IS there anyone in Scotland who doesn’t have it out for poor Nigel Farage? To listen to the Reform UK leader tell it, the entire country is engaged in a far-reaching conspiracy against him.
The shadowy fingers of this conspiracy first pulled the strings in Aberdeen on Monday, at an event which saw Farage take issue with Scotland’s media – and The Herald in particular. They had, the Reform UK leader insisted, been “involved” with the anti-racism protesters outside his press conference.
Farage claimed that Reform UK had only told Scotland’s press of the location, so protesters must have found it out through “one of you”. He doubled-down on this on Tuesday, simultaneously expanding the conspiracy to claim that The Herald colluded with protesters with the “deliberate intention of trying to provoke violence”.
This garbled interpretation of events is transparently intended to whip up hysteria against the media – but it ignores several key facts.
Firstly, campaign groups such as Stand Up To Racism, which organised the anti-Farage Aberdeen protest, use well-known methods to gather information. Hoping for a leak from the media isn’t one of them.
Secondly, it can’t possibly have only been the media who knew about the location of the Aberdeen press conference. For starters, the venue had to be aware – and Reform had clearly informed a raft of supporters such as the Tory defector Duncan Massey, whose office obviously knew. Then there’s the police, who had officers on site. If Reform didn’t tell them where to be, who did?
I am not aping Farage here and pointing fingers for an imagined leak, but simply highlighting that his so-called evidence for this anti-media conspiracy theory is full of holes.
Reform went on to undermine their own shaky claims after protesters also turned out to demonstrate against Farage in Hamilton.
Speaking to Politico, Farage’s allies in Reform UK claimed he had only dodged a “large-scale protest” which they claimed had been organised by the SNP.
So Reform UK’s version of events is that the media conspired to see protests meet him in Aberdeen, and the SNP then arranged for protests to greet him in Hamilton.
This is perhaps a time to deploy Occam's Razor, which says the simplest explanation is likely the correct one.
Is it more likely that the Scottish media, anti-racism campaign groups, and SNP all conspired together to organise protests against Farage wherever he visited in Scotland?
Or is it that the Scottish public organically decide to protest against racist populism without the need for some grand puppet-master pulling the strings?
In the world of Reform UK, the establishment stitch-up is the better option, so it is the one they will promote, regardless of the facts. Far-right conspiracies are, after all, well in Farage’s wheelhouse.
Just look at how Farage’s party have campaigned in the Hamilton by-election, using race-baiting adverts and false quotes to try and convince people that Labour MSP Anas Sarwar is more loyal to Pakistan than to Scotland.
And it didn't stop there. On Monday, Farage falsely claimed that Sarwar had said: "We are the South Asian community, we are going to take over the country, and take over the world."
Let's call that what it is: racially-charged rhetoric calculated to stoke division and distrust.
Is it any wonder that a grand conspiracy isn’t needed to organise protests against that?
