Party of 'muppets and morons' could sink Tories for years

Count Binface is campaigning to be London Mayor

One of the glories of British elections is hearing eccentric candidates outline their manifestos.

Who can forget Lord Biro, of the Bus-Pass Elvis Party, standing in the 2016 Witney by-election and pledging better daytime telly for those on ­benefits, euthanasia booths in all Wetherspoons pubs, and making Richard Branson start a chain of Virgin Brothels (with a 20% discount for OAPs).

Today, Count Binface is campaigning to be London Mayor with vows to make Thames Water bosses take a dip in the capital’s foetid rivers “to see how they like it”, turn shops that play Christmas music before December into libraries and build “at least one affordable home”.

They are dismissed as well-meaning, harmless oddballs but if you want to find malevolent, dangerous oddballs look at the so-called mainstream party to the right of the Tories. Here you’ll find weird loners who’ve been made to soften their severe haircuts and tone down their manic facial features to appear respectable. But once their ugly mushes appear above the parapet, skeletons come tumbling out of closets.

Think back to UKIP, the party that David Cameron dismissed as the home of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”.

Back in 2014 Kerry Smith used phrases like “disgusting p**fters”, Roger Helmer believed gays were “abnormal” and William Henwood tweeted that Islam was just like the Third Reich and that Lenny Henry should emigrate to a “black country”.

Ten years on, UKIP’s latest hate-child, Reform, is giving us a new generation of dodgy oddballs. After declaring they will contest every seat in the general election they’ve already had to ditch seven prospective candidates over racist, homophobic and obscene social media posts.

Pete Addis used a racist slur about the Chinese, called Angela Rayner a “slag” and claimed: “Bum sex, this is where brown babies come from!” Jonathan Kay said that Africans had IQs “among the lowest in the world,” Amodio Amato claimed Sadiq Khan wants to run “a Muslim army” and Iris Leask reckoned ex-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace “should be left to die” in Afghanistan.

Reform leader Richard Tice (an even cheesier version of former fruitcake leader Robert Kilroy-Silk) claims it’s no big deal as “every party has its fair share of muppets and morons”. But maybe not as many openly racist morons, eh?

It’s easy to dismiss Reform as a bad joke as Cameron did UKIP, but with the Tories only four points ahead of them in opinion polls they know they could cost them a Labour landslide it would take a decade to recover from.

Which is why they are taking seriously a poll which shows 42% of Reform voters would back Rishi Sunak at the coming election if he offered a referendum on immigration, giving them the chance to slash foreign arrivals towards the net zero goal of their spiritual leader Nigel Farage.

And Sunak may become so desperate after the Rwanda farce backfires that he offers that referendum. Just as Cameron did in 2016. Which is a truly frightening prospect.

Who’s for another long, hate-filled, nation-splitting civil war about shutting our borders followed by a potential future without immigrants in which a Britain in permanent recession grinds to a halt?

All down, once again, to Tory cowardice and fear of upsetting their fruitcake tendency.

With Sunak so devoid of ideas or inspiration, I wouldn’t bet against it.