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One is too many and 1,000 never enough. Addiction is a tricky business. What starts as fun inevitably, insidiously, tears away the soul. And there are signs that Nigel Farage’s press conference habit is getting out of control. He started off at one a week. Then his narcissistic need craved more and more attention. So he upped it to two or three a week. Each time the buzz got less. He was mainlining more and more just to try to stand still. To keep the withdrawals at bay. Still not enough. So on Thursday, Nige upped the dose to two inside a day. This can only end in a spell in rehab. Followed by meetings of PA. Pressers Anonymous.
Boom. The best laid plans etc. Nige was just six minutes into his first press conference of the day – the unveiling of the latest Tory defector, the meg-rich Malcolm Offord, whose lifetime achievements amount to buying yachts, as the leader or Reform Scotland – when it all kicked off. Malc had just signed a card renouncing his peerage, when every journalist in the room started looking at their phones. There was breaking news. Kemi Badenoch had announced she was sacking Robert Jenrick from the shadow cabinet and the Tory party.
Here was a story of our times. One that had it all. Treachery and stupidity. The Tory party at its very best. Kemi’s message was simple. “I never loved you anyway. I’m dumping you before you get the chance to dump me. So there.”
She had irrefutable evidence that Honest Bob was planning to imminently defect in a way that would cause maximum damage to the Conservatives. Well, hello, Kemi. What kept you so long? It was an open secret Jenrick had been on defection watch for months. The man who believed in nothing except his own dishonourable career – never forget Bob began life on the liberal wing of the Tory party before selling what passed for his soul to the populist right – had made no secret he had been in talks with Nige.
The tipping point for Kemi turned out to be his resignation speech, which had apparently been found face up on his desk and handed over to Tory HQ. Imagine being so quarter-witted you leave evidence of your treachery in plain sight. Even when you know you are under suspicion. But then Honest Bob has always been one to keep his dealings in plain sight. As a junior housing minister, he had been happy to wave through a planning permission that saved the erstwhile Tory donor and pornographer turned property developer Richard Desmond £50m.
That was effectively the end of Nige’s first press conference as planned. Poor old Malc. Yet again relegated to a walk-on part in his own life story. He would go as he had come. Largely forgotten. Instead of questions about the May elections, all anyone really wanted to know was whether Farage and Jenrick had made a deal. Was that the announcement Nige had intended to make at the later presser? If so, how had the deal been made? What promises had been made?
It’s not often that Farage looks wrongfooted. He is a grifter who is used to winging it. But even he seemed rather taken aback. No, he hadn’t been planning to unveil Honest Bob in London later that day. The news had come as much of a shock to him as it had to everyone else. Yes, of course he had been having talks with him,but he’d been having talks with lots of Tories. But he always kept his conversations confidential. Up until the point when he chose to share them with a few friendly journalists.
Soon, though, Nige could see the upside. The Tory party in complete disarray. Again. Where Honest Bob took the lead, other sheep may follow. Plus there was an upside to Jenrick’s sacking. Bob would have far fewer bargaining chips in the defection negotiations. Perhaps Nige wouldn’t have to offer him the job as chancellor after all. Time to sound as if he was playing hardball. “We don’t take every disaffected Tory,” he sniffed. Really? You took Zahawi. And any other number of deadbeats. Just imagine how useless you would need to be to get rejected. Take a bow, Liz Truss.
Cue later that afternoon. The second press conference on the cancellation of local elections to be replaced by a third. Nige was in dreamland. Rushing on his run. The cold turkey tomorrow could look after itself. “Thank you, thank you Kemi,” he gushed. Before this morning he had been nowhere near to securing a deal with the man whom he had described less than five months ago as a liar and a fraud. But he has never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Honest Bob had been signed on a free transfer.
It took Jenrick more than a minute to find his way into the room. Maybe he was having last-minute second thoughts. Or maybe he still hasn’t quite learned how to open a door. With a bit of assistance from his carer, Honest Bob made his way to the podium to give the speech that only he and the entire shadow cabinet had previously seen. One in which he would discover new lows even for him. Words as vomit.
“Britain is horrible,” he said. Everything was as bad as it could be. It took him a while to realise that he had actually been part of the Tory government that had broken the country. This wasn’t about him. Gushing fake sincerity. It was about his patriotic duty. It turned out that what was in the national interest was also in Honest Bob’s self-interest. Uncanny that.
A touch of self-laceration. Though not too much. Jenrick was more sinned against than sinner. He was ashamed of himself. Good. We’re all ashamed of you, too. There should never be another minister quite as bad as me, he continued. And that’s why he had to join Reform. To resist the temptation of being quite so hopeless as before. To save us all. He didn’t want to badmouth his former colleagues. But Mel Stride, Priti Patel and Kemi … Give him a break.
Honest Bob fell to the floor. “I love you, I love you Nige,” he sobbed, clutching Farage by the leg. Nige patted him on the head affectionately. “The best people are often failures,” Farage observed kindly. It had been that kind of day. A meeting of two untrustworthy minds. Both with an eye on the main chance. Nige has got to keep feeding that habit.
