Putin an X next to Reform
TetleysTLDR: The Summary
Putin does not need to invest in hacking our electoral system when we have men like Farage doing the job voluntarily. The British public deserves better than to be manipulated into voting for chaos. Better than being seduced by a pint-waving fraud who has done more damage to British democracy than any hostile power ever could. If you put an X next to Reform, do not be surprised when the Kremlin crosses Britain off its list of functioning democracies. Because at that point, we will have done their work for them.
TetleysTLDR: The long bit
There is a particular stench that wafts across British politics these days, and it is not just the usual Tory rot. It is something colder, heavier, more calculated. Something imported and nowhere does that stench cling more stubbornly than to Reform UK and the spectral figure who leads it around by the scruff of its neck: Nigel Farage. Every election cycle, Britain produces a new cavalcade of opportunists, chancers and public school pricks trying to flog the public some reheated Thatcherite fantasies, but Reform UK Ltd has taken it a step further. They are not merely recycling old Tory policies like some Poundland Mosley tribute act. They are importing an entire worldview from the Kremlin’s playbook: consciously, conveniently and catastrophically. And Farage, the piece-of-shit snake-oil salesman who has spent a decade pretending to be the voice of the ‘common man’ while necking overpriced pints on camera like a performing sea lion, is the perfect frontman for it.
To understand why Reform has become the most useful idiot in British politics, you have to understand the political project is is embedded in: chaos. Russia doesn't need to control Britain. It doesn't need tanks in Dover or agents in Downing Street. All it needs is to turn the political system inside out, encourage people to mistrust everything and everyone, and push a deeply divided country even further towards fragmentation. And Reform UK Ltd is doing that work for him, with Farage grinning like a man who thinks he’s clever for turning up to the exam with the cheat sheet printed on the back of his tie.
Farage: A man who never met a despot he didn’t fancy
On the week that Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform in Wales gets a 10 year stretch for taking Rouble bungs in return for treachury, let us begin with the elephant in the room wearing a St George’s flag waistcoat: Farage’s long, almost erotic admiration for Vladimir Putin.
Every time Farage has been asked to name a world leader he respects, the answer has pinged back quicker than a tennis ball off a brick wall: Putin. The strongman. The nationalist. The bloke who rides horses bare-chested and invades neighbouring countries the way most people nip down the shop for milk. Farage gushed, and I mean quite literally gushed, admiration for Putin’s ‘brilliant’ handling of the Syrian civil war. He praised Putin’s ‘vision’. He even managed the remarkable feat of implying that the EU provoked Russia into annexing Crimea, as if Putin is some sulking teenager who only invaded because Brussels looked at him funny.
This is not normal behaviour for a British political leader. Not even for a far-right one. It is, however, very normal behaviour for someone whose political project aligns neatly with the Kremlin’s strategic interests. Divide Europe. Divide Britain. Promote the fiction that the West is decadent, weak, hysterical. Stoke nationalism. Stoke anti-immigrant fear. Stoke resentment of the political class while being as much a part of it as any chinless Tory ghoul perched in a Mayfair dining club. That is the Putin playbook, and Farage reads it more faithfully than he ever read a briefing paper in the European Parliament.
Reform UK Ltd: a party in name, a company in practice
One of the greatest tricks Reform UK Ltd has pulled is convincing the public it is a political party. It is not. It is a private company, owned by a handful of wealthy men with too much ego and not enough scrutiny. Companies House tells the truth where Farage does not: this is Reform UK Ltd, complete with shareholders, directors and the same corporate opacity that the Kremlin’s oligarch class uses as currency. When a political movement is structured like a business, you have to ask: who are the investors? Who are the beneficiaries? What return do they expect? And perhaps most importantly: why would any foreign power looking to destabilise Britain not funnel soft influence, messaging or proxy support through a body so conveniently structured to obscure its inputs? Reform UK Ltd is the political equivalent of a laundrette with opaque ownership and suspicious amounts of cash flowing in and out. It is built to avoid accountability, regulation and transparency. And Farage, ever the showman, distracts from that structural truth by waving pints around, pretending to hate elites while being on first-name terms with half the hedge funds in the City and the dubiously funded influencers in Tufton Street.
