When Reform MPs bother to put in a parliament appearance they only have 5 seats. Which minority gets too much media attention?
From the amount of coverage that Farage and Reform UK Party Ltd recieve from news outlets such as the BBC, Channel 4 News, The Telegraph and even The Guardian, people could get the impression that Reform UK Party Ltd are a major political force. Until recently they had the same number of seats as the Green Party, and are dwarfed by the 72 Liberal Democrat MPs. In terms of parliamentary impact the Reform UK Party Ltd members actually score a lot lower than The Green Party as Reform members rarely bother going to the House of Commons and certainly do not bother voting much.
Amongst the issues that Farage has been disinterested in or voted against are: stalking, harassment, drink spiking, upskirting, and posting of personal photos of women without their consent online. Farage and Reform do not care about women’s safety except when they tie it to boats. Similarly he has shown no concern about children’s safety and openly opposed online safety relating to access to material on suicide, self-harm, eating disorders or pornography. While the Online Safety bill is flawed he has made no constructive contributions.
Journalists are likely to be just lazy and using the frequent publicity events as easy content to fill pages and air time. Unfortunately they are being uncritical amplifiers of what is hypocritical nonsense or fantasy policies with no actual thought or planning. When Farage is whinging about ‘illegal migrants’ no journalists have challenged him on his role in the Brexit process which resulted in end of the Dublin Agreement. This agreement allowed lots of irregular migrants to be quickly returned. The departure from the EU has been a major contributor to the growth in the number of asylum applicants awaiting processing.
Journalists neglect the opportunities to tackle them over the hypocrisy of their pronouncements.