I’m an independent investigative reporter focused on exposing the populist elite – in particular Farage and Reform.
There are thousands of people signed up for updates. I hope you’ll consider joining. It’s free!
There are plenty of similarities between Nigel Farage, self-appointed “leader of the opposition”, and our venerable former prime minister Boris Johnson.
For starters, they are both smug, self-important, and immensely privileged.
We all know their backgrounds. Johnson studied at Eton before entering his natural habitat: the hedonism and debauchery of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford.
Farage for his part didn’t go to university, but his education took place in the grand halls and on the long laws of Dulwich College in south London, while his debauchery manifested in the form of long boozy lunches in the City of London when he became a metals trader.
“I’ve been really impressed by Sam’s work – persistently finding story after story exposing wrongdoing and hypocrisy at the highest level. A name to watch!”
– Carole Cadwalladr
They are also both deeply unserious politicians, in many ways perfectly adapted to our fact-free age. Westminster hacks treat politics as a personality contest. The right to govern has been turned into a sport based on news value rather than competence. In this context, Johnson and Farage are both primed to succeed.
And, despite being drawn from the belly of the elite, they have both somehow managed to convince journalists, and a decent chunk of the electorate, that they are outsiders taking on ‘the establishment’.
I discuss this phenomenon at greater length in Bullingdon Club Britain, but essentially I think Johnson and Farage believe they have an inherent right to rule, or at least to be heard. Their privilege has bestowed them with the arrogance to believe they will always be listened to, regardless of how offensive or wrong they are.
A working class person, or someone from an equally disadvantaged background, knows they have a small margin of error in any profession, and especially in Westminster. If they put a foot wrong, their chances of success could evaporate. This creates politicians in the mould of Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, and Gordon Brown: stiff, fearful, and careful. They can never be renegades when they are the bureaucracy in human form.
By contrast, Johnson and Farage can career wildly across the highway of British politics – causing endless pile-ups while the media gleefully records the wreckage. Liberated from the consequences of their own actions, they can speak honestly without fear of repercussion. They have a free-wheeling, maverick spirit that matches the public’s desire for a wrecking ball to bulldoze the political status quo.
However, from where I’m sitting, it seems inevitable that Farage will suffer the same fate as Johnson. They are beneficiaries of false advertising, who eventually become its victim.
That is because they eventually have to deliver on their populist promises. And while they’re willing to turn on their chameleon charm prior to entering office – happy to play the role of anti-establishment antagonist – their natural instincts take over in the corridors of power.
Johnson’s man-of-the-people mirage vanished quickly during the pandemic. As I and others exposed, his ministers handed out billions in public contracts to their friends and donors – deploying the old school tie elitism that characterised Johnson’s formative years.
“One rule for them, another for us” came to be the trademark of the Johnson years, as the former prime minister stubbornly refused to accept that he had done anything wrong in failing to police rolling COVID parties on Downing Street premises.
Johnson’s actions finally caught up with him.
The same will be true of Farage. As I wrote yesterday, he has little-to-no regard for probity or transparency. He is proudly funded by oligarchs, tax dodgers, and oil executives – and god knows what he’s promised them in return for their patronage.
There’s a good chance that a Farage-led administration – whether on a national, regional or local level – will be even more embroiled by corruption and scandal than Johnson’s rotten tenure.
And while Johnson tried (to the best of his limited ability) to enact some popular economic policies, Farage seems determined to pursue his extreme libertarian agenda to the bitter end.
For all of its flaws, Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ mission at least put the idea of regional inequality on the political agenda. We may end up craving the return of even this meagre political offering, when Farage takes his chainsaw to already-depleted local council budgets.
Johnson and Farage are cut from the same cloth. And, if Farage eventually wins meaningful political power, he will likely suffer the same fate.
Five reasons to subscribe
Exposing Farage
My work focuses on exposing the rich and powerful – namely, how they are trying to impose their narrow-minded mindset on the UK: demonising immigrants, fawning over Trump, and paving the way for a second era of austerity. I specialise in exposing their donors, their networks, and their ideologies.
Investigative experience
I’ve written for the New York Times, The Guardian, the BBC, The Mirror, Led By Donkeys, and a host of other outlets. I was the first journalist to reveal that Michelle Mone’s company, PPE Medpro, had been handed £122 million in Covid contracts.
I know how to root-out stories and find the facts. That means you will be receiving key investigations and insights before anyone else.
Uncovering what others won’t
A few notable exceptions aside, the legacy media isn’t willing or able to investigate the rich and powerful. Their obsession with “balance” over truth has led them to platform the very people to blame for our current mess.
It’s free
It’s completely free to join my Substack. The overwhelming majority of my articles are free to read, and always will be. If you want to support my work or access paywalled articles, that’s a massive help, but it’s by no means obligatory. You’re also welcome to unsubscribe at any time.
No spam
I publish articles a couple of times a week – meaning your inbox won’t be overwhelmed.
❗ Bonus benefit
You’ll be joining a community of thousands already subscribed.
“I have drawn heavily on his tireless work.”
– James O’Brien
Great piece - it’s just so depressing that these unfunny clowns have the bandwidth and sway to get a hearing of any sort.
I am sure you're right, but the problem is: what damage will he do before we get there? Not only to the instruments of state which do their best to provide for the masses and "ordinary people", but also to the conversations and narratives of modern life.
See the Brexit campaign, and the 2019 Johnson campaign, and the Johnson behaviour. Truth and honesty immediately fly out of the window, to be replaced by entertaining narratives and fodder for the rolling news and social media accounts.
I believe this explains some of the publicity surrounding Starmer. Without the 'crash-a-minute' 'every-day-a-photo-op' of Johnson, rolling news outlets and "political commentators" and social media political influencers are starved of content. The commentariat are desperate to fill their timelines and schedules. The whole industry of modern political commentary, created before Brexit, is starved of content. Well-fed and watered political vultures will find themselves out of an audience, and out of a job. Even poor old Darren Grimes has had to get a 'job' as a councillor.
I see Sky News immediately switching to coverage across the pond every time Trump opens his lying, fat gob. So not only do they have live coverage, they have internal discussions with their "editors" and "correspondents" and "analysts", but then they have their lineup of political commentators to prompt further discussion. And then to an ad break.