February 21, 2025 - 1:00pm
One million votes. That is one insider’s estimate of the damage caused to Reform UK at the last election when Nigel Farage seemed to suggest that the West was to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It came up on the doors straight away and never stopped being raised. I have no doubt that it cost us several more MPs,” says this source. In a pre-election interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson, Farage claimed that “we’ve provoked this war”. For a leader to show a lack of moral clarity about Vladimir Putin’s obviously despicable expansionist regime is one of the few foreign policy no-nos that domestic UK public opinion is likely to punish severely.
Indeed, many Labour insiders date the start of the downfall of Jeremy Corbyn to his performance during the Salisbury poisoning episode. The former Labour leader suggested that a sample of the Novichok nerve agent used be sent to the Kremlin so Russia could determine if it was theirs or not. His rather popular “Magic Grandpa” identity quickly morphed into an instant corpse.
So is Farage now in danger of doing the same to his own “man of the people” mega-brand that has done so much to redraw the usual contours of British politics? Over the past week, as Donald Trump has relentlessly insulted Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, Reform’s MPs and its normally effusive party chairman have succumbed to a rare dose of “cat got your tongue?” syndrome.
That ended overnight, with Farage having no option but to talk about the issue during his customary visit to the CPAC conference of American Right-wingers, being held this week in Maryland. Interviewed by Sky News, he relied on the curious phrase that what Donald Trump says should be taken “truthfully, not literally” when asked if he agreed with the US President’s view that Ukraine “never should have started” the war.
“Putin started the war. We all know that. What he’s talking about are the causal factors that go back for years,” Farage said. “He promised a negotiation. He promised he’d talk to Putin. And he is. This is progress. We may not at the moment like how it looks, but we haven’t seen the final shape of the deal.” He also called on Zelensky to set a timeline for domestic elections, while not endorsing Trump’s claim that the Ukrainian leader is a dictator.
Before the tumult, Farage had actually laid down a very different marker on Ukraine. On 12 February, he told GB News viewers: “I think Ukraine now joining Nato is almost an essential part of this peace deal.” This provoked a flurry of “what did he mean by that?” discussions within Tory WhatsApp groups. But since then, nothing further has been heard of Farage’s backing for Ukraine’s most cherished goal — something which is clearly not on Trump’s agenda.
Up until now, Trump’s sweeping election victory in November has been all roses for Farage. Reform-curious voters in Britain have lapped up Trump’s hardline approach to issues ranging from illegal migration to gender ideology. Farage has gained both in profile and authority from his connections with Team Trump.
Yet there was always going to come a moment when the rogue elephant in the White House started trampling on British sensibilities. Opinion polling suggests the British public holds firm to its view of Zelensky and Ukraine being the heroic underdogs and Putin and Russia the evil invaders. According to YouGov, 74% of the UK public agree with Keir Starmer’s view that it is reasonable for a country not to hold elections while fighting a war within its own borders. Even 66% of Reform voters take this view.
YouGov also found that the British public remains steadfast overall in its support for Ukraine, with 48% even thinking that Britain backing Ukraine is more important than keeping good relations with the US. Just 20% of people feel the opposite. On this issue, Reform voters differed from supporters of other parties, with 28% prioritising support for Ukraine and 47% keeping in Trump’s good books. Yet that’s still a big chunk of Reform’s existing poll rating that Farage and co risk alienating. Should Trump’s comments result in a peace deal which humiliates Ukraine, one can expect public opinion to harden.
Have Britain’s established political parties finally found an effective line of attack against the upstarts? Shadow Defence Secretary James Cartlidge yesterday said it was “incredibly trite” for Farage to call for Zelensky to hold elections. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey went much further, claiming: “Nigel Farage has chosen to explain away Trump’s outrageous remarks about President Zelensky instead of doing the right thing and condemning them. He sounds like a spokesman for Trump.”
With Reform having announced almost no policy since the election, it has relied on positive opinion poll news to sustain the crucial idea of it being the party with overwhelming momentum. But does it have the substance to grind its way through a significant dip in popularity? We may be about to find out.
This really could be a banana skin for Farage.
doubt it, i think the Economy, Immigration, Inflation ,Crime all factor far more than Ukraine
In fact (just looked it up, top concerns of UK voters ) in the top 9 issues, Ukraine is not even mentioned.
This really is a chattering class issue, Reform will go to the doorstep and say hmm you can’t afford heat, you can’t afford food, but the UK goverment is currently giving billions to a very corrupt goverment in Ukraine, what’s your thoughts on that
People are generally yeah Putin bad, fair enough, but when they say well you know you are paying for this war, people go well, yep he’s bad, but is it our problem
Just like the environment , people yep save the planet, then they ask how much are you prepared to pay for it, in the US it was around $10 a year.
