Good morning,
In 2016, British people voted to leave the EU, and in 2029, they are preparing to leave the civilised world by voting for Nigel Farage and his one-man cult, Reform.
Recent polls show a massive surge in the popularity of the Reform party, an equally massive drop in support for the incumbent and centre-left Labour, while leaving the Liberal Democrats and the centre-right Conservatives in distant third and fourth place. Four years is ages in politics - but snap elections could come much faster, if the ruling party loses all confidence.
I grew up in the UK and still have relatives and dear friends there. But some of them have begun parroting Reform's racist and pro-Russian talking points, which they get from watching far-right media, such as GB News, or far-right channels and influencers on YouTube or X. It makes me sad.
"British values" and the "British way of life" are under threat from migrants, they say - but they can't articulate what those values or that way of life is. "Why should we pay higher taxes or risk a war with Russia to save Ukraine, which is maybe Russian anyway, wherever it is?", they also say.
So, let's take a look at Farage's CV: he's openly racist; he's economically illiterate; he admires Russian president Vladimir Putin; he used to be paid by Russia to appear on its (now EU-blacklisted) RT propaganda channel; and his only 'achievement' is helping push through the Brexit vote - the worst act of self-mutilation by the UK in my lifetime.
It all makes me even more sad, because the EU and the free world need Britain and its marvellous army more than ever to defeat the forces of darkness, circling us like sharks in a pond.
And so, the UK appears to be a society in decline. It has some of the world's best scientists, artists, universities, and companies, but also far too many ignorant, lazy people, who seem to have learned nothing at school, and who read nothing serious in their adulthood, while spending hours each night licking up the populist drivel on their social-media feeds.
The Britain I moved to in 1983 welcomed my family. People loved our story of fleeing communism for a better life. My dad got a good job and we had many friends. But now, when I visit my sister in the UK, taxi drivers snarl around the corners of their mouths and give me crooked, sideways glances when they ask where I'm from. I wouldn't move back.
And I don't have a solution, because it's too late to put the toothpaste of far-right populism back in the tube. It's equally impossible to censor public discourse without violating democratic norms.
It would also be undemocratic and illegal for Britain's intelligence services to dig up dirt on Farage, because that would be interfering in domestic politics.
But in France, when the far-right Marine Le Pen was preparing to fight the 2017 presidential elections, someone gave French news outlet Mediapart a dossier on her party's clandestine Kremlin loans and she subsequently lost.
I don't know or care if it was French intelligence, Estonian, or American - French voters deserved to know who she really is.
And if Farage has skeletons in his closet, I hope someone somewhere is doing their best to get them out in the open. British people deserve to know too. Reform is a one-man party. It stands or falls with Farage, so the best way to stop it is to disgrace him, because even British xenophobes wouldn't vote for a traitor or a crook, would they?
- Andrew Rettman, foreign-affairs editor
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