Russell Jones's Week Moment: Do the Maths, Nigel

The media's obsession with Farage's monomaniacal immigration demands ignores the truth that we actually need more immigration, not less, argues Russell Jones

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at his party's annual conference, Saturday 6 September 2025. Photo: Thomas Krych/Associated Press/Alamy

I’ll say this for Nigel Farage: he packs a lot in. We’re barely two weeks into September, and already we’ve had allegations of tax avoidance relating to the £885,000 house his mysteriously solvent girlfriend magically bought in Clacton and news that Farage earned almost £1million from second jobs, while only attending Parliament a third of the time.

Then there’s his declaration that he wants to deport women to Afghanistan under the Taliban; his vocal opposition to improving workers’ rights; and his decision to go to the USA rather than attend Parliament (again), so he could urge Trump to sanction nations that restrict free speech — including Britain, which is apparently so oppressive he can never say the things he’s always on TV, definitely saying. All of which led to him being called a “Putin-loving free speech impostor” by the US Congress.

While Nigel was busy doing all of this, his party was holding their conference, at which an invited speaker claimed vaccines had given the King cancer; Richard Tice promised to scrap investment in the northern constituencies upon which his party’s electoral hopes rest; and the latest admissions to the Reform Clinic’s softest, whitest room were allowed their first outing. First there was Nadine Dorries, a beef-witted one-woman riot of idiocy, who said her defection from not being an MP in one party to not being an MP in another was “the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make”.