We should be talking about Nigel Farage more, actually

Back to my weekly attempt to write without overthinking, featuring fascism, tiny portions, and the looming approach of my thirties.

Photo by Lan Gao on Unsplash

Lately, perfectionism has been burning me out.

I keep waiting for the perfect idea, the fully formed essay, the argument that lands just right. As a freelancer, so much time is spent sorting ideas into “valuable” and “totally fucking useless,” and too often that value is tied simply to whether it’ll pay this month’s bills.

The result: I often don’t write at all. Which, for a journalist, is clearly not ideal. I don’t want to go into 2026 carrying this professional self-consciousness. So I’m treating this space as practice rather than performance: a place to think out loud, get things wrong, and learn in public. Sometimes I’ll write things with no argument, no logic, no obvious angle, and that’s the point.

For now, I’m binning perfectionism and returning to an old format: one political thought, one cultural thought, one personal thought each week. Some weeks will be sharp, some soft, some chaotic. But at least I’ll be writing.

Everyone’s driving drunk on racism

I’ve seen people I do (and don’t) respect arguing that we shouldn’t focus so much on whether Nigel Farage was racist at school. The well-meaning line is that it’s a distraction: his current politics are racist enough, his agenda still harms people, the poison is still spreading. And while I understand the instinct, I disagree.

I keep thinking about something that has been said to me a few times recently: racism has always been latent in society, and it’s our job — collectively — to keep a lid on it. People will hold these views, but policymakers and those with power must set boundaries. Making certain ideas socially unacceptable, even if the impulse exists under the surface, is a basic function of a liberal democracy.

But the “let’s not get bogged down in teenage behaviour” argument creates yet another excuse to sidestep the most explicit, supremacist form of racism — the kind so entitled, so dehumanising, that someone can say the worst thing imaginable with no flicker of empathy. This isn’t muttered bigotry; it’s brazen, full-frontal racism intended to strike fear into people’s hearts.

Yes, Reform is inflicting racist politics on children today through different means, and of course, we need to stop that. But this is precisely the moment where we must find the capacity to do both. In a radio debate this week, the commentator opposite me dismissed the allegations as “a different era” and “he was just a kid.” When pundits feel empowered to wave away the most explicit forms of racism, we’ve left acceptability altogether. Fascism isn’t just at the door — it’s through the door, smiling in your face and laying the table for its friends.

My feature on the radicalisation of middle-aged men came out in The New World over the weekend, and it strikes me that maybe “radicalisation” isn’t quite the right word. For many, these instincts always existed, filed away with the things you know not to touch. Social consequences kept the lid sealed. What’s unnerving is how quickly those guardrails have dissolved. X, Facebook and TikTok haven’t just eroded norms; they’ve incentivised people to express the ugliest, darkest versions of their thoughts to an audience hungry for it. The mask hasn’t slipped, it’s been ripped clean off, and people are performing their worst instincts as if they’re personality traits.

I don’t know how you rebuild guardrails once people get used to smashing through them. But I do know you can’t rebuild anything if you start by hand-waving away inarguable racism. It’s never acceptable; not forty years ago, not from a teenager, not even in an era where the BBC itself indulged racist stereotypes. We must treat this story with admonishment and righteous fury because of what it symbolises: the smashing of the Overton window, the normalisation of those slurs, and the steady signalling that some people are allowed to trample our sense of acceptability altogether.

In the pocket of Big Small Plates

In other news: I’m at war with small plates.

It’s that time of year when everyone is scattering through London looking for a half-decent meal to accompany a glass of wine and some festive goodwill. Twice this week, I’ve emptied my bank account at conceptual small-plates restaurants (the concept presumably being a social experiment to see how much four millennials with student loans will pay for three prawns), paying full-fat prices for what amounts to a fistful of protein “to be shared” between two to four people.

And while I’m on the subject: I don’t want tiny wine glasses either. Or tiny bread. Or six olives for £6. Or tiny tables, crammed in like sardines, somehow meant to host six to eight plates, planks, stones or tablets. Whatever happened to abundance? Food laid out like a Christmas advert — generous, rich, slightly ridiculous. I’m talking shanks, not lollipops. Pizzas, not pizettes. And what the hell is a Gilda? You can’t even eat the stick.

For the last time: I don’t want to nervously carve around the final morsel, leaving a fingernail’s width for my companion, both of us too polite to take the last mouthful. Then it’s whisked back to the kitchen — that’s £16 gone, surrendered to British politeness. Have you got room for dessert? Don’t take the piss.

Milestones are fine, it’s the existential dread I’m struggling with

And personally? Oh, just a sudden, looming dread. 2026 is a big year: I’m getting married and turning 30. I’m not scared of either milestone itself, but it’s hard to look forward to the good things when so much of my work requires staring directly into the Very Very Bad: the rapid descent into fascism, the erosion of norms, the rise of those who say the quiet part at stadium volume. There’s something faintly absurd about taking a five-minute break from writing about the far-right ecosystem to ask my partner if he’s given any more thought to how we might incorporate the cat into our reception. He hasn’t, by the way.

But then again, maybe there is comfort in knowing that despite everything, people still find time for love and connection. It can feel like everywhere you look there’s anger and bile, but then you remember we’re all looking into a funhouse mirror — sentiment distorted through the lens of social media — amplifying outrage and masking the fundamental goodness and humanity of so many.

We touch on a lot of that in tomorrow’s episode of Oh God, What Now?, which is a fascinating chat with me, Jonn Elledge and Olivia Brown, Associate Professor in Digital Futures. I’d recommend giving it a listen, especially if you need another reason to put down your phone, log off, and go kiss your cat.

Thanks for reading. That’s it for this week — rough edges and all. I’ll be back next week with more politics, culture, and personal nonsense, imperfectly delivered. Probably.