Farage steals a slogan from the Lib Dems

Nigel Farage has previously spoken about learning from the Liberal Democrats – at least when it comes to building an election-winning machine. But is he now stealing their discarded slogans?

At his conference last year, the Reform leader said his party had “to model ourselves on the Liberal Democrats”, pointing to how Ed Davey’s party “build branches, the Liberal Democrats win seats at district, county and unitary levels”. The Lib Dems, he said, “put literature and leaflets through doors repeatedly in their target areas”.

Yet now Farage is going a step further, with The Times reporting todaay that he will use a speech on Monday to pitch himself as the champion of “the people who set their alarm clocks in the morning”.

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Rats in a Sack

Lib Dem advisers and press officers of a certain vintage still shudder of the time in 2011 when then leader Nick Clegg decided that his was the party of “Alarm Clock Britain”. In a cringeworthy article written for The Sun of all places, the then deputy prime minister said that ordinary, willing folk were “dubbed Alarm Clock Britain because they snub the benefits culture and get up early to go to work”, despite literally nobody having ever used the phrase before.

“This government is formed by a coalition of two parties and we want to join the people of Alarm Clock Britain in another coalition,” he wrote.

“Basically, Alarm Clock Britain consists of people who use alarm clocks,” wrote Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, then a columnist for the Guardian, noting that Clegg was “currently Britain’s 7,358th most popular public figure, sandwiched between Maxine Carr and the Go Compare tenor”.

For years afterwards, “Alarm Clock Britain” was whispered in Lib Dem press office meetings whenever anyone suggested another daft slogan. Will Farage have more joy?