Nigel Farage will say pretty much anything for money. Write him a script, stuff a coin in the slot and off he goes: the man who would be prime minister can be your personal mouthpiece for less than £100.

Or at least, that’s the obvious explanation for why – as exposed by the Guardian – the Reform leader has been churning out written-to-order video messages on request for (among others) Canadian white supremacists, a man jailed for throwing a bottle during the 2024 summer riots, and someone apparently keen to hear him talk about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “big naturals”, pornified slang describing the breasts of a woman who could be running for US president before long.

Either he wanted the cash badly enough not to ask too many questions, or he actually meant the stuff he was saying, and since he swears he’s not a racist or misogynist – well, draw your own conclusions. For what it’s worth, a representative of the Canadian group now insists they picked Farage “for a laugh” and to teach him the consequences of “being lazy and stupid enough to say anything for a dollar”. To misquote Trump, it ain’t Churchill we’re dealing with here.

Let’s be honest: it’s likely none of this will be a dealbreaker for diehard Reform voters, if only because it’s precisely what some of them are here for. The revealing thing about Cameo – a platform where B-list celebs, gamers, sports stars and reality TV contestants rent themselves out to record personalised messages for your loved ones’ birthdays or stag dos – isn’t just what performers are willing to say for the money, but what their fans typically want to hear. The actor Miriam Margolyes, for example, gets hired to tell mothers how much their daughters love them, while comedians invariably get asked to repeat their most famous catchphrase ad nauseam. Farage gets commissioned to discuss how secret societies are running the world, obliging by rattling........

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