Eighteen years ago, The Sun newspaper – the UK's most popular tabloid – published claims that police in an east London suburb had apprehended a group of asylum-seekers who had caught – and who were now preparing to roast and eat – some wild swans.

The story caused some furor: first, because the swan is something of a national bird for the English – insofar as all mute swans are the property of the monarch, and one is supposed to seek royal consent before consuming any of them – and, second, because it turned out to be entirely untrue.

The Press Complaints Commission – Fleet Street's own self-regulator, which famously failed to act when, a few years later, Rupert Murdoch's tabloids were accused of illegally hacking into people's voicemail messages – on this occasion also refused to step in.

The Sun did, however, publish a "clarification," which admitted that nobody had been arrested in relation to the alleged incident, but which continued to claim that a number of local people had nevertheless maintained that it had taken place.

History, as we know, repeats itself: first as tragedy, and then as farce. Fast forward then to 2025, when – in the very same month which saw the release of a major new television drama chronicling the exposure of News International's telephone hacking practices – the nation's highest-profile hectoring hatemonger, Mr. Nigel Farage, chose to go on a radio talk show to endorse his chump-chum Trump's ill-informed views on the use of painkillers during pregnancy and to resurrect the fiction that, in his words, "swans were being eaten in Royal Parks in this country" – being eaten, he suggested, by migrants rather than by members of the royal family themselves – people, he stressed, "who come from countries where it's quite acceptable to do so". 

(He had, of course, added to the myth the bit about it taking place in specifically "royal" parks – eight major green spaces in London – in a typical bid to escalate the indignation and outrage that this claim might provoke in his supporters. "They're coming over here to our royal parks, and eating our royal birds that are the rightful property of our royals," they doubtless muttered into their pints of bitter and their echoing halls of bitterness.)

A spokesperson for the Royal Parks responded to Mr. Farage's claims that their organization had "not had any incidents reported to us of people killing or eating swans."

While the rabble-rousing Farage may support the rights of the landed gentry (and their wealthy guests) to shoot and eat various species of fowl (misleadingly called "game" birds) in frenzies of slaughter (misleadingly depicted as "sports"), those rights certainly wouldn't in his ideal Britain extend to migrants – nor indeed, one suspects, to the classes of angry, dispossessed people whose loyalty he has somehow attracted (even though a Reform administration would try to dismantle the very benefits and public services on which most of them rely).

The right-wing Telegraph newspaper inevitably sprang to the Reform leader's defense with the argument that "Nigel Farage was mocked for raising the issue, but it’s been reported for decades." That much, at least, is accurate: but then, so have alien abductions and the appearances of alligators in New York sewers and crocodiles in the River Thames. Just because a populist paper publishes an urban myth – or just because the Radical Right relentlessly repeats a lie – doesn't suddenly make it true… however many people may end up coming to believe it.

There are reasonable people among us who might hope that this latest self-evident absurdity might represent the swansong of Reform UK. But it won't be. As the novelist Kurt Vonnegut once wrote – in the voice of an undercover agent trying to discredit the forces of fascism by taking its ideologies to their most absurd extremes – "this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate."

Nigel Farage's latest hate-gambit came at the end of a summer which saw the forces of the Far Right stage a mass rally in central London – where the world's richest man called for the violent overthrow of the country's elected government – and launch a campaign to paint England flags on roundabouts and hoist union flags onto lampposts through the streets of our towns and cities – not as symbols of national unity, but as calls for ethnic division and ideological conflict.

Buoyed by this upswing in extremism – and his growing popularity in the opinion polls – Mr. Farage chose this autumn to ramp up not only his rhetoric but also the draconian nature of his party's promised policies, announcing that Reform would abolish the right of migrants to apply for permanent settlement in the UK and would prevent anyone other than British citizens from being able to claim welfare benefits.

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In my last column (written the week before the Labour Party met for its annual conference), I called upon the British Prime Minister to have the courage of his convictions and to stand up and confront the hatred and lies being peddle by Reform UK, to "call them out for what they are."

I also called upon the BBC to pay heed to the findings of recent research conducted by academics at Cardiff University, which showed that the national broadcaster has not only given a disproportionately generous amount of airtime to Farage and his party but has also repeatedly neglected to challenge their most outlandish claims.

I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised to find the BBC's political editor declaring that Keir Starmer is "now unflinching and explicit, talking of what he calls the 'open fight' he wants with Reform."

In language which happened to echo words progressive commentators have often used, Mr. Starmer told the Guardian newspaper, on the eve of Labour conference, that this is now a "battle for the soul of the nation."

He added, "History will not forgive us if we do not use every ounce of our energy to fight Reform. There is an enemy. There is a project which is detrimental to our country. It actually goes against the grain of our history. It’s right there in plain sight in front of us. We have to win this battle."

Indeed, speaking to the BBC, Sir Keir went even further, branding Farage's latest proposal on immigration "racist" and "immoral" and declaring that "it needs to be called out for what it is."

This predictably prompted the Daily Mail to announce on its front page that if you're "worried about immigration... Starmer says you're racist." (Which of course you might not be, and the Prime Minister hadn't suggested you are, though whoever wrote that headline probably thinks you are.)

My most recent column, written a few days earlier, was published the day after that interview, and I'm afraid I cannot therefore take any credit for influencing the premier's rhetoric. It's nevertheless vaguely reassuring that he has started to speak the language for which more progressive commentators have been calling for quite a while.

Yet, while the British Prime Minister has called Reform racist for seeking to abolish the right of migrants to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain, his own newly appointed Home Secretary has shifted the government's policy further to the right on this same point, pledging that people will have to demonstrate a high level of English language proficiency, perform voluntary work in their communities, and hold clean criminal records, if they wish to stay in the UK. 

Ironically, of course, these qualities are rarely shown by many of our self-styled patriots who demand the mass deportation of asylum-seekers – but sadly, the government is planning to remove welfare access only from immigrants – rather than from current citizens – who cannot prove their contributions to British society. (It might have been a neat way of bidding farewell to Mr. Farage, but – fortunately for him – the center left doesn't share his apparent view that the right to free speech should be restricted to those who agree with him.)

At the end of last month, Keir Starmer made his keynote speech at his party's conference. Many Labour members had said he needed to go nuclear in his attack on Reform UK. Others had said he should ignore Farage completely and instead talk up his government's successes and their plans for the future.

In the end, he did a bit of both – holding out hopes for better times and repeating warnings for the worst that might yet come from the Radical Right. Britain was at a fork in the road, he said, it must choose between decency and renewal, on the one hand, and division and decline on the other.

He spoke – to a show of surprisingly enthusiastic applause (at least within the conference hall) – of his vision of "a decent, pragmatic, tolerant and reasonable country" – where we can see our flags "flying proudly, as we celebrate difference and oppose racism."

Yet the right-wing media are still reporting the expectation in his party that Sir Keir will face a leadership challenge after local and regional elections next May – and are therefore continuing to make the assumption that Labour will do disastrously at those polls. But, if a week's a long time in politics, then more than half a year is an eternity – and this year's party conference speech may yet prove to have been not quite Mr. Starmer's swansong after all.