Who is the most consequential British politician of our age? It is surely Nigel Farage.
Without his tireless campaigning there would have been no Brexit referendum. As leader of Reform UK, he’s now threatening to overturn the two-party system that has held sway for a century.
You may love Nigel Farage. You may dislike him. You may be unsure. But any fair-minded person would have to concede that he is a major figure who should not be ignored.
Why, then, is the BBC doing precisely that? Unlike Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, he hasn’t been asked to appear on Radio 4’s prestigious Desert Island Discs. He has of course been a prominent national politician for far longer than either of them.
According to a new biography of Farage by the Tory peer Michael Ashcroft, he has never been invited on the show because his presence would make woke Corporation staff feel ‘unsafe’. Producers are also said to fear a backlash from potential guests, who might boycott it.
So Farage has been ‘no‑platformed’ by a programme which famously brings out the human side of its subjects, though of course he has appeared on numerous confrontational political shows.
The BBC, which as our public service broadcaster is supposed to be even-handed, denies having excluded him, and claims it ‘would be happy to revisit [Farage’s] interest for a future series’. But the lack of any invitation over many years can’t be gainsaid.
It’s striking, too, that although Desert Island Discs can’t find room for Farage it has welcomed hard-Left figures such as militant trade union leader Arthur Scargill and former Labour Cabinet minister Tony Benn.
Any fair-minded person would have to concede that Nigel Farage is a major figure who should not be ignored, writes Stephen Glover
Desert Island Discs is something of a niche programme, and some people may therefore think that the BBC’s refusal to host Farage is no big deal. But it is symptomatic of a wider, anti-democratic prejudice.Â
For much of the time Auntie does her best to pretend that Farage – who leads a party consistently ahead in the polls – doesn’t exist. When he and his colleagues are interviewed, they are often treated as virtual criminals. So-called comedy programmes, such as Radio 4’s The News Quiz, routinely demonise Reform.
The offence is not so much against Nigel Farage personally as against the millions of people who have voted for Reform since 2024, and the millions more who will do so in the next General Election.
For the metropolitan, Left-leaning chattering classes who dominate the BBC from top to bottom, Farage is the ultimate bogeyman, while Reform voters are at best misguided, at worst unspeakable.
Please note that I don’t write as any kind of cheerleader for Reform. The BBC and others have every right to interrogate Farage over such issues as his close relationship with Donald Trump and his acceptance of a £5million gift (still not adequately explained, to my mind) from billionaire Christopher Harborne.
What is objectionable is to treat the leader of Reform and his party as though they are in a special category of their own, which in the BBC’s warped opinion places them further beyond the pale than representatives of the hard-Left.
This viewpoint is not confined to Broadcasting House. Far from it. If Reform should form a government after the next election, Farage will be treated as a pariah by several institutions of the State, as well as by other bodies.
People assert that Britain is ‘ungovernable’ at present. It’s not true. But enemies of democracy will do their utmost to make it the case if Reform wins the election.
In the first instance, it will be said on the Left that Reform ‘doesn’t have a mandate’ to govern, though such people have been happy for Labour to rule with a huge majority having gained only 33.7 per cent of the vote in the 2024 ‘loveless landslide’.
Then the civil service will try to thwart Reform at every turn, leaking stories of ministers’ bad behaviour to friends in the media, and very possibly refusing to carry out ministerial instructions.
The Public and Commercial Services Union – the largest in Whitehall – has recently had the temerity to debate a motion ‘to counter a hostile Reform government’ with ‘sustained industrial action’.
It won’t only be civil servants who will go on strike. Teaching unions, resident doctors and others will try to bring down a Reform government. It has happened before.
In 1974, militant mining unions brought down Ted Heath’s Conservative administration. A decade later, the miners, led by the aforementioned Arthur Scargill – the honoured guest of Desert Island Discs – tried to do the same to Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government. Mercifully, they failed.
Admittedly, the unions are less powerful than 40 or 50 years ago when they had many more members. But their continuing ability to cause havoc has been demonstrated by resident doctors in a succession of strikes.
It won’t end there. If Reform keeps its promise to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights (a policy also favoured by Kemi Badenoch), there will be legal challenges that could conceivably involve the Supreme Court.
One way or another, the ‘Blob’ – the reactionary forces of the Left with their vested interests and extreme policies often clothed in apparent moderation – will attempt to frustrate and subvert a Reform government.
Of course, the party has already worked this out, which is why Danny Kruger (a civilised former Tory MP who defected to Reform) has been put in charge of preparing for government by Nigel Farage.
He has recently proposed civil service reform that includes abolishing the Cabinet Office with its 11,000 staff, and making it easier for ministers to sack underperforming senior civil servants.
I am sure that Farage, Kruger and the rest of them are only too aware of future storms, and of the concentrated attempts at destabilisation that they will face, if Reform should govern after the next election, with or without the Tories.
We can also be certain the BBC is another British institution which will try to undermine a Reform government, though obviously much more subtly than the trade unions.
Farage has complained about the Corporation’s ‘Leftist bias’. He has also declared that ‘its overhaul is long overdue’ while insisting that Reform wouldn’t ‘abolish the BBC in its entirety’. A bloody battle seems inevitable.
All this might happen sooner than we think since Andy Burnham is reportedly contemplating calling an early election if he becomes Prime Minister in order to obtain a mandate. He hopes for a speedy ‘election bounce’ before voters quickly tire of him, which they assuredly will.
Polls differ as to whether Reform or Labour would emerge victorious from a snap election. I suspect Burnham might get cold feet and try to soldier on for two or three more years, ending in inevitable defeat.
It may be soon, or it may be later, but the emergence of Reform as the ruling party remains a very strong possibility. I fear we would then experience great instability as the Left in all its guises flouted democratic principles.
So, yes, Desert Island Discs is a niche programme of which much of the population is unaware. But in its attempt to sideline Nigel Farage – to treat him as though he is both unacceptable and unrepresentative – the BBC has given us a foretaste of the bitter struggles that lie ahead.
