STEPHEN GLOVER: Why the Left-wing Blob will do everything in its power to subvert and destroy a future Reform government

Who is the most important British politician of our time? Definitely Nigel Farage.

Without his tireless campaigning there would be no Brexit referendum. As leader of the Reformed United Kingdom, he now threatens to overthrow the two-party system that has dominated for a century.

You might like Nigel Farage. You may not like it. You may not be sure. But any fair-minded person has to admit that he is an important figure who should not be ignored.

So why is the BBC doing exactly this? Unlike Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, he was not asked to appear on Radio 4’s prestigious Desert Island Discs. Of course, he had been a leading national politician for much longer than either of them.

He was never invited to the show because his presence would have made Wake Corporation staff feel ‘unsafe’, according to Tory peer Michael Ashcroft’s new biography of Farage. The producers are also said to be afraid of backlash from potential guests who might boycott the film.

So Farage wasn’t ‘platformed’ by a big-name show that highlights the human side of its subjects, but of course he did appear on numerous confrontational political shows.

The BBC, which is supposed to be impartial as our public service broadcaster, denies it left him out and claims it would be ‘delighted to revisit’ [Farage’s] There is interest in a future series’. However, it cannot be said that no invitation has been received for many years.

It is also noteworthy that although Desert Island Discs could not find room for Farage, it welcomed far-left figures such as militant union leader Arthur Scargill and former Labor Cabinet minister Tony Benn.

Desert Island Discs is a niche program and so some people might think the BBC’s refusal to host Farage isn’t that big of a deal. But this is symptomatic of a broader, anti-democratic bias.

Most of the time, the aunt does her best to pretend Farage doesn’t exist, leading a party that is consistently ahead in the polls. When he and his colleagues are interviewed, they are often treated as virtual criminals. So-called comedy programs such as Radio 4’s The News Quiz constantly demonize the Reformation.

The blame is not against Nigel Farage personally, but against the millions of people who have voted for Reform since 2024, and the millions who will do so at the next General Election.

For the metropolitan, left-leaning chattering classes who dominate the BBC from top to bottom, Farage is the ultimate bogeyman, while Reform voters are misguided at best and unspeakable at worst.

Please note that I do not write like a cheerleader for the Reformation. The BBC and others have every right to question Farage on matters such as his close relationship with Donald Trump and his acceptance of a £5 million gift from billionaire Christopher Harborne (which, in my opinion, is still inadequately disclosed).

What will be rejected is treating the leader of Reform and his party as if they were in a special category of their own, which in the BBC’s distorted view makes them much paler than representatives of the hard Left.

This perspective is not limited to the Publishing House. Far from it. If Reform forms government after the next election, Farage will be treated as a pariah by other bodies as well as various institutions of state.

People claim Britain is currently ‘ungovernable’. This is not true. However, the enemies of democracy will do everything they can to make this happen if the Reformation wins the election.

In the first place, it would be said that Reform on the Left had no mandate to govern, but such people were happy for Labor to come to power with a huge majority in the ‘loveless landslide’ of 2024, with just 33.7 per cent of the vote.

The civil service will then try to obstruct the Reformation at every opportunity by leaking stories of ministers’ bad behavior to friends in the media and, most likely, by refusing to carry out ministerial instructions.

The Public and Business Services Union, Whitehall’s largest, recently had the audacity to debate a motion to oppose ‘sustained industrial action’ against a ‘hostile Reform government’.

It will not be just civil servants who will go on strike. Teachers’ unions, junior doctors and others will try to overthrow the Reform government. It’s happened before.

In 1974 militant mining unions overthrew Ted Heath’s Conservative administration. A decade later, miners led by the above-mentioned Arthur Scargill – guest of honor at Desert Island Discs – tried to do the same to Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government. Fortunately, they failed.

Undoubtedly, unions are less powerful than they were 40-50 years ago, when they had much more members. But their ability to continue to wreak havoc was proven by a series of strikes by junior doctors.

It won’t end here. If the reform keeps its promise to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights (a policy that Kemi Badenoch also supports), there will be legal challenges that could also involve the Supreme Court.

One way or another, the ‘Blob’ (the reactionary forces of the left with their own interests and extreme policies that often appear moderate) will seek to frustrate and destroy a Reform government.

Of course the party has already sorted this out, so Danny Kruger (the civilized former Tory MP who defected to Reform) was given the task of preparing the government by Nigel Farage.

He recently proposed a civil service reform that would include abolishing the 11,000-staff Cabinet Office and making it easier for ministers to sack underperforming senior civil servants.

I’m sure Farage, Kruger and others are acutely aware of the storms ahead and the intense attempts at destabilization they will face if Reform comes to power after the next election, with or without the Conservatives.

We can also be sure that the BBC is another British institution that will seek to undermine the Reform government, albeit much more subtly than the unions.

Farage complained about the Corporation’s ‘Left-wing bias’. He also insisted that the Reform would not ‘completely destroy the BBC’, while also declaring that ‘repair is long overdue’. A bloody war seems inevitable.

All of this may happen sooner than we think, as Andy Burnham is reportedly considering calling a snap election to take over if he becomes Prime Minister. He’s hoping for a quick ‘electoral bounce’ before voters tire of him quickly, which they certainly will.

Polls differ on whether Reform or Labor will emerge victorious in the snap election. I suspect Burnham might chicken out and try to soldier on for another two or three years, only to end in inevitable defeat.

It may happen soon, it may happen later, but there is a very strong possibility that Reform will emerge as the ruling party. I fear that we will experience great instability as the left, in all its guises, disregards democratic principles.

So yes, Desert Island Disks is a niche program that most of the population is unaware of. But by attempting to sideline Nigel Farage and treating him as if he were both unacceptable and unrepresentative, the BBC has given us a foretaste of the bitter struggles that lie ahead.