Tright here’s a brand new photograph of Nigel Farage and the Reform treasurer, Nick Sweet, who partied by way of the pandemic at Lord Shaun “Bum and Boobs” Bailey of Paddington’s Pissedmas disco with a load of dancing Tory spads in horrible Christmas jumpers, assembly Elon Musk at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago doc storage unit slash vainness artwork show mausoleum. How’s that for a gap para? It was the perfect of instances. It was the worst of instances. They suppose it’s throughout. It’s now.
The final time Farage posed like this was eight years in the past, along with his fellow dangerous boys of Brexit and Trump himself on the identical Trump Tower carry the place Michael Gove contemporaneously noticed “an immensely dignified African American operator”. However now Farage is lastly standing subsequent to the organ-grinder answerable for democracy’s hand-cranked dance of dying, as an alternative of the orange monkey whose jaunty capering distracts the punters whereas their passports are lifted and burned.
Farage has overtly acknowledged he hopes to search out methods to funnel Musk’s gives of monumental funding for the British far proper by way of the UK arm of Musk’s X platform, and is aware of he can do that legally; and we’ve seen how Musk’s spectrum retooling of huge sections of social media helped deprioritise liberal voices and push Trump in direction of energy, like somebody locking a philosophy pupil in a cabinet at a raucous frat occasion.
As soon as, Musk’s social media platform allowed the sharing of those columns, for instance, of their hundreds and garlanded me with limitless ego-massaging witty compliments from intelligent, humorous liberals. Now they land within the lower than a whole bunch, accompanied by AI pictures of Trump as a Marvel superhero firing a bazooka of justice at some Mexican peasants. Cry liberal tears, muesli boy!
Everybody I used to take a look at on Twitter, at present X, has gone elsewhere, apart from my racist auntie, a person who paints footage of moss, and the eternally youthful 70s comedy artwork intercourse icon Robin Askwith, who simply can’t appear to extract himself from the Liz Fraser foaming bathtub of Musk’s echo chamber of hate.
Musk is open in his contempt for Keir Starmer, but in addition vocal in his help of the far-right fraudster Tommy Robinson, having promoted his discredited racist documentary Silenced to 200 million of his followers, who view it as some sort of pill of regulation, dragged breathlessly down from the mountaintop by a person product of unrefrigerated sausages with a perpetually runny nostril and an imminently exploding brow.
However by all means, let the British parliament enable Musk to purchase his pets into energy whereas our leaders stand round buying and selling witty barbs about steak lunches and tuna sandwiches, the ineffective twats – Nero laughing at somebody’s Greggs order as Rome burns and is rebuilt within the form of 1,000,000 revolving swastikas.
I’m calling it. This Farage-Musk-Sweet photograph op marks the dying of British democracy. And there’s nothing we will do about it. Put together for fascism-lite in Farage’s future UK and get out when you nonetheless can. Oh! However you’ll be able to’t. Due to Brexit. That will need to have been one of many many Brexit advantages Kemi Badenoch was speaking about in PMQs final Wednesday. That and never with the ability to afford the postage for previously low-cost outdated Serge Gainsbourg 7in singles from French secondhand file sellers.
Don’t consider me? Take a look at how I’m at all times proper. Time and again. In 2025, my 15-year outdated standup routine about how Russell Model was a sleazy creep is trying evermore prescient. And three weeks in the past, I’d simply had a large £6,000 prop of Gregg Wallace made for my new standup present, Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf, which quickly unfolding occasions rendered extra resonant 5 days earlier than opening evening.
Generally, like Richard Burton waking every morning in The Medusa Contact to information reviews of mass dying and destruction that he feels his personal desires are inflicting, I fear that the worst imaginings of my most cynical standup routines are someway being recast as actuality by malevolent Lovecraftian squid gods, hellbent on the destruction of human civilisation. Did I trigger all this to occur? Kill me. Kill me now. Save your society! Save yourselves! I’m doing this! Me!
Carole “Cat Lady” Cadwalladr appropriately confirmed us how social media was covertly and systematically weaponised through the Brexit marketing campaign, and was ridiculed for it by a person with used cat litter for hair. Like John Lennon mentioned: “A really merry Christmas and a contented new yr. Let’s hope it’s the primary one with out Andrew Neil.”
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However not like the purchasers of Cambridge Analytica, Musk doesn’t even want to cover what he’s doing. I believe Musk will use his limitless wealth and all-pervasive cyber-influence to put in Farage on the head of some Tory-Reform hybrid opposition occasion, take away the present authorities and have his manner with our nation over an Aga like a jodhpurred male lead in a Disney+ Jilly Cooper adaptation. And I believe Farage will likely be our chief by the top of the last decade, booze and fags however.
As a result of Musk is a part of the incoming American presidency, Starmer appears to suppose he has to simply accept this open collusion, this direct try by a international energy to intervene within the capabilities of our democracy, as enterprise as normal. We appear to be unduly upset that Prince Andrew, a person who makes the phrase “unfastened cannon” appear unfair on insecurely fixed vintage weaponry, has been a idiot to befriend a potential Chinese language spy, whose presumed paymasters want us in poor health. However right here’s Farage, scrabbling about on his knees earlier than Musk behind the bus station downtown in a hail of unfastened ha’pennies, and our flesh pressers simply stand round like spare princes at a Jeffrey Epstein cocktail sausage occasion.
The Washington Publish’s slogan, irrelevant since Jeff Bezos purchased the paper, was: “Democracy dies in darkness.” Properly, democracy is dying right here in plain sight. Merry Christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our final.
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Stewart Lee excursions Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf subsequent yr, with a Royal Pageant Corridor run in July. He’s additionally a visitor of all-female Fall karaoke act the Fallen Ladies, at the Lexington, London, on 28 December
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