You can already imagine the video.
A man stands in the middle of a suburban English street holding a wad of cash in his hands. Smiling at the camera he says: “I’m gonna pay the energy bill for this whole street.” Cut to drone footage gliding over the neighborhood. The man knocks on the front door and a nervous woman in a flared dressing gown answers. “Congratulations, Carol. You’ve saved over £1,000 this year!” As she embraces him, high-energy electronic music intensifies. Then, a shot of the next neighbor receiving their prize, and another, and another, as the total cash amount grows as a tally appears at the bottom right of the screen. Eventually, the entire community came out into the street, waving happily.
This is definitely the kind of stuff we will be treated to when Reform UK’s energy bill lottery ends. The party announced a “Nigel Cut My Bills” competition last month: for the price of your personal data – voting history, name, phone number and email – you could win the chance of Farage popping up to pay the energy bills for you and your neighbors for a whole year.
Concerns have been raised about data collection, but I’m not worried about that. I personally find it difficult to deal with alleged data compliance violations. No, I’m worried about what such a stunt represents: the MrBeastification of British politics.
YouTuber Don MisterBeast is famous for posting stunts of epic proportions to the delight of teenagers around the world. A sub-genre of his videos involves him handing out large amounts of cash to unsuspecting individuals, such as when he gave $10,000 to a homeless man in North Carolina who was begging from cars for money. MisterBeast, real name James Donaldson, is extremely popular. His most viewed video received 915 million views; This is more than the entire population of Europe.
Reform understands that politics is increasingly moving online and that emotions matter in that space. To grab people’s attention and get support in return, it needs to anger voters (in small boats) and also get them excited about what it is offering. Its stunt uses the same elements found in MisterBeast videos: it’s unexpected, the amount of cash is huge, and the randomness of it all tempts you into thinking it could just be you.
The “Nigel Cut My Bills” website also provides information about how Reform will reduce everyone’s energy costs if it wins the next election. This will remove VAT from your energy bill and save £85. Cut Labour’s green levy, saving £100s. Eliminate scrap labor carbon tax, saving £15. To give credit where it’s due, the stunt is a brilliant piece of political communication: The act grabs you by the lapels and screams, “Farage is a man who puts money in your pocket” – now and potentially in government.
But, with the glitz, the social-media-mindedness of it all, it can be easy to miss that Reform is fundamentally misleading people about how energy pricing works. The bills are not high because of VAT, green levies or carbon taxes. They are high because the price of our energy is tied to the price of our reserve energy source: gas. Not renewable energy, but fossil-fuel dependence is to blame. Nigel Farage’s obsession with North Sea drilling will only keep us trapped in volatile energy markets. This means that in the long run, Carroll and everyone else will continue to lose.
This reminds me of the reform policy of his 2024 campaign. The party announced that it would charge non-doms (UK residents whose permanent home for tax purposes is outside the UK) £250,000 for a 10-year renewable residence permit and favorable UK tax status. The money raised from this one-time tax will go directly to Britain’s lowest paid workers. “Surprise, Carol, your cash prize for voting in Reform UK is here!” However, the real winner from this arrangement will be the very rich person who doesn’t live on your street (unless you also have a pied-a-terre in Mayfair), because that paltry sum is nothing compared to the money they would have to pay in taxes for UK public services.
In that video, MrBeast, after handing over cash to the homeless man, asks him how he became homeless. The man shares a very sad story of losing his family, then being fired from his factory job and living in hotels before he ran out of money. Donaldson’s eyes dart around uncomfortably and he makes a face, not sure how to respond.
Grand gestures and symbolic policies do not match reality – it is all just for show.
