Reform Has Turned People Risking Their Lives Into A Mobile Game In Which Players Can Win £5,000 - Reform Watch

Reform UK has found a grotesque new way to exploit the small-boats crisis. On 14 September, the party launched SmallBoatWatch, an app devoted entirely to keeping its supporters angry about people crossing the Channel. The app displays daily arrival figures, weekly trends and comparisons between prime ministers. Reform promoted it as showing crossings “in real time”, although its own App Store description says it is updated daily using statistics already published by the Home Office. Its prominently displayed cost figures are Reform’s own estimates and are explicitly described as unofficial. Context is stripped away so that human beings become a running total, a supposed bill for the taxpayer and a graphic ready to share on social media. As if this wasn't bad enough, Reform then went further. Alongside the app, the party launched Small Boat Scramble, a game in which players command a Royal Navy vessel and race to stop dinghies reaching Britain. Players encounter “small boats”, “mega-dinghies” and something called a “Boriswave”. The highest scorer over the first month will receive £5,000. Zia Yusuf described it as allowing people to have “a bit of fun with a very serious issue”. That response captures the moral emptiness of the entire project. People have died in the Channel. Others have watched family members drown while attempting one of the most dangerous sea crossings in the world. Reform has taken that human suffering and converted it into prizes and content for supporters. The timing of this is equally as cynical. Reform is facing intense scrutiny over two £36 million donations from cryptocurrency billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne. Nigel Farage is refusing to provide straight answers about the men pouring unprecedented sums into his party and it would seem that Reform would prefer the public to play with cartoon dinghies. SmallBoatWatch tells us far more about Reform than it does about Channel crossings. A party bankrolled by billionaires has built an app encouraging ordinary people to direct their anger at desperate people in boats. That is Reform’s politics in miniature, cruelty directed downwards while power and money accumulate at the top. A grotesque Trumpian politics.