These issues only gain traction if people are uninformed about the true costs of them, so Reform could easily benefit from this, esp as Trump has basically announced the War is over pretty much
Not remotely. As time goes on people will be fed the truth about Ukraine and eventually understand that, just like Covid, they were manipulated on an industrial scale.
Personally I doubt this will affect Reform at all.
The blob doesn’t like Farage re-stating what has been said historically by many world “leaders” as well as heads of the UN itself. The author daren’t mention this as it undermines their fantasies.
Supporters of Bureacratic Centrism make no arguments. All they do is repeat consensus platitudes and then scold and attack people with heterodox positions. They can’t engage in complex discussion because debate risks a break in consensus.
They’re stuck in a permanent state of virtue signaling moral righteousness. It’s all style and no substance. Its the same script on every issue whether Covid, Climate Change, Social Policy and Foreign Affairs.
Make an actual argument for once.
Mr. Bone seems a little uncomfortable. So he should be. Over Ukraine, Labour and Conservatives are in lockstep with public opinion. Farage is the unpatriotic one.
If Mr. Bone wants to lash himself to the mast of HMS Farage, and Farage lashes himself to the mast of USS Trump, and Trump lashes himself to the mast of the pirate ship Putin, then Mr. Bone’s discomfort ain’t seen nothing yet.
The AfD are in a similar position in Germany. We will see on Sunday what damage its proximity to Trump has done it.
The Orwellian moral self-righteousness is strong.
I’m American. I felt qualified to comment because the globalist bureacratic blob is the same everywhere.
I hope your hybrid Prius got you to your 12th Covid booster
Hello….MR. BONE lol I was wondering if I missed some commenting protocol, where I’m supposed to address you as “Mr.”, in creepy, stasi-like third person. I keep hearing the agent from Matrix haha. I’m American too and appreciate your original comment, as did many other readers I see. The blob IS the same everywhere! Glad we can all engage and commiserate. It’s been a major eye opener. Best to you!
Does the author seriously think this will be an issue in the next election? It will be long forgotten six months from now, let alone the next election campaign.
If it’s such a big issue, why are Reform polling above LibLabCon?
LibLabCon can bluster all they want about supporting Ukraine and even sending troops there. But the three of them are why the military have barely anything credible to send to Ukraine, why our industry has been destroyed, why we have the most expensive energy in Europe, and why public finances are highly precarious. They’ve created an immigration invasion of Britain they have no desire to halt. Their Ukraine rhetoric is just effeminate sloganeering, complete moralistic posturing.
because it’s not a big issue outside Westminster and the Media, just looked at polling for top concerns of UK voters. Ukraine is not in the top 9 (weird it was only 9 issues)
The Media inflate how much people are concerned about this,despite the constant gaslighting, the Russian’s gonna nuke the UK with a Tidal wave bomb or some nonsense like that
It’s important to the Media, it’s important to Labour, Tories, it’s simply not important to the majority of people, but it’s a useful distraction against more pressing issues such as Immigration, the Economy, Crime
My…how accurately you are describing our LibLabCon in the US. Lol all the same beast, same beastly behavior especially as they are being exposed and weakening, money is being cut off, and public is awakening. Doge is shining the light on all of them, and all trails lead to each other. This might be a very good thing, however painful.
it’s such a non issue , if Trump says the Ukraine war is over(which is basically what he is saying) then it’s over. So this war that is not getting anyone anywhere, apart from more pointless deaths is finished.
The EU, Starmer, Tories, Media seem really unhappy at this, that Trump took away their war. What a bad man, not letting these people profit on the deaths of others, i mean they only poor eastern europeans, who cares right.
So they will cry, be upset, call Trump a fascist for Ending a War, but they will 1 day accept that they work for him, they do as he says.
The parties that cling to this conflict will not be seen as the good guys
They all want their ‘Maggie Moment’ but without doing anything.
Big loves to both of you from US. Wholeheartedly agree with all comments. Maybe, just maybe…these psychotic, deranged self destructive corrupt globalists will get out of the way…and we’ll find we agree on so much more than we think. Weve been handed a burning house, on purpose, so tragic. Just wait until we see how all roads lead to child trafficking. US needs this wake up call and transparency and tough love is here. It’s still love, not that false virtuous perverted kind we’ve been seeing. But the truth. Our economy could very likely crash and take everyone with it but…Sunlight is killing them ahhhh. Could be the start of a beautiful new relationship. Gonna be rocky, but bring it.
You think it will all blow over? Well then: how long did it take the British people to forget about Munich 1938?
Chamberlains activities (probably accidentally) bought time for Britain to build up the RAF. The US is giving continental Europe a window to do likewise.
Chamberlain was a coward, pure and simple.
