During their jolly to Washington for Trump’s inauguration, Nigel Farage and Brexit financier Arron Banks staged the most solemn of pilgrimages to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath at the grave of a British soldier who perished in 1944. The fact that he succumbed to anaemia whilst working a desk job approximately 4,000 miles from Normandy – perhaps the only person in Arlington not to have actually died for their country – was somewhat de-emphasised. It’s the pose that counts. They took a documentary crew with them, obviously, and I picture the footage as the political version of Spinal Tap at Elvis’s headstone.

The Guardian view on terror in London: standing together against cynicism | Editorial Read more

In general, Farage’s definition of “respect” is so wantonly ludicrous that it has the power to kick even football’s “respect agenda” into a distant second place. Part of the shtick of guys like Farage is their belief that they embody “British values” such as “respect” and “decency” and “not talking down our great country”. The fact that they are currently choosing to honour this creed by telling complete lies about London for money on Fox News is perhaps the least British thing imaginable. If Farage really is terrified on the streets of degenerate London, like Abu Hopkins says she is, then this scourge of “snowflakes” is the biggest one out there.

Some people warn against listening to the likes of Nigel Farage in the wake of a terror attack, but I disagree. These are the times you find out how strikingly little Nigel has to say. It was the same after the murder of the MP Jo Cox – an extremist killing, you might recall, that Farage found it rather less easy to talk about. In fact, on that occasion Nigel was so incapable of locating anything approaching the right tone that he just had to shut up completely for a couple of days. If part of being a leader is rising to find the right words at difficult times – then Nigel ain’t no leader, bruv.

To many of the rest of us, his silence spoke volumes. In the wake of the Westminster terror attack, Farage has spoken volumes yet revealed a yawning silence. If the best thing you can come up with on London is a series of porkies you can only get away with on American cable news – well, you may consider your ideas cupboard rather bare. Farage reminds me of Paul Burrell, Princess Di’s former butler, who plugs his silly take on British etiquette to credulous Americans who wouldn’t be expected to know any better.

Meanwhile, it is fair to class Nigel’s use of the Westminster situation as “developing”. it seems to have gone something along these lines: the attacker will be an immigrant, won’t he? Right: the problem is immigration. Hang on, what? He’s a 52-year-old man born in Kent? Shit. I’m also a 52-year-old man born in Kent. Right: I’m changing what I said. The problem is integration. Give Nigel another three-quarters of a fact and he’ll have to adapt again. I imagine the problem will be Islam. We know his mancrush Donald Trump cheats at golf – I bet if you play with Nigel he’s always saying things like: “Right, that bird put me off – I’m taking a mulligan.”

It’s the same with his financial backer, Banks. Not so long ago I mentioned that Arron always tweets like he’s doing 97mph in a Vauxhall Cavalier with a suit jacket hung up in the rear window. I might now add that he changes lanes in the same style. First Westminster was linked to “illegals”, then he suddenly realised about 50 yards too late that he needed to take the integration turnoff. To watch Banks move from “immigration” to “integration” was to imagine all the surrounding cars go into Matrix-style slo-mo as he cut across three lanes, shouting “Friday night’s gonna be bigly, mate!” at his supplier on the hands-free. How many times, Arron? It’s MIRROR, SIGNAL, MANOEUVRE.

People saying they love London – this is not what Nigel likes to see at all

Look, I sympathise. On the one hand, these guys have to make use of attacks like Westminster. It’s good for business. On the other, couldn’t this latest one have happened – to borrow the title of the Guardian series – anywhere but Westminster? I mean, Westminster is supposed to be a byword. Few have worked harder than Nigel to make it stand for the worst of everything.

It’s conventional to speak of a terrorist atrocity as an attack on our values. Yet the public response to the one perpetrated in Westminster on Wednesday must feel like an attack on Farage’s values. People using #Westminster as a hashtag of solidarity, people getting on with their days, people saying they love London – this is not what Nigel likes to see at all. Everybody ordinary and decent HATES London – wasn’t that the pleasingly simple takeout from the referendum? Westminster is the very last place he wants people reminded that there are rather worse things in the world than liberal democracy.

Perhaps this is why his gang have tried to seize back the initiative with an announcement. This morning Arron Banks revealed he is to fund people to stand in 100 seats against remain-supporting MPs, who embody the worst of Westminster. It is a “drain the swamp” exercise, he explained, in which he is assisted by David Cameron’s former strategist, Steve Hilton. (Oh dear. Hilton’s blue-sky thinking is now so up in the clouds that he can’t see what horrors he’s being used by. He reminds me of the rarefied nuclear scientists Kurt Vonnegut satirised – the type indifferent to the uses of their work, who will probably be playing cat’s cradle when the metaphorical bomb drops.) Still, it’s all another manic lane change to divert the eye, which it would presumably be very “un-British” not to “respect”.