Reform’s shameful silence on Trump and Ukraine

Nigel Farage’s straight-talking Reform Party are normally loquacious types. Four of their five MPs – leaving aside the little-seen James McMurdock, once jailed for beating his then-girlfriend – show every sign of loving the big stage, amplifying their appearances on TV and in the Commons via expert use of social media.

Farage, the party leader and a national figure for nearly 20 years now, hosts a thrice-weekly show on GB News. His oleaginous deputy Richard Tice gleefully throws himself into the endless cycle of political TV and radio interviews – a mistake, since he is a poor, tetchy and ill-informed performer.

Rupert Lowe’s output on social media almost matches his prodigious rate of Commons questions; so much so that he has earned £10,000 in two months from his admirer Elon Musk via his monetised X account. Lee Anderson is a master of Facebook, where he posts multiple videos per day; either from Westminster, his Ashfield constituency, his own GB News show or from the homes of celebrity chums like far right comedian Jim ‘Nick Nick’ Davidson.

All this adds up to a lot of exposure. During last year’s general election, Reform generated nearly three times as many social media interactions as Labour. Their talking points are amplified by supportive social media accounts – particularly GB News. It is a huge amount of reach.

But for all of that, does anyone know what Reform think about Donald Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine?

It’s now over a week since Trump began his sell-out of an invaded people by announcing details of a friendly phone call with the murderous dictator Vladimir Putin. The president and his allies have since spilled out a series of Kremlin talking points, suggesting not negotiation but capitulation. Now we’re at a new low – the president of the United States resigning as the leader of the free world by declaring the elected Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator who was responsible for starting the war in the first place.

What do Reform have to say about all this? As of Thursday morning, next to nothing. At the time of writing, Farage’s most recent social media post was one from Wednesday afternoon, criticising Keir Starmer for attending a meeting where one of those present was a hijab-wearing woman who in 2015 had posted something stupid about Isis. The publicity-loving party leader is said to have been turning down interview requests on Wednesday night. He’s due at a hard right conference in Washington DC on Thursday.

Tice has been posting, but only about Thames Water and “Net Stupid Zero”. Anderson HAS posted about Donald Trump – but only in approval of the president’s plan to remove all benefits for illegal migrants (something already in place in the UK for those who have had asylum applications rejected). Lowe continues to blow his favourite dogwhistle with tweets about “woke judges… abusing their position to protect foreign rapists and paedophiles”.

But on the events of the last couple of days, about the president of the USA changing sides to back Russia, about the collapse of the western alliance, about whether Zelensky is a dictator, about the future security of Britain and the continent of Europe in the face of this betrayal – so far, nothing. Other parties and their leaders have spoken. The shoot-from-the-lip Reformers are keeping schtum.

Why should this be? Do Reform fear that their growing popularity (they lead in four of the last five published opinion polls) will be dented or even destroyed if they turn up on TV and social media to defend Trump, and are eviscerated as Tice rightly was by Julia Hartley-Brewer last weekend? Or are they all holidaying in Dubai with Isabel Oakeshott?

Are they waiting to see what Britain thinks before deciding where they stand? They’ve been keen to post about their poll lead with YouGov but seem to be ignoring the same pollster’s findings that 77% of Britons hold Russia entirely or mostly responsible for the war, and only 3% think Ukraine is entirely/mostly responsible.

Or do they really, really want that $100m from Trump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk?

Update: On Thursday afternoon, Farage broke his silence in an interview with GB News, saying “Let’s be clear, Zelenskyy is not a dictator, but it’s only right and proper that Ukrainians have a timeline for elections.”

He also claimed his near-24 hour delay in responding to Trump’s outburst was because he’d been on a plane to Washington DC – modern aircraft famously having no WiFi, email or the ability to make voice and video calls.