Dr Catherine Preston

Farage on Gill and Pro Russian media bribes” I told him not to go. He defied me and went. I was completely unaware of any statements that he made."

Farage with pro Russian media (and wife of briber) on the day Gill made his statements in 2018

SHOCK POLL: NIGEL FARAGE WILL BE PM TOMORROW IN an amazing poll conducted by The Pointless Polling Company, it was revealed that voters' intentions may well change over the next three and a half years and at present it's 100 percent impossible to guess what the next government might look like. However, 99 percent of journalists agree that it would be much more fun if we had an election tomorrow and everybody resigned and everything was chaos and Farage had a go at being PM, just for the hell of it, because it was so much fun when Brexit happened and then the government kept falling every five minutes and we could write endless pieces about (cont. p94)

Private Eye offers up an excellently scornful commentary on the relentless polling. It’s become ridiculous and has oversimplified our politics to dangerous levels of stupid and irresponsible.

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

Dad’s books are full of empathy, common sense, and a healthy suspicion of the powerful. But at its heart his work is also about how systems keep people poor while pretending it’s their own fault. So I hope Kemi’s taking notes as well as reading the jokes.

It’s my turn.

OK, let's take this seriously. I had an odd half an hour and via Apple Books had a quick look at the three claims I knew most about - two re the post-Brexit bilateral preferential trade agreements replicated from the EU versions and one about cheaper bananas. All are wrong or wildly implausible. 1/n

As someone who grew up in the kind of Evangelical Christianity that has spawned this, I totally agree.

The facts of cases involving ice are more and more horrifying. What happens when you hire barely trained people and provide incentives for cruelty plus try to limit the application of law.
Is this really what the Tories want?

Here is a pic of former Reform leader in Wales Nathan Gill, who has admitted taking Russian bribes between December, 2018 and July, 2019.

He is alongside the current Reform candidate for Caerphilly Llyr Powell at the EU election count in May 2019.

(Copyright: Matthew Horwood)

1/2

This.
Is.
Brilliant.

It was the founder of the Jesuits, St Ignatius of Loyola, who is supposed to have said: "Give me a child until he is seven years old and I will show you the man." Those words might have inspired the guiding principle of hostile state propaganda: give me control over the perceptions of foreign leaders and I will decide their policies. Now that Nigel Farage is a potential prime minister, his views on international crises suddenly matter a great deal; one day British foreign policy might flow from them. Russia will always strive to manipulate outside perceptions by devising elaborate stories to justify Vladimir Putin's aggression. And the problem is that Farage has a long record of falling for even the most inventive of Kremlin cock-and-bull tales. Alas he is not alone. It has emerged that one of Farage's supporters profited by faithfully reciting Russia's absurdities. Nathan Gill spent nearly six years in the European Parliament as a member of Ukip and then the Brexit party, before serving briefly as leader of Reform UK in Wales until 2021. Last week, Gill pleaded guilty to having accepted bribes in exchange for making statements that were useful to Russia. In 2019, the record shows that Gill rose in the European Parliament to accuse Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky of the "repression of freedom" in Ukraine. There is no suggestion that Farage knew that Gill was taking bribes or had any connection with this case. There is also no sign that he disapproved of Gill's public criticism of Zelensky. Instead, Farage's response to Putin's first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 proved his willingness to believe Russian propaganda. https://archive.ph/UyfKK

Putin's cover story for that war of conquest was that Ukraine had provoked its own invasion by daring to apply to join the EU and Nato. And what did Farage say? "Amongst the long list of foreign policy failures and contradictions in the last few years," he told the European Parliament on September 16 2014, "has been the unnecessary provocation of Vladimir Putin." As Farage was speaking, Russian troops and tanks were already fighting inside eastern Ukraine, reinforcing separatist rebels in the provincial capitals of Luhansk and Donetsk. Earlier, Putin had occupied Crimea - 10,000 square miles of Ukraine's sovereign territory - by redrawing a frontier and annexing a chunk of a European state for the first time since 1945. Who did Farage believe was the expansionist power? Why Brussels of course. "This EU empire, ever seeking to expand, stated its territorial claim on the Ukraine some years ago," he said. If you think that he must have retreated from this speech, he retweeted it approvingly in June last year. In fairness, Farage condemned Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but on the day of the onslaught he could not stop himself from repeating the Kremlin's cover story that the whole tragedy was a "consequence of EU and Nato expansion".

