A guide to speaking like a Reform UK supporter

 Once you follow the utterances of Farage and his fellow Reform politicians, you realise two things. First, his political language and ideas are lifted directly from those of Donald Trump with hardly any adaptation for British circumstances. So Reform speak enthusiastically about abolishing what they call ‘DEI hires’, although DEI is a term used in the USA that has no meaning in UK law. They also propose to implement a ‘DOGE Team’ (named after the US department briefly headed by Elon Musk) to reduce expenditure in the local authorities they control, although almost all this is determined by statutory obligations. Farage’s most recent statements on ‘law and order’ go even further down this road, with pledges to send criminals to El Salvador (the destination chosen by Trump for deportees from the USA), and to loosen gun controls. 

The second striking feature of Reform politicians is that, like Trump, they have changed the meaning of words with the aim of making racism acceptable. So here is a guide to two revised definitions:
▸    Immigrant. This word traditionally means a person who comes to a country to become one of its residents. But the revised Trump/Reform meaning is ‘a dark-skinned person, irrespective of their place of birth’. A corollary of this definition is that white people are never defined as immigrants. This redefinition provides a means of bypassing legal prohibitions on racist language. So when Trump accuses ‘immigrants’ of being genetically violent, he does not include the white South Africans he welcomed to the USA, nor of course his own mother and grandfather. Instead, he means blacks, browns and even first nation Americans. He believes all should be deported whether or not they are US citizens because he believes the USA is a country for white people, to be run by white men. 

▸    Free speech. Legal restrictions on using racist language are keenly resented by Reform and the rest of the far right, who look back with nostalgia on the days when they were able to use derogatory racist epithets in everyday speech. They therefore demand ‘free speech’, which for them would restore the days when they could use the might of the media to smear and bully ethic minorities, women, gays, or whichever of ther many groups they feel contempt for. ‘Free speech’ in this sense does not apply to their opponents. In the USA, critics of Trump are threatened with costly legal action and an army of lawyers. Farage expresses outrage that by opposing legislation to protect children using on online media places him on the side of sexual abusers like Jimmy Savile.

This way of speaking, for all its absurdities, convinces a great many people. It taps the basic tribal fear of the other, of people unlike ourselves, who the fearful believe threaten our lives, our children and our identity. By stoking this fear, unscrupulous politicians are able to rob and cheat the public, and be free to carry out the many crimes of which they accuse the immigrants.