to reach the final round of the presidential race, has said “there is a clear problem with neutrality in the public service broadcasting” and that she would like to privatise it.
Party affiliation (if any – independents can also stand) is given on the ballot paper. That said, voters are sometimes misled – accidentally or deliberately – when parties have confusingly similar names. In the last elections for the Scottish Parliament in 2021, a fascist front group calling itself “Independent Green Voice” probalby deprived the Scottish Green Party of two seats. Whether they will bother this time I don’t know; but I suspect transphobes who recently left the party will try a similar trick.
John Morales @ # 43 – Thanks!
Ergo, N. Farage has even more (not) to answer for…
KG @ # 45 – Thanks!
In Florida (and surely other states), we have a similar ghost candidate phenomenon, with non-politicians cashing in on having similar names to incumbent pols. Need I name which party ponies up the cash?