As expected, Nigel Farage promoted his two most recent Tory defectors to plum positions in his party. It’s all part of the grand delusion, says Herald columnist Kevin McKenna

The counterfeit politics of the UK’s main parties was evident once more as UK Reform unveiled their new top team. Nigel Farage appointed Robert Jenrick as the party’s ‘shadow chancellor’ and Suella Braverman as their Education minister in waiting. If any proof was still needed Reform are playing an elaborate confidence trick on those working-class voters it purports to speak for, the promotion of this pair of opportunists has just provided it.

Certainly, you can’t condemn Mr Farage for duping his supporters. In Scotland, the SNP have been doing it successfully for ten years or so. Sir Keir Starmer and Labour’s Inch-High Private Eye detective agency came to power on the delusion that they’re left-wing. To paraphrase the influential American political savant, Buddy the Elf, the British Prime Minister “sits on a throne of lies”.

Since 2015, we’ve never been far away from the next incoming declaration of intent about independence by the SNP. There have been so many that you’re able to create a mosaic of all the breathless headings. On several occasions spanning a period of five years we’ve been told to ‘Get Ready for IndyRef 2’. Another standard is ‘Sturgeon says IndyRef2 will beat at heart of the campaign’. My favourite was ‘Snap Indyref likely next autumn’ according to a former SNP minister in August, 2020.

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