There was a highly revealing interview this week between Nigel Farage and two Telegraph journalists, in which the Reform UK leader set out his plans to prosecute the undercover ITV reporters who recently exposed the endemic racism, Islamophobia and misogyny inside his party.
“They’re behaving like criminals. They need to be prosecuted. We will prosecute them,” he told the paper’s Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan.
Now you might expect that two journalists listening to a far-right leader set out his plans to lock up their colleagues would push back against him in some way.
You might expect, at the very least, for them to defend the longstanding tradition of undercover journalism as a tool for uncovering dishonesty, corruption and law-breaking.
Yet far from pushing back against Farage, Halligan and Pearson can both be seen nodding along to his comments, before later proudly promoting them on social media.
They’re not the only ones.
As I’ve recently seen first hand, far from being willing to stand up to the authoritarian and outright fascist tendencies of Reform UK, many in my profession now seem more than happy to go along with it.
Here’s why.