Are Gill’s offences being used to smear the populist rebellion that Reform represents?
DANIEL JUPP
IF YOU pay any attention to news and politics, you will have noticed that the last few days have been utterly dominated by the name ‘Nathan Gill’. It’s likely that this might also be the very first time you’ve heard of this person. There’s a reason for that.
The ostensible reason is that Gill has just been sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence for taking bribes from a Ukrainian businessman with Russian links. Gill, a pretty minor figure in UK politics, served as a member of the European Parliament for Wales between 2014 and January 2020. He also served as a Member of the National Assembly of Wales between May 2016 and December 2017.
What this amounts to then is a grand total of about seven years serving in elected positions. And with all due respect (perhaps more than is due at all) to second tier levels of politics in terms of actual power since the Parliament of the EU is a talking shop, with almost all real power vested in the Commission, and the Welsh Assembly acts somewhat like a gigantic council.
Gill was not a nationally known and well recognised figure prior to his crimes. He wouldn’t be one now, either, save for three things.
First, for a brief period of just two years, Gill was the head of the Reform Party in Wales. Second, Gill committed crimes of corruption and national betrayal. And third, Reform are leading in the polls by a considerable distance ahead of the detested governing Labour Party and all the other parties too.
Gill’s offences matter to the media because his brief connections with Reform can be used to smear the entire populist rebellion that Reform represents.
Now, before I’m accused of ignoring what Gill did, let’s make it plain that anyone taking bribes to pose questions that are friendly to a foreign power is not someone I would seek to defend.
Gill’s trial heard that he had taken at least £40,000 in payments between December 2018 and 2019 from the Ukrainian politician Oleg Voloshyn to present pro-Russian comments both in the European Parliament and pro-Russian Ukrainian news outlets like 112 Ukraine and News One (both of which were subsequently closed down by Zelensky’s government). Gill had also been made a board member of these media stations.
My cynicism regarding this story does not equate with a defence of such actions but the way it was used to attack Reform by implying guilt by association.
If we look at Gill’s political history we see this: a trajectory common to many vacillating voters of the right, as well as to some political leaders. Before 2004, Gill was a Conservative. Between 2004 and 2018 he was in UKIP (his longest party affiliation, and, it’s true to say and obvious to say, one Farage shared for some of that sane period). Between 2018 and 2019 he was an Independent and between 2019 and 2021 he was in the Brexit Party/Reform. He left Reform in 2021.
In other words his movement is similar to one any voter on the right might have made. But the basic reality is this: Gill was not in Reform when he committed his crimes, and he left Reform a year before Russia invaded Ukraine.
When one looks into his history at any depth, too, we get some interesting points that nobody is mentioning, such as that Gill left UKIP in protest at former leader Gerard Batten’s support for Tommy Robinson (a pretty mainstream, conformist action for a man now being described as some sort of far right firebrand).
But the media headlines are all about linking Gill, Russia and Reform. They are primarily being used to smear Reform because Reform is an electoral threat. It is a version of the Russia Collusion Hoax deployed against Donald Trump, a fiction invented by the Hilary Clinton campaign team and then knowingly advanced, with full knowledge of its lack of truth, by the mainstream media and by every Trump opponent of the last decade. The objective is to promote the idea that parties of the right are in league with our enemies.
The reports therefore both downplay Gill’s paymaster being a Ukrainian and overplay Gill’s Reform history.
Hence, the BBC led with Reform UK’s ex-Wales leader Nathan Gill admits pro-Russian bribery, the Guardian with Reform UK’s ex-leader in Wales Nathan Gill pleads guilty to bribery charges, the New York Times with Former Reform UK Politician Sent to Prison for Taking Pro-Russian Bribes, Sky News with Reform UK’s former Wales leader Nathan Gill jailed for accepting pro-Russian bribes, and the Independent with Reform UK’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, jailed over pro-Russia bribes.
Gill’s crimes become a very convenient weapon against Reform and against Nigel Farage in particular. Yet none of these articles bother to mention how long Gill has been disassociated from Reform. None of them see fit to mention that there is zero connection between these crimes and any of the Reform leadership or any Reform policy. Gill’s other party affiliations go unmentioned.
Why is that? Well, the Conservatives are still a mass immigration and globalism complicit mainstream party, to the extent that their chairman, Kevin Hollinrake, is running around disgustingly comparing Reform to Nazism (again, copying US Democrat smears of Trump).
And as for UKIP, they aren’t the urgent populist threat anymore. There’s no point in linking Gill’s crimes to UKIP because it’s not the party now threatening to replace Labour in power.
After Gill’s sentencing to 10 and a half years in jail for taking a backhander to say nice things about Russia (heavy, perhaps, when you compare his punishment to the Labour councillor who walked free after encouraging supporters to slit people’s throats), the media well and truly pushed the boat out.
The Guardian offered both Farage’s views on Russia likely to be further tested after jailing of Nathan Gill and Nigel Farage urged to root out Reform links to Russia after jailing of Nathan Gill.
The trajectory moves from the crimes of one man to guilt by association to an explicit and unproven smear of a political party.
Gill’s brief period as the Reform leader in Wales becomes the message that there is some kind of gigantic Russia collusion between Reform UK and Vladimir Putin. This is how this kind of propaganda works.
Once established, it permitted Labour Business Secretary Peter Kyle and, of course, Keir Starmer to go on the offensive respectively via the Mirror (Nigel Farage blasted over ‘Russia Problem’ as minister launches blistering attack) and Sky News (Starmer demands investigation into Reform-Russia links after party’s ex-Wales leader jailed).
What this represents is a quite chilling demand from a weak but totalitarian Labour Prime Minister for ‘special investigations’ into the rival political party thrashing his government in the polls.
For those of us who aren’t offended by the English flag and reject all prioritisation of foreign interests, the Gill media feeding frenzy combined with pious incantations about patriotism from the left all ring rather hollow, as any chant of treason from those who betray us every day, will do.
Assuming all gifts to members of the government and other mainstream parties are declared and donations are legal, those gunning for Reform differ from Gill in perhaps just one way: they have policies which betray us for free.
This article (Are Gill’s offences being used to smear the populist rebellion that Reform represents?) was created and published by Daniel Jupp and is republished here under “Fair Use”
The DS tried this modus operandi/playbook in America, and look how that went for them! Russia Russia Russia! In their sick and twisted plans Trump would be six foot under right now, and Harris would be continuing the “managed decline” of a once great country. Never forget Starmer interfered in US politics by sending a large cohort of labour activists in order to aid Trump’s political opposition. The hypocrisy in this government is rife.