We know from the investigations into the Brexit referendum that Russia had a keen interest in promoting division and feeding disinformation. We know that bot networks, troll farms and state-aligned media outlets pumped pro-Leave messaging like sewage into the bloodstream of public discourse. We know Farage and his friends loved every second of that chaos, because they were riding its wave like surfers on a tsunami of bullshit. And now, with Reform UK Ltd, we have a vehicle tailor-made for a repeat performance: a party-company hybrid with minimal oversight, a history of proximity to Moscow’s narrative goals, and a leader who cannot criticise Putin without his voice cracking like a schoolboy trying to lie to a teacher.
Useful idiots and the soft power of sabotage
Of course the Kremlin doesn't need a signed contract with Farage. It doesn't need to fund Reform UK Ltd directly, although in most likelihood it does. Influence does not work like that anymore. Modern destabilisation is not about spies in trench coats. It is about soft alignments: useful idiots, ideologues, opportunists and media ecosystems that play into your hands without ever needing a handshake. Farage fits that mould perfectly. Whether he is consciously aligned with Putin’s agenda is irrelevant. The effect is the same. Reform UK Ltd pushes narratives that mirror the Kremlin’s foreign propaganda almost word for word. Here are a few of the greatest hits:
Britain is broken beyond repair.
The elites have sabotaged your country.
Immigration is a cultural invasion.
NATO caused the invasion of Ukraine
Western decline is inevitable.
Strong leaders (and strongmen) are the future.
The old parties are corrupt, pointless, compromised.
Everything is collapsing, so why not blow it all up?
This is not patriotism. This is psychological operations by proxy. The point is not to offer solutions. Reform UK Ltd doesn't have any. The point is to make the public feel hopeless, furious, alienated and ready to burn the system down. Exactly the sort of nihilistic atmosphere that Russia loves to cultivate across Europe, because a Europe of fragmented, furious nations is a Europe too busy screaming at itself to constrain Russian expansionism.
Media echoes: the Russia-Reform UK Ltd feedback loop
Turn on GBeebies and what do you get? A panel of red-faced reactionaries panting with enthusiasm as they tell you that Britain is being taken over by foreigners, that the West is weak, that the political class is corrupt and that only the nationalists understand the truth. Does that sound familiar? It should. It is the same script as Russia Today, minus the Cyrillic subtitles. Farage himself has appeared on RT more times than he's voted in Parliament. He has used Russian state media platforms to push the same anti-EU, anti-NATO talking points that the Kremlin beams into Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. The overlap is not coincidental. It is ideological, structural and convenient. Farage gets a platform. Russia gets a mouthpiece who looks vaguely respectable to the British public. Reform UK Ltd, meanwhile, gets a pipeline through which narratives can flow without ever being traceable to a foreign hand.
Follow the nationalism: why Reform UK Ltd’s story is Russia’s story
Reform UK Ltd presents itself as the party of the working class, the party that ‘tells it like it is’, the party that will ‘take back control’. It is a reheated Brexit, served cold and clammy. But underneath the slogans is the same ultra-nationalist worldview that the Kremlin uses domestically:
A fetish for borders.
A hatred of migrants.
A longing for an imagined past.
A disdain for liberal democracy.
A belief that elites secretly run everything.
A conviction that only a strong leader can save the nation.
This politics is not British. It is imported. It is the ideological equivalent of fake designer goods that fall apart the moment you tug a thread. Farage claims to love Britain, but his vision of Britain is one drained of its post-war values: internationalism, cooperation, solidarity, a welfare state, multicultural cities, the NHS. His version of Britain is a whitewashed fantasy lifted straight from Kremlin propaganda about the West’s so-called ‘decadence’. Reform UK Ltd is not trying to conserve Britain, it is trying to remake it in the image of a reactionary, authoritarian, illiberal nationalism that serves only one ultimate master: chaos. And chaos is Russia’s greatest export.
The money question: always follow the cash
One of the recurring questions journalists still ask, sometimes timidly, sometimes fearfully, is: where does Farage’s money come from? Because let us be blunt: this is a man who has failed upwards for twenty years. He doesn't hold down real jobs. He doesn't run corporations. He doesn't produce anything. He doesn't innovate. He exists only as a walking reaction machine. Yet somehow, Farage lives comfortably, lavishly even. His media gigs are lucrative, sure, but they do not explain the full picture. His party-company is financial smoke and mirrors. His donors often obscure themselves through layers of corporate structures. His political operations are financed in ways that baffle even hardened electoral analysts. You do not need to allege Russian funding directly to note that his financial opacity is perfect for it. Perfect for any foreign state, in fact, that wanted influence without fingerprints. Perfect for oligarchs, too. Perfect for anyone who wants to buy chaos under cover of British nationalism. Reform UK is a political black hole: everything goes in, nothing comes out. And Farage likes it that way. Since he became an MP, he's had 10 jobs earning over a million in a year - and none of those jobs where representing the poor buggers in Clacton that put him into Parliament.
