‍Like some elderly gurning limbo dancer, Nigel Farage never misses an opportunity to go lower and lower. He revels in his reputation as the only man brave enough to tell it like it is.

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‍Man of the people? What bollocks! He is a master opportunist, first and foremost out for himself, a millionaire grifter leading a party of the rich (Richard Tice, Danny Kruger, Zia Yusef and Little Bobby Jenrick), the gullible (daft Sarah Pochin, professional idiot Lee Anderson), and the failed (Suella Braverman and Andrew Rosindell).

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‍This week he finally put in an appearance in the Commons, basking in the glory of having triggered Tommy Robinson and prize chump Lawrence Fox into stirring up the mob in Southampton following the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak. All Farage had to do was tell us that we should “respond with pure cold rage” and that was enough to light the fuse. Which of course he knew it would.

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‍Does he think he has a monopoly on the horror and sadness we felt when seeing the bodycam footage of Henry’s last moments? I know of nobody who is not shocked and sickened by the sight of police reading the poor boy his rights while handcuffing him. And telling him “I don’t think you have mate” when Henry cries out that he has been stabbed.

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‍In one of his rarer than rare appearances in the Commons Farage was left in no doubt about what the House thought of him. He was met with shouts of “Condemn the violence” as he asked when ’two-tier’ policing would end. 

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‍He was condemned by Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey and Keir Starmer. In the case of Starmer, he fixed Farage with a cold stare and said: “I’m really shocked that he pretends to have respect for Henry’s family and then acts in this way…they made a simple plea to us to please not exploit his death. 

‍His response is to appeal for rage. Rage! It shows exactly who he is”.   

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‍It does indeed. Farage is a chancer, a spivvy Del Boy without the cheek or the charm. He is not fit to be a parish councillor, let alone a would-be prime minister. He has no judgement, no morals, no class and, I hope, when a general election is called, no chance. By then the councils which have fallen to Reform will have proved what a shower they are. So too  his little misfit band of MPs

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‍However, much as I would like Reform to win the Makerfield by-election to keep out that smug leftie King of the Bloody North Burnham, I fear the ‘plucky plumber’ Rob Kenyon is simply too thick to convince even voters thoroughly fed up with conventional politics. In one TV interview he denied everything (antisemitism, admiration for Putin and a liking for Miss Vorderman’s nether regions) and then claimed that if he had said them (which he had), it was when he was a private individual.

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‍The  fact is Nigel Farage in No 10 would be another Liz Truss, clueless and politically illiterate. Just richer with up to £1 million-a-year from sources other than representing the poor saps of Clacton. Were it not for the wonders of satnav he probably wouldn’t be able to find his own constituency.

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‍On Wednesday he was called out for what he really is, not just by the party leaders but by the Commons as one, and it was noticeable how stoney-faced his own MPs were. 

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‍Compare and contrast this odious creep with the grace of Henry’s father Mark and with Martin Cosser whose son Charlie was stabbed to death almost three years ago. In that time Martin and his wife Tara have formed Charlie’s Promise, the charity devoted to educating kids about the horror of knife crime. Martin  spends most of his time touring schools talking to the very children who could be future victims or indeed future killers.

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‍He has the backing of both the King and the prime minister and deservedly so. Farage has the approval of Trump and Musk.

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‍I rest my case.

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‍Older ex-Express hands may remember Roy Wright, the here-today-gone-tomorrow Express editor who filled the gap between Alastair Burnet and Derek Jameson. Well, let me tell you he has a namesake (no relation) who is the former art editor of the Sunday Mirror and now draws the most extraordinary images of trees.

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‍To make it more difficult he uses charcoal and each of his subjects is detailed to the last vein of the last leaf. Many are from the glorious Richmond Park, Roy’s local, and in the main they are done from scratch with Wright sitting in front of them for hours, hoping they and the wind obey his request not to move.

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‍This particular gnarled old thing looks like something Dorothy might have seen along the Yellow Brick Road but it’s one of Richmond’s finest and oldest in the snow. The detail is incredible.

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‍He has many commissions from gardeners anxious to have a cherished oak or spruce immortalised and he does well in the US.

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‍Thus proving that there is life after Fleet St when you branch out and turn over a new leaf. Oh well, please yourself.

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‍AND FINALLY

‍Yesterday was the first day of the 150th Test match to be played at Lord’s and what a Test this is becoming. To celebrate, most living England captains who led their teams out of that great pavilion were there to celebrate. Everyone from Michael Brearley to Ben Stokes and including Botham, Vaughan, Gower, Gooch, Gatting, Cook and Strauss. Sadly not Ted Dexter, my boyhood hero, who captained England in the ‘60s and died five years ago at the age of 86.

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‍I was there in 1963 as a 17-year-old over from Ireland when he scored one of his greatest innings. It was for just 70 but full of the most dashing strokes in only 75 balls against the Windies’ finest, Wes Hall, Charlie Griffith and Gary Sobers.

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‍In those days we were allowed to sit on the grass and I longed for a four to come my way. Which it didn’t. I finally met Dexter at a cricket writers’ dinner in the early 90s and I was like a nervous teenager again, in awe of the great man.

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‍ALAN FRAME

‍5 June 2026