Politics: nibbling at the edges

By Richard North - February 1, 2026

Although I detest the celebrity cult with a passion, even I have to take some notice when the likes of Jeremy Clarkson reaches out to dump on Farage.

With the heading of his weekly column in The Sun reading “Do you know what Reform’s policies are? Neither do I… So here’s why voting for Farage won’t solve any of your problems”, he tells us “I’ve got my crystal ball out and here’s what it’s telling me: If and when Reform win the next general election, the army of people who voted for them are going to end up sorely disappointed”.

The refrain is not at all unfamiliar to readers here as Clarkson observes: “You’re not voting Reform because you like the sound of their economic policies. You don’t know what their economic policies are. No one does”, adding that: “it’s the same story with their policies on transport, agriculture, education, potholes, health and smoking in pubs”.

“You know what Nigel Farage thinks about China?”, he asks rhetorically, adding the obligatory: “Me neither” before going on to say: “All they’ve told us is that they’re going to do something about immigration, and for a huge number of people, that’s enough”.

Here, I think that Clarkson is behind the curve because there are a lot of people waking up to the idea that Farage – even if he does get into No 10 – is unlikely to do anything serious about this problem but, just supposing he intended to, Clarkson puts the obvious question: “but what exactly is Farage planning on doing about it”?

Behind that question lurks the shadow of events on the other side of the Atlantic as Clarkson posits that the response might be: “Sending a squad of policemen into immigrant-rich areas with orders to stop and question anyone with a brown face”.

The elicits the scornful response of “Yeah, right”, as he ventures: “They’re trying that in Minnesota and from what I hear, it’s not going too well”. The lessons have registered even with this TV personality.

Actually, to be fair (if one must), Reform did produce a plan for deporting illegal migrants back in August 2025. It was markedly deficient then and more so now for want of updating to take account of the Minnesota experience. Pete is less than complimentary.

Yet, all of a sudden, a lot of people are writing about this issue – largely under the radar because the legacy media doesn’t do serious stuff like this, and especially when they have a million Epstein files to play with.

One such is J’accuse, a well-known Substack blogger in his own field. He muses on the obvious, that mass deportations mean the arrest of thousands of people, their detention by the state and the treatment of any resistance to this as criminal activity.

For this, he deduces that the British Right will have much less appetite for mass deportations when they happen here. The moment a middle-aged Antifa lady is bopped over the head with a police truncheon, you can expect howling denunciation from the Right-Wing papers as well as the BBC and Guardian.

The BBC is milking it for all it’s worth in the United States, currently churning out a sob story about the effects of ICE activity in Chicago, so it takes little to imagine how the broadcaster might respond to similar activity on its doorstep.

Says J’accuse, “Every aesthetic choice made by British Conservatism over the past 50 years inclines them to take a ‘principled stand’ against ‘tyranny’ while defending the hallucinated ‘middle ground’ of ‘restricting immigration’”.

Farage and his cabinet (should he ever get to government) will likely try to remain firm but they will be bombarded with “polls” from Mr Tryll and likely byelection defeats as Shire Tories let their snob gene kick in and opt for “decency”. Unsurprisingly, the writer is “deeply pessimistic” as to how well this persuasive offensive can be resisted.

The one thing about which J’accuse argues though is the idea that there will be much overt resistance from the Muslim communities. Pete disagrees (and so do I), relying on the Harehills experience where the police were chased off.

You would see, he says, similar ethnic solidarity in places like Savile Town in Dewsbury, and very possibly see whole streets barricaded off. That then the police to either turn up in overwhelming force, or back off. And I think we can guess what “community aware” police commanders would choose. They will not choose to put their delicate little flowers in harm’s way.

The UK Muslim population would than weave it all into the victimhood narrative, and since they control the northern councils, they can very rapidly create complications.

Addressing the Muslim issue might reinforce the favourability of deportations amongst white working class population, but then you’d start seeing ethnic communities linking up with other minorities to wield power on the local level – and making it a no-go zone for the police – basically making it so the police cannot operate without Belfast-style police hardware. This would bring us into low-level civil war territory.

All of this adds to an increasing level of uncertainty and even unease about Farage, not helped by stories such as this which harps back to my report a few days ago, which highlighted his presence at the Davos bash last month, sponsored by an Iranian billionaire, Sasan Ghandehari.

It now turns out that £200,000 of donations to Reform circumstantially linked to this source come from a tiny firm which just happens to be a client of the Ghandehari, leading to suspicions that the owner, John Richard Simpson is simply laundering funds so that a donation from an offshore donor (which is not permitted) can be paid via his UK firm (which is permitted).

Technically, this may be above board but – as with so many of Farage’s dealings – it leaves a nasty smell of something not quite right as he once again steers too close to the edge.

Right now, Farage should be on a high, as he enters into the contest for the Gorton and Denton by-election. Even the criticism that his candidate, Matt Goodwin, over-claiming on his local connections, rebounded as Starmer has declared the by-election is a vote on “true patriotism” while his party has picked for its candidate Angeliki Stogia, a first-generation Greek immigrant.

Casting a cloud over Farage’s ambitions is the decision by Ben Habib’s rival Advance UK party to field locally-based Nick Buckley as a candidate, potentially creaming off enough votes from Reform to rob it of a victory in what could be a very tight race, where the infamous Rod Liddle thinks the Greens are the favourites.

This points to yet another of Farage’s failings: Habib was a good and faithful servant of Reform before he was unceremoniously ousted from his position as deputy chairman in a party reorganisation which had Richard Tice take his position.

Farage may think he can walk on water, but there are only so many times you can tempt fate before there is a price to pay. The voices from the Left may be discordant and largely ineffectual for the moment, but when his extreme critics are making the same noises as Jeremy Clarkson, we could be looking at a shift in the political tectonic plates.

Should Reform actually make it to government and fail to deliver, Clarkson argues that the electorate will say that they’ve tried the Tories and they’ve tried Labour and they’ve tried Reform and that nothing ever changes.

When you’re out of reasonable options, that’s when people start going for options that aren’t reasonable at all, he says, and that’s when you end up with an orange man at the helm.

Before we get there, though, I think reality will bite. It’s already nibbling at the edges.