Why Reform UK Ltd matters to Russia: NATO, Brexit, and British paralysis
From the Kremlin’s point of view, Britain has always been a strategic problem. Not because we are a military superpower, but because we are a diplomatic cornerstone. A Britain aligned with the EU and NATO makes unity possible. A Britain fractured, divided, exhausted and self-destructive makes unity impossible. What has Farage spent his entire career promoting? Withdrawal from Europe. Withdrawal from international cooperation. Withdrawal from global responsibility. Withdrawal from basic reality. It is the dream of every autocrat: a Britain curled up in a corner, too paranoid and confused to oppose anything beyond its own shadow. Reform UK Ltd’s brand of nationalist isolationism is not patriotic. It is geopolitical foreplay for powers that want the West weakened. Putin does not want Britain to become Russia. He wants Britain to become useless. And Reform UK Ltd with its merry band of flag shagging gullible supporting morons is very good at making Britain useless.
The danger of normalising treachery by stupidity
There is a moment in political history when a nation has to decide whether to treat a buffoon as a harmless clown or a dangerous figurehead. We failed with Johnson. We cannot fail with Farage. Britain has spent too long pretending Farage is a comedy villain. He isn't, what he is is the acceptable face of unacceptable politics. A man who can sit in a studio, repeatedly, get a sympathetic interviewer, talking unchallenged about being ‘silenced’ while on national television and act as if he is the victim rather than the vector of division. Reform UK Ltd’s candidates are a gallery of the unhinged, the unqualified and the unfit but that is not what makes them dangerous. What makes them dangerous is the vacuum they fill: the vacuum created by Tory collapse, Labour timidity, media complicity and public despair. Into that vacuum flows every authoritarian current from Moscow to Budapest. Reform UK Ltd is the British gateway drug to far-right authoritarianism, sold to the public under the guise of common-sense patriotism.
Well the BBC did it to Corbyn, without justification. Here the justification is in buckets
Britain must wake up
You can hate the Tories. You can be disappointed in Labour. You can feel betrayed by the Lib Dems and no one would blame you. We deserve better, but none of that justifies sleepwalking into the arms of a movement whose political ecosystem is indistinguishable from Kremlin strategy. Reform UK Ltd is not a revolt. It is a Trojan horse.
Farage is not a patriot. He is a propagandist.
And Putin doesn't need to hack our elections when we have Quislings like Farage doing the job voluntarily. With people like Reform UK Ltd in the UK, Putin can channel all his efforts on destablising other countries. The British public is being manipulated from within into voting for chaos. Better than to be seduced by a pint-waving fraud who has done more damage to British democracy than any hostile power ever could. If you put an X next to Reform UK Ltd, do not be surprised when the Kremlin crosses Britain off its list of functioning democracies. Because at that point, we will have done their work for them. And Farage, grinning like the slimy little toad-faced over-privileged public school prick he has always been, will raise a glass and pretend he has won something other than the applause of tyrants.
What we need now, more than ever, is an independent, forensic investigation into how outfits like Reform UK Ltd are actually financed, because Gill’s imprisonment hasn’t just lifted the lid, it’s blown the whole rotten pan off the stove. It has moved up a division from reactionary fringe party into treason and criminal endeavour. The party’s corporate structure has always been a convenient smokescreen, a way to dodge the transparency expected of genuine democratic actors while funnelling cash through opaque company accounts, friendly ‘donors’, and whatever other back-alley arrangements they think they can get away with. With one of their own now behind bars, the public is entitled to know who’s really bankrolling this lot, what they expect in return, and how deep this goes. And if the books turn out to be as grimy as the politics, then the whole shoddy operation deserves to be hauled into the sunlight and treated with the same contempt we reserve for any other piece-of-shit snake oil racket posing as a political movement. Our democracy depends on it.
Tetley is a left of centre writer and retired musician based in the UK. A former member of the Labour Party, he writes political analysis exposing Britain’s authoritarian drift, the criminalisation of protest, and the erosion of civil liberties.
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