Farage and Musk are coming for Scotland

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‬Farage has KGBNews, Elon Musk and Twitter, he’s all over TikTok. The Trump cultists and all the power behind their libertarian aims back him too, as well as the dark money funded ‘think tanks of Tufton St. Farage is the UK face of a world wide and well funded movement to turn democracies into libertarian wealth extraction machines for the 1%. And now they’re coming for Scotland.

Scotland has a hardcore of right-wing bigots. Thankfully their numbers are small but their voices are loud and we can’t be complacent – the far-right everywhere have organised well. Generally the country’s politically aware and well-educated and you’d hope that would serve as a bulwark against Reform’s racist bullshit. But there are far too many who pretend that their racism is patriotism and who act as though being called out for their racism and bigotry is far worse than being a racist or a bigot.

The real problem here are the anti-independence parties, and Scotland’s predominantly anti-independence media, in particular BBC Scotland and the Labour party in Scotland, which are determined to fend off independence at all costs but which are remarkably lacking in curiosity about the quality of the UK that they insist Scotland must remain a part of. The BBC is more than happy to platform and amplify the far right. Farage is to a large extent a creature of the BBC.

The tories burned down the country and cycled through seven prime ministers because they couldn’t even form a coalition just within their own party, and then Labour took power and instead of saying ‘we’re going to undo Brexit’ they decided to buy into the increasingly unhinged agenda that the ever more hard right Tories have been pushing thanks to dark money funded hard right Tufton Street sewage tanks which have been normalised and platformed by the British media, not least the BBC.

Now there’s a new threat. It is being reported that this century’s greatest threat to democracy Elon Musk is looking at ways to funnel US$100 million in donations to Nigel Farage and Reform UK, the equivalent of £78 million as part of his on going feud with Starmer. Musk has successfully bought the American government and now he wants to do the same here. Musk wants Farage to become the next Prime Minister in part because he took the huff after being criticised by Starmer for the misinformation that he and his social media bin-fire propagated in the summer during the racist anti-migrant riots which beset many towns in England. The war of words began during last summer’s far-right riots, when Musk posted on X that “civil war in inevitable” in the UK.

Musk’s inflammatory comment prompted Downing Street to hit back: “There’s no justification for comments like that and what we’ve seen in this country is organised illegal thuggery which has no place on our streets or online.”

Musk went on to criticise the introduction of inheritance tax for agricultural land by Rachel Reeves in the Budget, and last month accused Labour of turning Britain into a “tyrannical police state”. Well, Musk knows a lot about being a tyrant. Just ask anyone who worked for Twitter when he bought it.

Musk cannot donate directly to a political party in the UK as he is not a British citizen, but a man with his obscene wealth could find ways around that restriction given the openness of British politics to dark money. Musk is a South African-born billionaire who lives in the US. Our election laws are explicitly supposed to prevent foreign donations like this – but anyone, from anywhere, can get around the rules if they donate through a UK registered company. He could make the donation via the British registered subsidiary of his Twitter platform, a move which would turn it into a nakedly partisan campaigning social media company. There are no laws requiring political balance in advertising or algorithms on social media platforms. Musk could flood Twitter with adverts for Reform UK and attacks on its political opponents. This would give Farage and Reform the same advantage in the UK as Musk gave to Trump and the Republicans in America during the recent US elections.

It beggars belief that we could be on the verge of a far right authoritarian government in Westminster because of the UK’s lax laws on political funding and the hissy fit of a petulant man child. Remember in 2014 Better Together assured Scotland that Scotland needed the protection of Westminster to defend against political extremism. Chalk that up as another lie.

All this is of particular concern to Scotland as elections are due here in May 2026 whereas we are almost five years away from another Westminster general election. Musk’s attempt to buy British democracy in favour of his preferred brand of far right anti-immigrant nationalist populism could strike Scotland first. The amount of cash that Musk is reportedly talking about injecting into Reform UK is immense in comparison to the funds available to other parties Reform UK could have millions to spend on its Scottish election campaign, potentially seriously distorting the political landscape.

We already know what Farage wants to do to Scotland, because he told us in 2013. He said “If and when the Scots bottle it on 8 September [sic] and vote no, they will see a stronger English voice because people have had enough of Scottish self-indulgence.”

British democracy is broken, Elon Musk didn’t break it, he’s merely taking advantage of an inadequate system created by all of the large British political parties who have consistently put their own short term interest ahead of the public good because they all think they can game the system to their own advantage. The result is a ludicrously unbalanced media landscape and a political system which is awash with dark money.

Campaigners have warned about the pernicious influence of dark money in our politics for many years but neither Labour nor the Tories have shown any interest in doing anything about it. Why should they? They are the ones who benefit. Control of political funding is reserved to Westminster As campaigner Peter Geoghegan points out: https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/musks-100m-to-farage-will-break-our-democracy-starmer

“Even if Farage and Musk break election law, why would they care? The maximum fine the Electoral Commission can impose is just £20,000. That’s not even small change to the world’s richest man.”

Starmer needs to get his nose out of Blackrock’s trough and fix Britain’s broken electoral laws and laws about transparency of funding for think tanks, and he needs to do it now – if he doesn’t, we will all suffer the consequences and it’s not just the money in our politics which will be dark, it’s all of our futures. Musk’s threat of a massive and destabilising donation to a hard right English nationalist party has the potential to destabilise democracy entirely. The prospect that it could become illegal to campaign for Scottish independence has become frighteningly real.

There are now reports that the Labour government is going to look at limiting individual political donations to £100,000 annually. It’s a small step in the right direction but doesn’t go nearly far enough and it may not be in place in time for the next Scottish elections. The time for decisive action is now. However increasingly it is looking as though Scotland is facing a choice between independence or Prime Minister Farage.

There’s a glitch in WordPress’s editing software, links embedded in a piece are broken in the version that is emailed out to subscribers. I’m trying to find a work around. In the meantime I will fix broken links post-publication.

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