Postcard from Broken Britain

Day One back in Britain and Channel 4 greets me like a cold, wet sock to the face.

There’s Fraser Nelson asking, straight-faced:

“Will Nigel Farage be the next Prime Minister?”

 

Sorry, what?

I pop a paracetamol. I check the date.

Keir Starmer is already Prime Minister.

 

But this, dear readers, is the new British politics: where reality is optional, the ghost of Enoch Powell tap-dances nightly, and the Reform Party is being sold as the second coming — wrapped in bunting, rage, and the faint whiff of sausage rolls.

 

The New Messiah in Pinstripes.

 

Nigel Farage is back — not that he ever left — resurrected like a moth-eaten Lazarus with a pint in one hand and xenophobia in the other. On the Channel 4 panel: the usual suspects — Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith, and GB News acolytes nodding like dashboard dogs to the beat of white grievance.

 

Farage says they’re “struggling to find high-quality candidates.”

Well, that’s telling.

You don’t need John Curtice to translate that: the party’s filling its ranks with the clueless, the callous, and the casually racist.

 

And yet Reform’s poll numbers climb. Why?

Because nothing works in Britain anymore, and someone has to be blamed.

 

The Politics of Pint and Prejudice.

 

The audience — God bless their bar tabs — still believes the sun never set on the Empire. The French are frogs. The Italians are Mafia. Muslims are taking over Hull.

 

Meanwhile, in New York, a Muslim socialist wins a mayoral primary because the youth are broke and tired. They turn left.

In Britain, we lurch right.

Into Reform.

Into Braverman.

Into someone promising control when we’ve lost all grip.

 

The irony? Farage is entertainment.

The man is a cross between a darts commentator and an after-dinner speaker at a Basingstoke Rotary Club.

But in Britain — like Boris, like Trump — that’s now a qualification.

 

Starmer: PM by Stealth.

 

And here’s the kicker: Keir Starmer is already Prime Minister.

But does anyone notice?

 

He tiptoes through policy like a man trying not to wake a baby.

Wary of the tabloids. Haunted by Farage’s ghost.

He governs not like a leader but like a compliance officer.

And if that vacuum holds, Farage won’t need to win — he’ll simply pull the entire country into his orbit, dragging Parliament into the bad pub he calls a movement.

 

The Coming Apocalypse: Notes from the Field.

• Kent County Council now run by Reform. A £1.5bn budget. No experience. Promises written on the back of a Tesco receipt. A disaster in progress.

• Scotland’s Zarwar condemned not for policies but for being Pakistani.

• Southport riots.

• Hamilton by-election.

• Rotherham, Rochdale, Solihull.

The dog whistle’s gone digital. And Farage, Patel, Braverman and Badenoch are riding that algorithm straight into the bloodstream of the underinformed.

 

Britain is being sliced into them and us faster than you can say “broken levelling-up bollocks.”

And yet, Reform keeps winning.

Like Trump. Like MAGA.

With no policies, just vibes.

With no plans, just enemies.

 

Welcome back, Philip.

 

Here I am, a brown man who’s been British longer than Reform’s been Reform, back in the North on a wet Thursday, watching a country forget how to function — and cheer about it.

 

This isn’t politics. This is karaoke nationalism.

This is “All fur coat and no knickers” dressed up as vision.

 

Farage doesn’t want to be Prime Minister.

He wants to be famous.

He wants the ego rush without the spreadsheet.

But he just might win — or worse, shift everything — because he’s entertaining.

Because Britain is bored.

Because rage is easier than responsibility.

 

So what now?

 

Farage’s three paths, according to John Curtice:

• Win a majority (unlikely).

• Coalition with a dying Conservative Party (depressingly likely).

• Hung Parliament and deal-making (his true hunting ground).

 

But we have four years to go.

And the wheels may still come off.

 

And until then, I’ll be watching.

Every single day.

Because the next election won’t be about who governs Britain.

It’ll be about whether Britain even remembers how to govern at all.

 

🎵 Reform is always on my mind…

(A lost Andy Williams ballad re-recorded by Nigel at the Doncaster Conservative Club.)

 

Welcome to Broken Britain.

Pass the Campari.

Society