Nigel Farage is turning into Donald Trump, and not just in his attitude to Russia.
Before the Channel 4 News thunderbolt about bad behaviour by some of the party’s activists in Clacton, the Reform leader took himself to Sunderland for a lunchtime rally that owed plenty to his patron, the US presidential candidate.
We had rooty-tooty music, fireworks to celebrate his entrance and self-acclaim by the bucket-load. Mr Farage has become a not unboastful Bertie.
The complexion is that of Chivers marmalade. He sashayed around the stage and spoke in headlines that blew out of one side of his mouth, a little like Buddy Hackett. He derided Sir Keir Starmer as a dozy fool in much the way that Mr Trump speaks of Joe Biden.
Regarding the Conservatives, he wondered if he should instead refer to them as an international betting consortium.
Without Boris (who looks to have been comprehensively usurped by Nigel), there hasn’t been much humour in this election, but Reform grasps the political value of not taking yourself too seriously.
The only problem: this new, Americanised Farage beats his chest so much that it tastes like vanity. It was a job getting him off the stage at the end, so much was he loving the applause.
Maybe voters are so stultified by the other candidates that they will put up with some trans-Atlantic swagger. To convey a presidential message you need clarity and chutzpah.
Purists will quibble: ‘But this is a parliamentary election, not a presidential one.’ Reform voters do not necessarily see it like that.
The event began with two of Reform’s candidates in the English North-East. They were a lot sparkier than some of the idiots the party has chosen in other seats. Lynn Murphy, Reform’s hope in Easington, Co Durham, was a clear‑voiced communicator who was politicised by the Covid lockdowns. ‘Experts with graphs and figures’ had caused wreckage to people’s lives. She had initially thought ‘them people in suits know what they’re doing’, but ‘then I realised anyone can buy a suit’.
Ms Murphy added: ‘We used to be a nation of people who’d take the bull by the horns in a crisis. Now it’s, ‘I can’t cope any more’. This is not good enough.’
She was followed by Paul Donaghy, Reform’s runner in Washington and Gateshead South, which he described as ‘one of 18 seats we are predicted to take from Labour’.
Knocking on doorsteps these sunny weeks had left Mr Donaghy looking distinctly tomato-ish. Not much of a man for factor 15, I’d wager. ‘Every Labour MP has done everything they could to stop Brexit,’ he told the crowd of 1,000 at the Rainton Arena. ‘We will not forget, and you will pay for it with your seats.’
Enter Moses. That is, Mr Farage. The place went nuts, and he almost rubbed himself against the wall of applause. As he clasped his hands to the microphone and closed his eyes it was like watching a US telly evangelist extract big bucks from the faithful.
One of his stories involved a benefits claimant going to the doctor and saying: ‘Hi, doc.’ Then there was a ‘let me tell ya’ and ‘I tell ya what’. Urging greater use of stop-and-search powers, he said the phrase three times. Trump does that when emphasising a point. He pulled comic faces and fluttered his eyelashes with a milkmaid’s modesty when he noted that Sir Keir Starmer still couldn’t say if a woman had a penis or not.
After affectionate detailing of his life story and the sums of money he has made recently, he told the 1,000 worshippers: ‘I’ve just given it all up to lead you.’ Did they recoil at being patronised? Not at all. Seemed delighted by the idea.
But as with Donald, the hide is thin. He complained that on foreign policy he had been traduced terribly in recent days. He claimed he had been a far-seeing prophet on Libya and Iraq and much else. But the words ‘Ukraine’ and ‘Putin’ did not cross his lips.
Sore points?