Nigel Farage is borderline delusional

The last possible date for the next general election is exactly four years away – Thursday, August 15, 2029, to be exact. But that doesn’t stop it feeling like Nigel Farage is already prime minister.

Migrant boat arrival numbers lead the morning bulletins; migrant hotel protests (led in some cases by incognito Reform councillors and candidates) make the evening news. The party’s spurious crime statistics and uncosted policy launches eat up considerable air time, as do the deep thoughts of Andrea Jenkyns and Sarah Pochin. Now police have been told to release the ethnicity and nationality data of suspects charged in high-profile cases – a policy precisely no-one in Britain was demanding before Reform made it a hobby horse.

There is one more sign that Farage is already running the country. He is being given free rein to talk nonsense by the Mail newspaper group, which has not supported a politician as slavishly since it backed Lettuce Liz Truss (“Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Woman”, “At Last! A True Tory Budget”).

Last weekend, the Mail on Sunday found Farage weighing in on what the paper called “tough new checks for UK citizens travelling to the EU” in the shape of its entry-exit system (EES). From October 12, all non-EU travellers will have to have their fingerprints and a photograph taken the first time they travel into the EU. They may also be asked for evidence of where they are staying and of a return ticket back out of the bloc.

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These sound exactly the sort of checks a politician who is tough on visitors overstaying their welcome – like, say, Nigel Farage – might support. And indeed they sound awfully like the checks faced by frequent visitors to the USA – like, say, Nigel Farage.

But because Farage is a monstrous hypocrite, he told the MoS that the plans were outrageous, insisting that Keir Starmer “needs to stand up and say ‘this is completely over the top’. How on earth we managed to negotiate a deal as bad as this, I do not know… once again, Starmer has gaslit the public.”

And because Farage is a habitual liar, he also told the paper, “For all the travellers who go to France, to have to prove medical insurance will be a very lengthy process”. No such requirement exists in the EU’s plans, but that won’t stop Nigel being appalled by it.

Yet because the MoS wants to see this performative rage machine elected, they didn’t bother to point out the problems with any of the above – or indeed the blindingly obvious fact that none of the “completely over the top” checks would be necessary for British travellers in the first place had we not taken the advice of Nigel Farage and left the European Union.

If it’s like this now, imagine how supine they will be when they get their wish and it finally is Farage in charge…