the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Thinking about the reactions of the three main political parties to the recent donation of £5 millions to Farrago, one might be forgiven that theirs was a past wholly unsullied by such grubby goings-on. That they conducted themselves with unimpeachable moral probity at all times. And as such, were ever vigilant to avoid even the merest whiff any financial impropriety. To this end, were careful to avoid any association with anyone whose own financial affairs were not as blameless as their own.

Of course this isn’t true. Wherever there is power, there are those with the power but no money, and those with the money but no power. Power in the political sense. Power to influence legislation. To ban something, make something else harder to do or to relax and even abolish some other legislation.

There are numerous examples. So many, in fact, that to even mention a few of them would be to avoid mentioning countless others. One thing is a constant though. Which is when it is made public knowledge they that are the recipient of a large donation from a hitherto unknown business person, it’s all injured innocence. Allegations of a politically motivated smear campaign by their rivals, a trial by media, rumour and innuendo, blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard it all before and no doubt we’ll hear it all again.

The most blatant example of this is of course the one that is hardly ever seen as problematic; the money that the trade unions give to the Labour Party. Not a surprise. The Labour Party was created by the trade unions to give the working class a political voice in parliament. However when trade unions threaten to withdraw some of their funding, only for massive pay increases to be awarded by this Labour government to end strikes called by the same unions, then the £5 millions some bloke gave to Farrago seems wholly irrelevant. Teachers, junior doctors and tube drivers unions have all tried it on. Have demanded – and been given – pay deals that will only encourage them and other unions to make even more outrageous demands.

But there’s no hypocrisy at all when ‘Labour calls on Sunak to return Frank Hester’s £10m Tory donation.’ Or when the ‘Lib Dems (were) under pressure to return £2.4m donation from fraudster.’ Especially when none of the money was returned.

They’re all at it. Well they were. Not anymore. Donations to all three main parties have collapsed. In 2025 Reform got more than all of them combined.

Again, I’m no Farrago fanboy. He really did himself no favours at all when questioned about the donation, he tetchily replied, “I can spend it on Ferraris if I want. It’s entirely up to me.”

Not when his girlfriend is Laure Ferrari…

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And here we go again! There is yet another poll in ‘The Guardian’ today about Farrago, and as all like every poll that ‘The Guardian’ publishes about Farrago, this one is equally as s damming.

‘More than half of voters view Farage and Reform as ‘very sleazy’ Wow! More than half? Tell me more!

‘YouGov has published polling today suggesting that more than half of voters regard Nigel Farage as “very sleazy”. On this measure, he scores far worse than any of the other party leaders. Even 40% of Reform UK voters regard him as “sleazy”.’

Mmm. That would be the same YouGov that pays people to its surveys. People that want to surveyed and have signed up to be. People who are incentivised. And the more surveys they do, the greater the rewards. People who tend to be younger and spend more time online. Just so we’re clear.

So I saddled up my hobby-horse and rode on over to YouGov to find out more.

They handily summarise the findings, the nice ‘Guardian’ friendly ones, at the top of the page. This saves anyone bothered enough to look the trouble of scrolling further down down the page, past all of the coloured bar charts and the boring explanations as to what it all means, until they find this;

‘Additionally, 31% of Reform voters see the party they backed in 2024 as sleazy, a similar number to the 29% of Tory voters who say the same of their party’s record since the last election (although 55% brand the Conservative governments from 2019 to 2024 as sleazy). Four in ten Labour voters (42%) likewise deem the Labour government since 2024 to have been disreputable.’

Hang on! Shouldn’t that be the headline in ‘The Guardian’. ‘More than half of all Conservatives voters think that the Conservative governments since 2019 were ‘sleazy’ Or how about, ‘ Over 40% of Labour voters think Labour is ‘disreputable’

That is, after all, what the survey says. But how many people did YouGov ask? Being a sad sack I checked. Had to open another page to find out though. 2083, thats how many. Or few, depending on your point of view. ‘The Guardians’ point of view though is abundantly clear.

It’s true, inasmuch as the being factually correct. People really did say that. But not that many people were asked. But clearly, as long as they can use the poll to attack Farrago, ‘The Guardian’ doesn’t mind.