I confess in the last seventy two hours I have watched a lot of shaky defence when under pressure, devastating strikes that can rattle a side, and to top it all a lot of argy-bargy about rules, and how breaking them can draw down huge criticism.
Politics has been really busy too, but I mean football.
The echo across however is uncanny. I think most of us whatever party we favour have realised, had realised, or been dragged kicking and screaming into realising that the “Rules based order” is at best under threat, at worst has already collapsed around us.
Blatantly breaking the rules seems to be getting more normalised. That’s not always a bad thing.
Indeed part of the big complaint about the situation Britian finds itself in is that for two long parties had tried to operate within a set of rules adopted thirty years ago and are now so clearly constricting that ‘rewiring’, ‘Reforming’ indeed ‘burn it to the ground’ if you are Dom Cummings seems not only in vogue but partly to be wished for by many.
I find it hard to believe that Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader and, so Angela Rayner suggests, deputy PM to be, thinks a good new rule should be to place social media under the same constraints as broadcast media during elections times.
Apart from the ridiculous attempt at curbing free speech and fair comment during a period where debate is more important than ever, can you imagine the proliferation of bad jokes and cat videos we’d have to endure if they were ever silly enough to try it.
I think in service of this site I’d be willing to ignore it and face the consequences.
So they you are even I might think there’s occasions to break ‘the rules.’
Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, two names put together often enough by him that it’s not altogether helpful to the former, have both been accused of ‘breaking the rules’
And one of them denies it, and the other couldn’t care less.
It is frankly absurd that a President of any kind in any country that has them would think to call up a sporting body and try to overturn a refereeing decision and reverse a suspension. It’s a looking glass world when FIFA cave in and give him what he wanted, even odder how many Americans thought it was perfectly OK.
The argument over whether US ‘soccer’ star Folarin Balogun broke the rules or not and yet received a red card, is as nothing compared to whether a President can play his Trump card and interfere with something that he has little to do with – and knows even less about – but to top it all off feels at ease admitting, and joking about. Lord knows he’ll take credit.
As however, can Belgium, for thumping the US team out of the World Cup 4-1, even with the player on the field.
Not content with that little fracas in which he raised the profile of Belgium, a country I reckon a third of Americans would struggle to point to on a map, the President has also stepped in about whether Nigel Farage has broken the rules.
Nigel Farage, already well into weeks of dodging the limelight over his five million pound gift from a crypto currency billionaire – who it must be said once donated to the Conservatives – has gone from shaky broadcast defence to hiding in the dressing room, followed the revelation of a registered 12 hour gold rush of a quarter of a million, and now suggestions that his young apprentice (one for the star wars fans) “Posh” George Coterell has also been subbing him, in the year before he was elected to the tune of social media staff, security (again) and use of a house. This George denies.
The rules here are quite clear, unless it is under ‘a personal gift’ exemption, that really only covers close family and for nothing to do with political activity, anything over three hundred pounds must be registered. That is to say it must be publicly declared so all can see the amount and know where it came from.
I’m not sure what security or social media support £299 can buy you but it’s the point about nothing to do with political activity that the rules here appear to have been ‘interpreted’
George is actually a personable fellow. For full transparency he was present ten years ago the night I met my wife. He always asks after her when I’ve seen him and has never been rude or unpleasant towards me. George always looks at you like he knows something you don’t and is feeling happy about that but isn’t going to tell you what it is. He has talents that like Farage are a plus and a minus but he also has a conviction for fraud. That’s tricky for a politician to choose to be around in these current circumstances.
In the times we’ve met recently he certainly wasn’t going to reveal how he spent his considerable amounts of money in 2024 but there’s one thing even he couldn’t deny. He may have no title, no actual written down job, but if you think he hasn’t been hand-in-glove politically with Nigel Farage for a decade or more then I have some once in a lifetime crypto to sell you.
George is inner circle. George has been, with Dan Jukes and a number of others the trusted of the trusted. Raheem Kassam may have outsourced himself to America but he’s there to help when needed. These people aren’t going to fall out with him, and he will stand by them. That is not something Zia Yusuf quite understands, they’ve been in the team with Farage for over a decade, not arriving, with money, in August 2024 having just left the Conservative party. George may not have a ‘formal role’ with Reform but he’s been working on the whole political project for years
Nigel Farage arrived back in the UK yesterday very angry. If he’s right then I can sympathise. He threatened Sky news with dire consequences after they descended on him at the airport claiming that early that morning they had tried to contact his daughter.
To be clear with a few exceptional circumstances politicians families, should be absolutely off limits. Whoever the politician, or party. The thing is Sky deny ever doing anything of the kind, as the Times newspaper denies publishing addresses where he owns houses. They would consider that breaking established rules. If they are lying about that Farage would have grounds for another bumper pay day in court.
Farage didn’t leave the US empty handed though. The President, as I say, decided a ‘soccer’ red card was small potatoes, so dipped into this UK fixture. If as Reform suggest this is all an Establishment plot to bring him down, they point out ‘this is what they tried to do to Trump but it didn’t work’. Trump himself agrees and posted:
“They are running the 2024 Anti-Trump Playbook on Nigel Farage”
Are they though? I don’t remember the howls of outrage when the same Sunday Times journalist exposed Starmer’s dealings with Lord Alli, Tulip Siddiq’s housing arrangements, Morgan McSweeney’s undisclosed donations received, and a list of investigations into Labour under Starmer.
Lashing out at the MSM is a risky business when for two years you have been courting them, and they’ve been listening, given you are doing so well in the polls.
Having said that, Farage himself took time out of his apparent persecution to remind people who the real bad guys were – the Tories. Tweeting about 14 years etc as if it was all the Conservatives fault, not his own, that he was being ‘conspired’ against. Never mind the somewhat hypocritical jibes emanating from Labour.
Here’s the funny thing. You can’t credibly accuse the Tories of ‘hiding their record’ when the leader of the Conservatives is doing a sit down public interview apologising for some of that record and taking questions from the media – including ConservativeHome’s own Oliver Dean – whilst you yourself bolt for a hiding place giving the most limited of information about any of your financial record.
For what it’s worth I think Oliver was right yesterday to not underestimate Reform, or rely on some kind of implosion, but as I mentioned on Friday something is very definitely up inside Reform at the moment, I just don’t know that it’s fatal.
Right now committed Faragists are digging in, chucking everything at the defence and scything down all comers to keep from conceding any more. Burnham is still the mysterious blank sheet upon which people want him to rip up the rule book, he sought have has to have got so far so quickly.
Boris Johnson was in part kicked out because he was seen to break rules he himself set. Kemi Badenoch has spent the two years saying new rules apply in the Conservative party because following the old ones led them to electoral disaster.
The thing is, those who rule, do so by making the rules, that’s supposed to be what politics is for.
We find ourselves in a weird moment, a rules crossroads. Where in some cases the rules that exist are being ignored by some, need to be challenged in others, and the people whose job it is to adhere to rules, and indeed make the rules don’t see the point or come up with really stupid ones.
The chances of this changing any time soon? You can rule that out.