No, Nigel Farage. The political establishment is not out to get you

Thank you for subscribing!

The Clacton MP is trying to portray Reform UK as the plucky underdog fighting off wolves, writes GB News columnist Nigel Nelson

Psychologists have a theory paranoia is a defence mechanism against the despair of loneliness. Better to imagine someone wishes you harm than to know no one gives a fig about you.

Being hated means that at least you are someone's radar. There are people who are consoled by the fiction MI6 is steaming open their mail and bugging their phone.

The secret service would hardly go to all that trouble unless you mattered to them. As Oscar Wilde once said: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.”

Perhaps the playwright missed his vocation as a psychoanalyst. Nigel Farage thinks the establishment has got it in for him.

That is not paranoia. Labour, the Tories, Lib Dems and Greens (along with Channel 4, the Daily Mirror and Guardian) really are out to get him.

But this is not part of an establishment plot: Reform UK is itself part of the establishment. It is just politics.

Mr Farage may like to portray Reform UK as the plucky underdog fighting off establishment wolves. But other parties and mainstream media would not bother if Reform UK was not riding so high in the polls.

How much longer, I wonder? Die-hard Reform UK supporters are undisturbed about the Dispatches sting or Mr Farage’s still somewhat mysterious £5million gift from a crypto billionaire.

But if the stories alleging dodgy funding keep mounting up, they will lodge in wavering voters’ minds – the ones Reform UK will need to win a general election and form a government. Voters may not be across the nitty-gritty of the claims, but questions over the way Reform UK handles its own money will lead them to ask whether the party is up to managing theirs.

My greater concern is Reform UK's apparently cavalier disregard for checks and balances. Mr Farage suggests Whitehall officials and judges who do not go along with what Reform UK wants will be replaced by those who will.

Every government makes mistakes, which is where civil servants and judges come in. The civil service provides behind-the-scenes advice and expertise and judges a verdict on bad behaviour.

Parliament always has the final say and can overrule them, but that does not mean filling their ranks with yes men and women. So as last week ended and this one began, the political landscape looked a bit unsettling.

International events did not help. Argentina is threatening the Falklands, and should they invade again, there must be concerns over whether the 11 frigates and destroyers we have now compared to 55 in 1982 would be enough to chuck them out. Meanwhile, Nato leaders chirp on about Russia likely to attack us by 2030.

And then Alternative for Germany wins Saxony-Anhalt in regional elections. AfD is a rum lot which backs Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, yet it is leading national opinion polls in Germany.

Even Mr Farage admits they are “a very mixed bag” and keeps his distance while French National Rally leader Marine le Pen hooves them out of her European Parliament group for being too radical.

I was talking in the Commons to a shadow Cabinet minister about the volatility of UK politics and the frightening developments elsewhere in the world. Neither of us could remember quite such a weird time.

Her extra worries on top of my existing ones made me worry even more.