Another article starting out from a distorting false prospectus – in this case the assertion that Farage shows “a lack of moral clarity about Vladimir Putin’s obviously despicable expansionist regime”.
Such typically sloppy/biased/unprofessional (take your pick) journalism to take quotes out of context. Farage has been clear that the West antagonised Russia over Ukraine over a long period, but that this was no justification for the Russian invasion. I agree.
And I’m not sure (and I’m speaking as a strong supporter of Ukraine up to this point) that ongoing UK support for war in Ukraine is as solid as the author assumes.
Is Britain ready to admit to itself that Russia’s clear power supremacy in its own sphere of influence calls into question the wisdom of the prognostications made by British leaders since Feb’22, and since?
Reform’s surge is powered by a newfound realism about social & energy policy.
But is Britain ready for the same let’s-get-real realism in foreign affairs?
I think the defining moment, that can never be unseen, was after JD Vance’s speech, the sight of
German defense minister, a grown man, elitist tyrant CRYING LIKE A WOMAN. Needing hugs from the ladies. To thunderous, ingratiating applause. Yeeek. Says it all. Sorry if I don’t find that moving, call me all the isms you want. And I’m a female. Americans don’t have time for that. How utterly embarrassing. Weakness is the universal language and no one, I mean no one, respects such a thing. Find your balls, Europe.
We did provoke the War. We have been provoking it since 2008 along with certain sections of the DC security/neocon community. Trump and Farage are right to point this out.
Alas, most westerners are so brainwashed by the state controlled MSM into hating Russia they are unable or unwilling to look at the facts. We wouldn’t have put up with a second of what we expected Russia to put up with.
Ukraine was a vassal state of the US. Why did we want to antagonise Russia? Because we thought we could use Ukraine to destabilise it. We want access to Russian commodities on our terms plus move on to pressurising China.
Alas, like most recent western military adventures it’s turned to dog s*** and we’ve lost. What a waste of everything.
Trumps only interested in stopping Russia and China from being BFF’s. He’s right.
Trumpbots out in force. The man is not suitable for POTUS. The pity is that he doesn’t have any sane competition. How a country of 350 million people can come up with crap candidates, left and right, is the 64 dollar question.
The actual quote is that Trump should be taken ‘seriously, not literally’ (it says in article ‘truthfully, not literally’ – doesn’t make much sense). I think Steve Bannon might have coined the phrase, along with ‘pay attention to the signal, not the static/white noise’ – similar general meaning.
He also pointed out the double standard when ppl took Trump ‘literally, not seriously’ but Obama ‘seriously, not literally’ (eg approved when Obama said stuff like ‘we must ensure every child reaches its full potential’ but scoffed when Trump said ‘America will have the greatest economy ever in history’).
It’s not a suprise that Farage often heads for similar territory to those on the far left (yep,you can still use the word “far” without sticking “right” after it).On a personal level there is quite a bit of respect,if you doubt that then have a look at George Galloway standing up for Farage on Question Time and Farage happy to introduce Galloway at that Brexit rally and there is of course the old adage that the hard (trying not to use “Far”,don’t want to give the BBC a fit of the vapours) left and right aren’t two ends of a ruler but two ends of a horseshoe.
The hard truth is that UK has nothing to offer Ukraine that will make any difference to the inevitable result, regrettable though that is. Starmer should be making this clear to Zelenskey.
How many people surveyed are still hosting Ukrainian refugees as per Boris’ scheme?
Like the early coverage of the care given to people with disabilities in Ukraine, this has disappeared.
Farage has found that it’s a disadvantage to know anything, however little, about the history of this matter. The public who would sooner listen to empty vessels like Ed Davey really deserve conscription as a reward.
Trump was just giving Volodymyr Zelensky a dressing down.
Trump wants peace, Zelensky and liberal “open society” zealots want war.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theupheaval/p/american-strong-gods?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=al84p
So much for the Right to Life and using global resources for global peace and economic growth rather than on global war and economic degrowth.
Open Society fanaticism is collapsing because the progressive realisation of the Open Society is predicated on resource availability to facilitate economic growth. Patrick however wants an escalation of the war and economic degrowth.
No economic growth, no stable society.
There is no peace without the PROTECTION of ethnic Russians in east Ukraine.
Trump wants the war to end which means protecting ethnic Russians in the Donbas.
Can Ukraine be trusted to do that? No.
Can Putin? Yes.
As Black and White as that really, except Patrick thinks it prudent to entirely ignore the “hard culture war” that has existed between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians in Ukraine since its independence in 1991.
https://www.crisisgroup.org/content/conflict-ukraines-donbas-visual-explainer
In other words, American, European and Russian involvement in Ukraine’s hard culture war has now escalated to a money draining meat grinding war which Open Society zealots do not wish to end unless Ukraine is admitted into the EU and NATO despite the wishes of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.