Blain’s Morning Porridge July 9^th, 2026 – Why I’d be voting for Binny MacBinface!

“The problem with political jokes is that they get elected…”

The fear of what might follow The Labour Government haunts the Gilts Market. Relief may come from the political implosion of Nigel Farage. Grubby Sleaze surrounds him as the UK’s much-loved Man of the People morphs into a discount-priced Mini-me version of Trump. The Crypto and graft entanglements that envelop him have shattered what made him so successful. Farage is no longer one of us. He is Them.

LINK TO PODCAST

It’s 10-years since the UK’s Natural Environment Council decided it be terwibbly democratic to let the Great British Public choose the name of its new polar research vessel. Someone suggested “Boaty MacBoatface” and everyone thought it a wonderful giggle. Naturally the comedy name won the popular vote… but the thought of the UK’s territorial ambitions being represented around the Southern Oceans by Boaty MacBoatface was too much for the British Antarctic Survey who would operate the vessel. A compromise was reached. The ship was named the Sir David Attenborough after a genuine national treasure.  Since the ship and the drone submersible given the Boaty MacBoatface moniker were launched in 2020 they’ve done sterling research work.

The great British Public like nothing more than a good old-fashioned belly-laugh at the expense of the establishment. Which leads me to wonder if Nigel Farage has just made a massive Binny MacBinface error.

Wouldn’t it be funny if he loses the Clacton By-Election to Count Binface – the comedy successor to the Monster Raving Looney Party?

And why not? After all,… many Brits voted for Brexit on the basis it would be a bit of laugh. I’d vote for the Bin on the same terms because it would be hilarious. I’d like to “light the blue touch paper” of Farage’s temper to see how he might react. After all, Farage is great politician of the people, he’ll get the joke and have a good old giggle about it over a pint or 10…

Except of course he won’t.

Witness Farage’s haunted demeanour over the last few months after he was caught accepting a £5mm “unconditional” gift from a crypto-billionaire just months before the UK 2024 Election. Or the £270,000 received for 12 hours work pimping a gold bullion company, a firm that owns Bitcoin Treasury co Stack BTC – chaired by the 10-day failed Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng – where Farage has a been granted a significant stake.

Everyone loves Nigel. He’s a man of the people. He likes a pint. He says it as it. He talks common sense. But now he is mired in allegations of sleaze… Oh dear. While the great British public can forgive most things (except Morris Dancing and Paedophilia), allegations of greed and financial wrongdoing tend to stick. It’s just not British.

Oh… money is such a grubby subject. And Farage is angry because he knows he made a massive mistake to have been caught up to his armpits in it. In many ways it’s a terrible waste of Nigel Farage’s undoubted political talents. His entry and subsequent career in politics and his success was based on his campaigning ability, his focus, and his skill in telling it as he saw it with humour. He made a mockery of the European parliament. And he exposed them with facts.

But then Farage set his sights higher – Brexit, and now Reform. As his political footprint has widened, he’s become exposed to a wider and wider circle of people – not all of them best-intentioned.

That has always been Farage’s problem. He is a gregarious man. The ex-City commodities trader, the man in the pub, the Brexit campaigner, picks his associates badly. And as he has advanced up the greasy political pole, controlling his own party… it’s who he listens to that have taken a toll. Today he looks exhausted and broken.

And now it’s coming back to haunt him. His involvement with Stack BTC, the money received from Christopher Harborne’s sizable 12% ownership of stable-coin Tether, and the degree to which jailbird crypto-financier George Cottrell has been bankrolling him all look to stem from his very debatable connections. If they finance him, they influence him. Nigel’s heart may be in the right place, but his head no longer is.

I’ll make no comment on the charges Farage has dodged declaring donations to Parliament, or the dubious sources of his income to Parliament – these will all emerge in the wash should Farage win back the Clacton seat he resigned from.

Farage is furious about the attention the “gifts” and earnings have attracted. However; “Let him without sin cast the first stone”: when Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner was found to have underpaid £40k in stamp duty of a flat he was incandescent with rage. He said it “screamed entitlement”, told the media her position was untenable, and led the campaign to hound her into resignation. (She has since settled the tax under-payment – yet it will haunt her political career for eternity.)

This morning Robert Jenrick, the former Tory leadership contender, now waiting in the wings to take over Reform should the Number 37 bus have its moment of destiny with Farage, (US readers – the Number 37 bus is a polite way of saying “removed” figuratively or literally), is being investigated for accepting £37k from a dodgy American who has pled guilty to wire-fraud. (Jenrick has form in this regard – given his previous closeness to property and pornography billionaire Richard Desmond, whom he may or may not have favoured when he was housing minister – just saying.)

There is no smoke without fire, but Reform is beginning to look like a Russian Oil Refinery after the Ukrainians visited.

Let’s be honest… Would the UK be any worse or better off without Farage? Lots of people think he’s great. Lots of people think Donald Trump is a political genius. Lots of people are wrong about lots of things.

Watching Farage dismiss questions on the £5mm gift given him by a well-dodgy crypto dude or explain why a fraud convicted scammer is apparently running his business, (which is his majority share in Reform Plc – it’s not a political party, but his company!), is embarrassing. He gets so angry when even valid questions are asked, dismissing questions as proof positive of the interviewers are horrid and lack intelligence.

