Admiring Malcom Offord’s Jaguar

“The best belonged to Malcolm Offord, though: a vintage, open-top Jaguar sports car, Bond-esque in its sleek lines and growling power. Offord, with his sunglasses and slicked-back, wealthy man’s hair, looked entirely fit for purpose in the driver’s seat as he roared off into the countryside.”

It’s a remarkable piece of journalism.

A reminder to New Statesman readers that Offord, the subject of such unfiltered admiration, is to lead a party whose UK leader recently announced a five-year plan, which would include tearing up human rights laws and sending people to countries where they could be at risk of imprisonment, torture or death. He confirmed women and children would be among those to be locked up on arrival, as he set out plans to build huge detention centres in military camps and charter five flights a day for deportations.About 600,000 asylum seekers could be deported in the first parliament of a Reform government, Farage suggested. He promised uniformed officers raiding Britain’s towns and cities, disappearing people off the street for rendition to countries they’ve never been to, with no recourse to legal protections, claiming that it’s what “normal countries do.”

It is, by any account, the most extreme political agenda laid out by a political party in our lifetimes.

Deerin continues: “I think he’s a terrific get for his new party, for a variety of reasons. He’s smart and successful, having amassed a fortune in private equity, with a grasp of economics and business that will dwarf that of anyone else at Holyrood, presuming he makes it there in next May’s election. He’s passionately and authentically Scottish, born to an ordinary background in Greenock and with the useful habit of throwing in the odd bit of Scottish slang when he speaks. The condition of Scotland has been his main political focus, as he proved with the publication of an excellent paper, “Wealthy Nation, Healthy Nation”, earlier this year. This looked at how the legacy of Adam Smith might be used to boost growth and productivity north of the border, and examined the failings of the nation’s education and health systems. All this helps tackle the perceived “Englishness” of Reform.”

There’s a lot to take in here, but to break it down: being wealthy is a good in itself; he’s ‘authentically Scottish’ (whatever in the hell that means); he knows Scottish slang (michty me!); and this will all go towards offsetting the fact that Reform are an English nationalist party with literally no Scottish policies at all.

Apart from the craven, parochial and cringeworthy tone of the above, the question remains why a supposedly left-wing magazine would publish a piece in support of a political party with a clearly laid out fascist agenda?

Only the editor Tom McTague can really answer that, but the wider reason for the Unionist commentariat hitching themselves to the Reform UK bandwagon is extreme opportunism and a complete lack of moral or political compass. They know that Labour and the Tories are in electoral freefall, and the only vehicle which can damage the cause of independence is Reform UK. In support of their ultimate goal: faithfully defending the Union, they are quite willing to support the most extreme political entity in the post-war era.

Political journalism is as much about what you put in as what you leave out. Deerin’s piece artfully dodged the big issues of Offord’s route to the House of Lords, just as it avoided the extreme agenda Farage laid out in the summer, just as he bypassed the issue of anti-semitism that hangs over Reform UK’s leader in these dark times. Sometimes people talk of the ‘political class’ and the ‘media class’ – Deerin and Offord are where you can see the join, at “a lunch for well-to-do business types.”