As a former prominent leader of Reform faces jail for taking bribes to make pro-Russian statements, Neil Mackay says we have to ask serious questions about any possible links between the party and the Kremlin

IN this broken and cruel decade, the most extraordinary stories are often the least surprising.

Who, anymore, for example, is shocked by the outrages Donald Trump commits against democracy, liberty and free speech?

Clearly, what he’s doing may offend and anger you, but you expect it, right?

Does the butchering of yet another child in Gaza or Ukraine still seem somehow unexpected?

Clearly, what is being done should offend and anger you, but you expect it, right?

It’s a sign of how the times are calcifying our souls that these outrages are no longer “surprising”; that such events, and I write this with horror, have even come to seem “normal”.

They are, evidently, not normal. They’re deeply abnormal and morally repulsive, but they accord with what we know of the world already. They fit a pattern of ghastly predictability.

Some rotten, infernal truths are now standard: Trump is an autocrat; the lives of Palestinians and Ukrainians mean nothing to the brutes who run Israel and Russia.

A similar numbness seems to pervade the British public’s perception of Reform.

Currently, we should be in a state of collective outrage and revulsion at the crimes of Nathan Gill.

Instead, there’s a collective sense of “oh well, so now we know the rumours were true”.

That in itself tells you all you need to know about Reform.

A recap: Gill is the former leader of........

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