Farage's dogged and instinctive exoneration of Putin should not have come as a surprise. In 2013, the Kremlin's friendly dictator, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, used poison gas to kill over a thousand people in a rebel-held area of Damascus. Russia tried to hide Assad's atrocity by claiming that the rebels had gassed themselves as a "provocation". Who should endorse this absurdity but Farage. "I did admire what he [Putin] had done over Syria," he said in April 2014. "Poison gas had been used and everybody in London and Washington and Brussels assumed it had been used by Assad. And Putin said 'hang on a second, don't be so sure'. It turns out it's more than likely it was the rebels that used the gas." One problem: Farage was talking nonsense. By then, United Nations inspectors had already established that the gas in question had been sarin nerve agent (possessed by Assad but not the rebels) and the rockets had been fired from regime-held areas of Damascus. To believe "it was the rebels" you had to convince yourself that they had manufactured sarin, despite having no such capacity, and then secretly advanced across the frontline into an area held by their bitter enemy, before launching their rockets back into a suburb under their control; inhabited by their own families, and then leaving without anyone noticing. No wonder a UN Commission of Inquiry later documented 33 chemical attacks by Assad's regime between 2013 and 2018. Farage not only proved himself a sucker for this pack of Kremlin lies, he later paid fulsome tribute to its author. In May 2014, he had this to say of Putin: "The way he played the whole Syria thing - brilliant. Not that I approve of him politically."

Farage had the wit to remember the qualifying sub-clause, but his sheer credulity remains astounding. He genuinely convinced himself that Syrian rebels had gassed their own children with sarin nerve agent that they did not possess and the real imperialist threat to Ukraine came from the "EU Empire" rather than Putin. The fact that Farage could hold such thoughts in his head raises a vital question: is there anything he would not believe if the Kremlin claimed it to be true? Suppose he was prime minister and Putin invaded a Nato country, probably one of the states whose very membership of the alliance Farage thinks was mistaken. Would he honour Britain's treaty obligation to defend this ally? Does he believe in Nato? Every British prime minister in eight decades has backed this alliance to the hilt. Is Farage different? Does he realise, for example, that the British Army's biggest overseas deployment is in Estonia, a country he apparently thinks should have been excluded from Nato and left out in the cold. If Russia were to attack Estonia, would a prime minister Farage allow our troops to join Nato in resisting the onslaught? And how would he respond once Putin had concocted some preposterous cover story for this aggression? Perhaps that Estonia had gassed Siberia? Experience suggests that Farage might fall for the Kremlin's moonshine, again.

Truth and critical appraisal from unexpected quarters - The Telegraph

Nigel Farage has a Russia problem

The leader of Reform has a long history of being swayed by Putin's propaganda

Well done David Blair, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10...

‘Thick as Thieves’: Nathan Gill and Nigel Farage’s Putin Problem Far from being distant from the Reform UK Leader, insiders told Byline Times that the former MEP convicted of bribery was one of Farage’s closest aides, while we reveal how Gill worked on the Kremlin’...

🔴NEW🔴

Thread 🧵

@bylinetimes.bsky.social can now reveal that, during the crucial period when convicted Reform leader Nathan Gill was most active, working directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most senior ally in Ukraine, he was also one of Nigel Farage’s closest confidantes 1/12

Ryan Bridge has become a familiar face in Stirchley lately. He's one of two "company directors" of raisetheflags.org, where he collects donations from £10-£500 for flags.

Not to make light of the editorial failure, but look how far Twitter lies now permeate in to normal discourse. We think we know about the racism but the utter contempt for truth since Musk bought the platform is deliberate & very dangerous. You can’t foment racism with fact checkers in the building.

Thank you.

I realise that there are lots of erudite and entirely correct reasons against leaving the ECHR, but surely the main one to be repeated ad nauseam is "from the people who told you Brexit would solve all of your problems - how did that work out for you?"

Please don’t. Women at the top suffer enough abuse without otherwise nice people making fun of their appearance.

Equally tired of the number of women on here I’ve seen poking fun at her appearance. We don’t help ourselves sometimes.

This isn’t helpful to women in positions of authority. We shouldn’t be doing this to each other.

Better than who expected?

Douglas Barrowman and Michelle Mone's company, PPE Medpro, has just been ordered to refund the Government £122m from a PPE contract.

There are two very odd things about PPE Medpro that may affect the odds of the Government ever getting that £122m...

Thread:

Javier Milei had to beg a bail-out and already needs another. Argentina's economy is in a tailspin. Gov't bonds and peso in freefall. People starving, throwing rocks at him.

Farage last year: "He's amazing. It's Thatcherism on steroids. Cutting and slashing expenditure. That's leadership."

SHARE!

Why is Keir Starmer obsessed with Nigel Farage?

Rachel wearing very flimsy looking apron, mask and visor in NHS setting

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals.

Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’.

What, Michelle? 🧵

Signed and shared. 👍

Yes, hopefully someone else will do something. She had a long conversation with another customer where she was encouraging her to support Farage. I wished I’d been there as I would have reported her.

I think he should but he’s old school and doesn’t like to make a fuss. I’m so angry on his behalf I’m tempted to report it myself. I don’t want him getting dragged into anything though. Just decided to sound off on social media instead!

My dad’s just got back from M&S in a state of shock. The member of staff overseeing the self checkout was loudly pushing anti-immigrant propaganda. He won’t let me report it but he’s really shaken by it.

How weird that this should have disappeared from the Telegraph archive...