Farage finally sees the light on 'cool' Elon Musk's X
Poor Nigel Farage! The thin-skinned Reform leader has finally cottoned on to what the rest of the world has been saying for at least three years: that X, the social media plaything of Elon Musk, is no longer a nice place to do politics.
The platform is “becoming a very unpleasant and dangerous place”, Farage told a press conference earlier this week, as he claimed it was Reform candidates from minority ethnic backgrounds who were bearing the brunt of the abuse.
Speaking at the press event, Farage said the online abuse was “utterly appalling in every way” and that if any other party’s candidates had received the same level of abuse then the media would be “in total uproar.”
“I’ve not heard a single person comment on it. It really is bad,” he claimed.
And just this week there have been examples of the sort of sickening bile being spewed on the platform, such as… er, a Reform UK candidate who called for “every Muslim” to be deported from the UK because the public cannot tell them apart from terrorists.
Kate Michaela, who is standing for Adur District Council in West Sussex, shared a number of extreme posts, including one that said “every Muslim must leave the UK by 2030”.
The Reform candidate and beauty salon owner also shared a post by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the far right yob who goes by the name Tommy Robinson, describing foreign secretary Yvette Cooper as a “dumb bitch” who was allowing Islam to “take over Britain”. She also reposted a Kremlin conspiracy theory which linked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Reform has said it was “looking into the allegations” against Michaela.
In London, meanwhile, Farage’s party is investigating allegations that one of their Westminster candidates used X to say he “hates” the NHS and thinks nurses eat too much.
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Rats in a Sack
James Bembridge, standing for the West End ward, is alleged to have posted in 2020 – a time when most people were busy clapping their hands and banging their saucepans for the health service – that “the rancour that the pro-NHS folk have against me with never match the visceral hatred that I have for the NHS. I don’t want reform – I want to see it torn down to the ground.”
In March 2021, again in the midst of the pandemic, another post from the same account shared comments that NHS nurses were “eating food banks out of business”.
“I’m not sure why applause is so readily given to NHS nurses who claim to be driven to using food banks when, looking at them, they are presumably eating them out of business,” reads the post. Reform has said that it was “looking into the allegations” against Bembridge.
Are things any better over on X’s great rival Facebook? Not really, if recent evidence in Wales is anything to go by. One Reform candidate for next month’s Senedd election has claimed that “abuse in nurseries will skyrocket” if parents are offered more hours of free childcare, as Plaid Cymru are promising in their manifesto. In an online post Martin Roberts said that “mothers will wish they’d looked after their babies themselves”.
In response, Reform didn’t even say it was looking into the allegations, arguing instead that as Plaid had also had candidates found to have posted dodgy material online in the past “they don’t have a leg to stand on”.
Farage’s conversion on X is somewhat damascene given his previously effusive praise for Musk, embarrassingly claiming in 2024 that the billionaire’s support for his party would boost its standing among young people as it would make them “look cool”. “The shades, the bomber jacket, the whole vibe,” he explained.
But Musk quickly cooled on Farage, first failing to follow through on an alleged £100 million donation he had mooted, then calling for the Dear Leader to be replaced by Rupert Lowe before throwing his lot in with the latter’s Restore Britain outfit.
Not that it’s stopped Reform’s leading figures from taking Musk’s dollar. Farage’s MPs have pocketed more than £55,000 from the site since the 2024 general election, with the leader himself making more than £22,700 through the platform.
