Patronising callousness in store for the nation if it votes for Farage and Reform - Yorkshire Post Letters

George Orwell's novel '1984' must be Nigel Farage's favourite book. Nigel has just informed us that the £5m he received from Chris Harbourne, the crypto billionaire who lives in Thailand, partly to avoid UK taxes, was a "reward for 27 years campaigning for Brexit".

Dictionary definitions of "reward" include the point that it's "merited for good behavior".

Results of Nigel's good behaviour? Brexit means that by 2024 annual income per head was down by £850 and exports by 9 per cent. By 2025 UK GDP was down by 6-8 per cent and business investment was 12-18 per cent lower (stats from NBER).

Nigel glorified his ‘success’ in ending our contributions to the EU and piggy-backed on the lie that we would get £350m back per week to spend on the NHS but hid our obligation to pay for breaking our agreements with the EU. Has anyone seen the NHS money?

So ‘good behaviour’ now means deep financial wounds for families and the nation. George Orwell wrote about ‘Newspeak’ language designed to reverse its former meaning: Nigel excels here.

What about the £5m he received in early 2024? As it came less than 12 months before he stood as an MP he should have declared it to the Parliamentary authority. But as he is a celebrity one of his principles is ‘get me out of this’.

He initially promised us that the money was for personal protection, not a reward. Imagine the scabrous criticism Reform would pile on other politicians who weren't honest about the reasons for a £5m personal gift.

His twists and turns become too numerous to count. Another principle he repeats is "I cannot be bought by anyone". How come just after investing £215,000 in a crypto currency deal ("earning good money" he says) he told the crypto industry that he would be "your champion" arguing repeatedly that bitcoins should be deregulated and used to pay tax bills.

And the crypto company he chose is run by Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor who wrote Liz Truss' infamous budget - so bad that it ended her Premiership after 49 days.

And if we judge a man by the company he keeps we mustn't forget Nigel's former Reform boss in Wales, Nathan Gill (said by Farage to be "honest and loyal") recently imprisoned for 10 years for bribery.

We are constantly told that Reform is the party for ordinary people and yet 75 per cent of its donations in 2025 came from just three people, all multimillionaires.

The Electoral Commission tells us that the total Reform received was twice Tory receipts and nearly four times Labour's receipts. One donor was Richard Tice, Nigel's deputy, who recently praised Reform's backers and MPs saying that "as businessmen they knew how to run things including a future government" and in their previous careers "their first duty had been to make money for their shareholders". Three of Nigel's 'frontbench' in Parliament made their money mainly from dealing in luxury property.

What might be the political inspiration for such businessmen? Are they seriously motivated to make tolerable the lives of the 6.8m Brits trapped in very deep poverty? Is it too cynical to expect that those with such wealth are looking, like their leader, to use politics to get the reward of even more wealth?

And with another single phrase Tice indicated the gross conceit lying at the heart of Reform's attitudes. He insulted Wes Streeting, who had begun to turn the NHS around, as "that poor little chap". What language do they use about the rest of us? Patronising callousness will be the reward the nation receives should we be so thoughtless as to vote for a Farage government.