Matt Chorley of the BBC has made a mistake. Referring to Nigel Farage’s response to the killing of Henry Nowak, Chorley said that the Reform leader used the phrase “white cold rage”. In fact, he’d said “pure cold rage”. The journalist subsequently apologised, explaining that he’d misremembered.
Well, any inaccuracy in reporting needs to be acknowledged but I’m not clear why this one in particular warrants an apology. For a start, the original phrase was clearly figurative. Rage is neither cold, nor pure. Neither, for that matter, is it white. I do understand that in the current febrile atmosphere, words that might have racial connotations should be treated with caution, but if “white” is a dangerous adjective then surely so is “pure”. Both might be used, together or separately, in the furtherance of racial hygiene and similarly bonkers eugenicist notions, for example. So Farage appears to be aggrieved not by the suggestion that he used a potentially inflammatory adjective, but that he used a different potentially inflammatory adjective from the potentially inflammatory adjective that he did use.
Of course, a few months ago accusations resurfaced that Farage might have used rather more robust language in his adolescence, although apparently that was “tongue-in-cheek schoolboy banter” so that’s OK then.
PS: In a deeply morbid way, I now really want to hear Farage’s Desert Island Discs. Although I doubt if they’d approach the, um, purity of his political idol’s selection.
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