Farage the farmers’ friend wants to sell them out - again

“Reform are the party of working people,” is Nigel Farage’s new mantra, and guess what, it turns out to be true – as long as the people he is talking about are working in the White House or on American farms.

With the obvious exception of Clacton, Farage is everywhere at the moment. The Daily Express calls it an “onslaught of events”, Reform call it a local election campaign and what it actually looks like is one man’s attempt to break the world record for being photographed with large numbers of elderly white people in different locations over a four-week period.

All are being treated to well-rehearsed rants about broken Britain (Farage helped break it), migration (massively up since Brexit) and large amounts of garbage in Birmingham (notably on March 28, when Reform held a rally at the NEC). Now they have been joined by a new moan: That Keir Starmer will betray Brexit and wreck prospects of a US trade deal by signing up to EU food and veterinary standards at the Brexit reset summit on May 19.

Farage told The Telegraph: “If we are going to align with the European Union on food standards and veterinary standards, then we’re going to make life for America very difficult, maybe impossible. It is a very, very silly thing to do in a world that is fast changing. What I prioritise is keeping our hands free. Long term, financially, America is a much bigger goal.”

It is never hard to read between the lines with Farage, and what he really means is “keeping our hands free” by signing a trade deal with America. That might, as sources close to the repugnant JD Vance suggested the other day, come at the price of Britain agreeing to repeal hate speech laws protecting LGBT+ groups and other minorities.

It would almost certainly include a demand for the UK to accept imports of chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef (both currently banned here and in the EU). Doing so would kill off hopes of an expanded deal with Brussels, and this is Farage’s real goal.

Farage told Radio 4 in March that we should accept “US agricultural products to be sold in Britain”, adding “there’s been some concern about chlorine-treated chicken, but there is an answer to that, which is to label things, let consumers decide.” To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, this is the unspeakable in full support of the uneatable.

Farage is happy for us to tuck into heavily subsidised, industrialised food that is produced in cruel and unsafe ways, even as it undercuts the British farmers he professes to support whenever he dons his gleaming Barbour and wellies at tractor protests. And like the Trump White House, he wants Europe weakened, even if that means British businesses doing business with Europe continue to be smothered by red tape, with British consumers left poorer as a result.

Is there anyone, apart from Donald Trump, that Nigel Farage won’t sell out?