Fawning Farage interview is just Standard for London's struggling paper

London’s No-Longer-Evening Standard continues on its journey rightwards, this time devoting its front page to a fawning interview with Nigel Farage, illustrated with an arty pic and the headline “Farage for PM?”.

The cover image of a grinning Farage with cigarette in mouth, mimicking David Bailey’s celebrated 1965 photograph of Michael Caine, suggests that the Reform leader is a cheeky chappie charmer rather than a deeply cynical migrant basher. It will turn many stomachs in a multicultural city that voted in only nine Conservative MPs out of 75 at last year’s general election, two months after reelecting mayor Sadiq Khan for a third term with an increased vote share.

After axing editor Dylan Jones last year – after he presided over the paper going from a daily to a weekly with a vastly decreased distribution – it appointed as his replacement Anna van Praagh, who seems to spend much of her time on social media retweeting right wing talking points and calling for ministers like Bridget Phillipson to resign for no reason other than that van Praagh disagrees with her.

Jones stayed on as editor-at-large, meaning readers continue to be treated to his fulminations against the Labour government (Keir Starmer “looks like he turned up to play wearing someone else’s big boy pants and a pair of dirty plimsolls”, he wrote in November). And now he’s delivered an interview with Farage so ingratiating it could have come direct from Reform’s press team.

Jones writes how “the 60-year-old politician is as personable as ever, smiling, full of Reform-friendly stats, and proudly brandishing his Carnaby Street Union Jack socks” and adds “Farage is still buzzing from the recent US inauguration, during which he hosted a big party for 750 in Washington, full of the great, the good and the politically curious.” He notably neglects to mention how Farage was very publicly snubbed by the new president at the ceremony itself.

Bowling Farage such tough doosras as “Starmer has had a torrid first six months. What has he done wrong?”, Jones points out how “Starmer and his good-for-little chancellor Rachel Reeves have wrecked the economy, temporarily alienated the new American president, and — as yet — failed to come up with any coherent and deliverable solutions for solving either the NHS or illegal immigration”.

And he fails to pull up Farage when he uses dogwhistle language like “parts of [London] are unrecognisable as being English” nor when the hang-’em-and-flog-’em crimebuster says that it is “pretty awful” that convicted criminal Tommy Robinson is in solitary confinement (which is for Robinson’s own safety).

With such coverage, it’s little wonder the Standard’s more liberal-minded young staffers – or those that remain, after the most recent round of swingeing cuts – are looking to abandon the struggling organ.