Kmflett's Blog

Farage & the 12 day rule

When Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair’s spin doctor he was said to have a 12 day rule about stories on people or issues. If they story was still running after 12 days things did not look good.

Campbell later denied he had said this. After all when you’ve authored a dodgy dossier it pays to be a little forgetful about your past (notwithstanding his Diaries).

Stories about what Nigel Farage is alleged to have said in his Dulwich College school days first appeared on 18^th November. The 12 day limit has long since been passed.

After that came the question of what Farage knew, if anything, about his colleague Nathan Gill’s Russian bribes.

Then more recently a former Reform Councillor who monitored Farage’s election expenses at Clacton in 2024 has sent a dossier to the Essex police with the claim that legal spending limits were exceeded and a number of items not declared.

Josh Glancy commented in the Sunday Times (7^th December) about the Dulwich allegations:

Farage’s response to these stories about his school behaviour has been an unconvincing mess a revealed a side to him that could yet cost him electorally

On 10th December Kemi Badenoch urged Farage to say sorry on Talk TV, a Murdoch owned media outlet. Badenoch is not a great one for apologies herself but the point here is that on Day 22 the story remains in the news and Farage has been unable or unwilling to draw a line under it

In an interview with Talk TV, Badenoch said:

A lot of people are coming out saying [Farage] did say those things. He should just apologise. If he just said: ‘You know, I was a kid, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It was wrong. People shouldn’t speak like that,’ this would all have gone away.

And that’s the problem. It’s not that he’s racist, that he doesn’t care. And actually, I think as a serious politician, if you want to run the country, you should care about how the words you say impact people …

Interesting is it’s not one or two people. They’ve got like 20. They’ve got 20 people. So it’s a lot of people.

Whether [Farage] remembers or not, he didn’t deny it. He said, well, actually, he wasn’t trying to hurt people. Nigel’s a big boy. He should just stand up, put on his big boy pants, and just say: ‘Do you know what? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’ The fact that he doesn’t want to do that is a bit strange to me. That’s what I would have done.

Now 26 people who were at Dulwich College with Farage have written an open letter (Guardian 17th Dec) demanding that he apologises