Russell Jones's Week Moment: Nigel Farage Thinks Politicians Are W*nkers - What an Absolute Politician He Is

As Keir Starmer announces that Brexit 'had some benefits', an astonished Russell Jones examines its effect on the UK economy and recounts how his life was saved by an unfeasibly handsome immigrant

Nigel Farage, Reform MP for Clacton, at a press conference, 5 February 2025. Photo: Imageplotter/Alamy

It’s been a strange week for me, as I found my mind forcibly cast back to events that overtook me at the start of February 2010. Fifteen years ago, seemingly fit and healthy, I awoke one ordinary Thursday to find blood pouring from my unmentionables. This was not normal for me, so I went to see the least soothing GP in recorded history.

“Is that yours?!” she shrieked, her fists balled in her scatty hair as she looked aghast at the vial of blood that I had presented in lieu of the required urine sample.

“So, it’s all fine then?” I thought. “Cool”.

I was still chuckling at her bedside manner as I was carted off to hospital in an ambulance barely 10 minutes later, although things stopped being funny way before I arrived at A&E, by which time I was bathed in a combination of sweat, panic, and growing agony.

I spent the evening on a general ward, out of my tiny gourd on delicious morphine, but was woken at an ungodly hour because I was due a visit from an unfeasibly handsome Polish doctor, who had popped by to tell me I had cancer.

Not ordinary cancer, mind you, but mega-cancer. I don’t do things by halves. A tumour quite literally combining the size, stealth, and sly viciousness of an average house cat had already eaten one of my kidneys, and was busily chomping its way through my adrenal system, when suddenly it decided to burst flamboyantly open with a “ta-daaa”, and caused so much internal bleeding that thick red gobbets haemorrhaged out of my tallywacker.

I’ll fast forward through the weeks in hospital, the 33cm incision to allow the removal of several internal organs, the learning to walk again, and the three years of experimental chemo. Instead, let’s focus on the loving support of my nearest and dearest.

“Look on the bright side,” said my brother. “At least you’ll lose some weight”.

Anyway: it was this combination of reality-aversion and numbskull positivity that I was reminded of this week, as we celebrated five years since Brexit was implemented, and Keir Starmer, the chalk outline around the corpse of socialism, announced his sudden belief that Brexit has “had some benefits”.

Do tell!

Leave a note in the comments, explaining what part of the enforced crash diet and ritualistic gutting you are enjoying the most.

Is it the £100 billion per year in lost output, with the OBR predicting a 15% long-term economic hit? Or perhaps the cost to our barren treasury of £45 billion per annum, which has to be made up somehow, hence the highest tax burden in living memory. Oh, you thought it was coincidental that we face £44 billion in so-called stealth taxes? If so, I’ve got a bridge to sell you, although for budgetary reasons that bridge is at risk of collapse. As indeed is most of our pock-marked road system, our exports, investment, higher education, our NHS, and seemingly our entire next decade, as the economy Rachel Reeves inherited tips into stagflation.