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Reform ridiculed for turning into a Trump tribute act

This week, we got an idea of how Reform would govern if they got in power. Not by following through on their promises, but by going along with whatever nonsense comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth:


Does paracetamol cause autism? No. It doesn’t.

For those who are out of the loop, long-time medical sceptic Donald Trump recently announced the following:

Trump made the announcement with health secretary RFK Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz. As we’ve previously reported, critics have accused RFK Jr. of profiting from medical quackery. He also had a worm in his brain at one point, but don’t worry, that hasn’t stopped him from living life to the fullest:


There was speculation that Dr. Oz would profit from the autism announcement, because he held shares in the supplement retailer iHerb, which stocks a supplement which Trump is recommending to combat autism. Oz claims to have divested his shares and iHerb say they’ve ended their affiliation, but as Newsweek reported:

it is unclear how much of the iHerb shares Oz still has. In February, he said he would divest his iHerb holdings within 90 days of being confirmed to his government role. However, in another disclosure he indicated that he might keep some of the stock until the company goes public or is bought.

The Trump administration have been linked to numerous alleged ‘scams’ – particularly those in the crypto space. Forbes reported in June that Trump had made an estimated $1.1bn from crypto; Reuters reported he made nearly $100m from his own meme coin. In its description of what a meme coin is, Investopedia describe the following in a list of investment cons:

High chance of scams, project abandonment, low interest

If you’re wondering how much his meme coin is worth today, it’s significantly less than when it went on sale:

Graph showing a big initial spike in volume followed by a protracted dip

This means the Trump supporters who ‘invested’ in his coin immediately lost all their value. But yeah, we should totally follow this guy’s lead on important issues like medicine.

Oh, and as others have reminded us:

Something fishy with Reform and Trump

Have you heard the phrase ‘a fish rots from the head’? We’re not sure if that’s scientifically accurate, but then again, maybe science isn’t real? That seems to be Nigel Farage’s opinion:


Farage said:

when it comes to science, I don’t side with anybody.

I don’t side with anybody, you know, because, because science is never settled, and we should remember that.

I’m sorry, but this man wants to run the country; how is he supposed to do that when he refuses to have opinions about science?

You realise that science undergirds everything, right?

How are we supposed to adapt to new technologies or react to new diseases if the guy in charge throws his hands up and says ‘I’ve no idea, sorry, figure it out for yourself‘.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight that Farage has voiced many definitive opinions of science. Most notably, he sided with the fringe minority who oppose the 97% of scientists who agree “humans are causing global warming and climate change”:

Oh, and the Net Zero stuff is all horseshit by the way, as climate activist Simon Clark pointed out:

So these are the five steps of the anti-net zero playbook. Inflate the costs, ignore the cost of business as usual, ignore the operational savings, ignore the co- benefits, and most egregiously, ignore the costs of inaction. Not getting to net zero is going to cost the world much, much more

What a pathetic, little worm Farage is – siding with Trump because he’s afraid of the smoke and then pretending it’s because he’s neutral on science. Total bullshit merchant. The same goes for Reform deputy leader Richard Tice:

And that wasn’t even the end of it.

Swan songs and dancing queens

Farage didn’t just go along with Trump’s nonsense; he also made up some of his own:

As reported by LBC, Farage said:

If I said to you that swans were being eaten in Royal Parks in this country, that carp were being taken out of ponds and eaten in this country by people who come from cultures that have a different… would you agree it happened, is happening here?

LBC highlighted that the police and Royal Parks have disputed this claim, although one million Facebook uncles have disputed that, so who’s to say?

People mocked Farage online, highlighting that he’s once again taking his queues from Trump:


They’re eating the swans, people.

This is a wild thing for Farage to say, because you can tell he’s the sort of guy who probably has eaten swan at some point. What are we basing that on? The same scientific method that Reform use.

Another Reform bigwig jumping on the eejit express train was Andrea Jenkins:

Jenkyns did manage to deflect from Farage’s idiocy, to be fair, but she did so by cracking out the vaccine conspiracies:

Distraction tactics from Reform (and Trump)

Given the disastrous week Reform has had, people have suggested this is all just a distraction:


It very well may be, but we suspect Reform will struggle to get away with it in the same fashion as Trump. And none of indicates a party that’s confident in what it’s doing:


A few years from now, there may be a wave of men and women who have to eat poached swans to sustain themselves. These people are Reform politicians, and if they keep this stuff up, they’ll be unemployed by the next election.

Featured image via Guardian News (YouTube screenshot) / Heute (license here) / Steve Bowbrick (Flickr)

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.