Nigel Farage is a WFH icon – I can just picture him at his ‘home desk’ in his fluffy socks

Who would ever choose to work from home? It’s absolutely dreadful. So says Nigel Farage, anyway – and he should know, because he does it constantly. When was the last time anyone spotted the Reform UK leader “at work” in his own constituency of Clacton-on-Sea? According to him, it’s “a couple of days a week”. Sounds a lot like hybrid working, then.

Farage has a hell of a lot of workplaces, but isn’t inclined to spend much time in any of them. As well as Clacton, he’s got the GB News studios (a couple of times a week), he writes a (weekly) column in the Telegraph and occasionally pops up in the Commons (on Wednesdays) at PMQs. I understand his schedule, because I do it too. It’s called “freelancing”.

Still, Farage has a lot to say about WFH. A lot. Methinks the lady doth protest too much, for when he blasts remote working, like he did this week in Birmingham, saying “it doesn’t make you more productive” and that the country needs an “attitudinal change to hard work”, it feels an awful lot like when I tell myself – out loud, because I’m making myself accountable – to “get off the sofa and go to bed”, or to “stop scrolling on Vinted”, or to “put the cake down and close the fridge door, Victoria, you’re an animal”.

His appearances in Clacton – aka his actual work – are few and far between, to say the least. Yet, when Farage was accused of not spending enough time in his Essex seat by his own constituents in 2024, he said simply that he employed a “big team of staff to answer emails”. He also clapped back that he was in the process of buying a house, there, but (conveniently) failed to answer directly how much time he’d be spending in – or out– of the office. (Ironically, the £885,000 house purchase itself then got caught up in the second-home scandal, after he claimed to buy a house in his Clacton constituency but it was actually purchased by his partner, Laure Ferrari.)

He was also caught – whoops! – in a bit of a fib in September the same year, after claiming he’d been advised not to hold face-to-face surgeries there because of “security reasons” (the Speaker's Office and parliamentary security team said they had "no recollection" of telling Farage this – and Farage later backtracked and admitted that the Speaker's office “is always right"). It all smacks a lot of bending the truth by telling your boss you were “on a call”; of keeping your camera off on Zoom because you’re “WFB” (working from bed) or mouse-jiggling to make sure that pesky Slack status stays green and “active”.

Farage, we can only assume, is so achingly aware of his bad habits, of his tendency to play hookie from the workplace, of his desire for a “smart casual” dress code (a shirt on the top half for a Teams meeting, tracksuit bottoms out of sight under the desk) that he’s holding his hands up and doing a nationwide “mea culpa”. It’s the only plausible explanation for him telling on himself in front of a rally of 2,000 people. Why else would he describe claims that employees are more productive if they work from home as “nonsense” and say people “work better” if they are part of a team in an office, as opposed to individuals from home? He knows that we know.

I want to tell Nigel Farage that it’s OK, that we – that I, uniquely – know. I’m sitting here at my “home desk” in an Adidas co-ord and fluffy socks, writing this article. I just made myself a coffee with whipped cream (there’s no shame in it).

It’s only just February – we all started the year full of resolve, desperate to make those New Year’s Resolutions work. We really did mean it when we insisted to our friends and family that we were “going to get fit, this year” and bought some Aztec Lycra leggings and vowed to sign up for the marathon in April. And we heard you, Nigel, in July 2022, after Covid – with all the pomp and zeal and determination of the born-again – wondering aloud if “working from home was becoming a right” (and was that a plea in your eyes? Probably). “Are we moving in that direction?” you inquired hopefully. And then, when you changed tack in 2025 and said, “We are going to be quite radical – work from home? Forget it!”, we understood. We do it, too. We just have to resolve out loud to try, try again.

If we took it at face value, then it would all be a bit, well, ridiculous, wouldn’t it? After all, we know that around 72 per cent of workers want to work from home at least part of the time, and the UK has one of the highest levels of home working in the world (with half of all workers WFH at least some of the time). Last year, 40 per cent of us reported that we were working from home either exclusively or in a hybrid capacity. A 10-month study published in November showed hybrid working is good for both businesses and employees.

We also know that right now, Reform UK is falling somewhat in the polls – and perhaps it’s no surprise, with a “do as I say, not as I do” leader emphasising “hard work” over a “work-life balance” (does Farage have his OOO switched on when he’s in Mar-a-Lago? Just wondering) and simultaneously alienating half of the workforce: women – particularly mothers – who are disproportionately affected by a lack of flexible working. But hey, if Farage wants to lose voters, demonising WFH is a good way to start. At least it’d give him a little less work to (pretend) to do.

But come now, we shouldn’t be surprised that Farage – and his entire party – are hypocrites. Reform UK has itself offered staff the option of home working, despite vowing to end working from home (it doesn’t even make sense if you squint at it). In May last year, a job advert for Reform’s south central regional director promised “home working with occasional travel within the region”; a £50,000-per-year role that was being advertised online just days after Farage promised that nobody working for a Reform-run council will be allowed to do so from home!

The conflicting messages are too much. Know what? I’m at home – and it’s about time for my break. I think I’ll make like Nigel and just go and have a quick lie down...