Gosh… who else does that? Who else dismisses potential graft as irrelevant, treats his party like a personal fiefdom, and has done less for his nation’s greatness than Benedict Arnold?

Farage increasingly looks and sounds very much like the UK’s very own Trump Mini-Me.

Can he still lead Reform? He’s very good at telling everyone else they are crap, calling them the establishment, and blaming others for Broken Britain. But he’s never been in power or solved anything. That’s reflected in how newly-won Reform councils have struggled to get to grips with running local authorities – and become sidelined as a minority of poorly vetted candidates are exposed as misogynistic, racist, prone to conspiracy theory and graft.  Wow. MAGA clones.

I asked one of my Reform chums (one with a proper party job) what the current spending priorities are and they intend to pay for them and got a “f*ck off Blain and stop trying to wind me up” response… which I thought was harsh and unhelpful.

So, I checked out the Reform Website to find out what their policies are. They say Britain is a fantastically historical country with a proud past, and under Reform has an even more exciting future… and the secret sauce will be “strong leadership, prioritising Britain’s interests, making the country strong, prosperous and confident”. Reform will restore Britain’s power, reward hard work, defend our culture, and put British people first.

Marvellous. But how are they going to do it?

Stopping the boats. Deporting migrants. Securing and defending borders. Protecting the NHS. Restoring UK sovereignty. Supporting farmers. Paying fair wages. Scrapping net zero. Making citizens feel safe. Rebuilding manufacturing capacity. Protecting our culture. Rebuilding our Armed Forces. Putting Workers first. Putting businesses first. Embracing new technology. Cutting Foreign Aid. Cutting the Civil Service.

Equally marvellous. How are they going to pay for it?

Reform claims it will be able to cut taxes by £140 bln per annum, and make savings of £150 bln, thus improving the nations finances considerably. Except we know from Ms Reeves experience that a few basis points up or down in interest rates moves the dial considerably. And in the real world the only way to cut Bureaucracy is to hire more civil servants – and demonstrated in the famous paper by Hacker/Appelby in the 1970s.

I decided to delve into a policy statement…

Since I think Clarkson’s Farm is great campaigning TV, I read through Reform’s National Agricultural Policy. It will make food production the priority, but farmers will also be environmental stewards. Not sure how that works? Maybe a bit like planting a field with flowers to create diversity, but cutting them down for silage before baby birds have fledged? (Yep, that’s a genuine dilemma from the show.)

We also become food self-sufficient (not if it means eating sprouts or kale). The state will invest in policies such as soil health (genuinely a great idea), water management, infrastructure and tech – all of which is massively expensive. Less bureaucracy, pushing British food quality. Supporting rural Britain, including more local services like local abattoirs which will be critical.

The actual Agriculture Policy is contradictory, but broadly sensible and grown up. Most of it makes sense. How will it be delivered if Reform is at war with the Civil Service? It’s actually as good as the Agricultural policy wish lists the Liberals, Labour, the Tories, Plaid and the SNP are proposing. The problem for all parties is where does Agriculture come relative to the NHS, Defence, or stopping the boats? Which grand ambitions get cut first?

I could not find any agricultural policy statement from Lord Binface.

I then asked my chum Claude what he thought, and he suggested Reform might be a tad optimistic on their costings. Reforms’ tax cuts could leave a bigger funding gap, and savings are “difficult”, which could result in the kind of mess Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill has in the USA – where the Debt Clock is about to roll through $40 trillion dollars (up from $36 trillion on the day Trump took office 18 long months ago.)

The bottom line is Reform makes lots of grand political statements – but doesn’t explain how it will fund them. And that makes them no better and no worse than any other British Political Party.

Reform is popular because it’s a populist party. It has good and not so good ideas and is beginning to think about policy.

Its weakness is people. Fish rot from the head down. Farage is the soul of the party but now looks a broken man – caught in the web of financial entanglements the financial astute and acquisitive grifters around him are milking. It will be a shame to see Farage go – he could have become a National Treasure, the much-loved, mad as a box of frogs, right-wing uncle that was the life and soul of the party… reminding us of times long-gone…

Instead, he’s dressed himself in the new clothes of a party he no longer really controls, been caught in the web, and is likely to become a footnote – like Joseph Chamberlin – in UK political history.

And for that… the Gilts market will probably breathe a sigh of relief…

Out of time and back to the day job…

Bill Blain

Author of the Morning Porridge
CEO Windshift Capital
Advisor – Spitfire Strategic Capital

Meanwhile, don’t forget about my new book:

The Battle For Hamble is a proper grown-up examination of how economies fail: a tale of Greedy Corporates, Bad Planning and Economic Illiteracy. It uses a wholly unnecessary Gravel Quarry in the middle of a prosperous village to illustrate the multiple failings and abdications of responsibility that have created Broken Britain. It’s about bureaucracy, money, exploitation and shareholders vs stakeholders. It’s about social injustice – asking why it’s ok to put 6000 jobs at risk so corporate bosses can reap bigger bonuses! Whether is the Hamble Quarry, HS2 or the abysmal state of UK armed forces due to bad procurement, read the book to understand how its broken process and bureaucratic indifference that is sinking Britain.