How a Lie Takes Hold
Last week, Britain finally signed a trade deal with India. That’s a good thing. A new US:UK trade deal too, and if rumours are true, a new UK-EU trade deal might be on the horizon next week too.
This UK-India trade deal has been years in the making. The major sticking point? Visas. The Modi government wanted a bundle of UK visas to hand out to its mates and cronies. Suddenly, that demand has vanished, and the deal is done. It’s beginning to look like Trump’s cack-handed tariff strategy might have inadvertently nudged other countries toward striking bilateral deals.
But as always, there’s outrage—particularly from Britain’s permanently furious online right.
One clause in the agreement allows UK companies to hire Indian specialists more easily, and lets Brits work in India under similar terms. In both cases, posted workers keep paying social security contributions in their home country for the first three years. So, a Brit working in Mumbai pays National Insurance in the UK and keeps their pension intact. An Indian engineer seconded to London does the same—paying payroll taxes in India.
This isn’t new. The same arrangement exists with the US, EU, Japan, South Korea, and most of our other major trading partners.
But that hasn’t stopped the Reform Party and what’s left of the Conservatives from claiming—loudly and repeatedly—that Indian workers coming to the UK will be exempt from Employers’ National Insurance. It’s a lie, but one that’s spreading like wildfire on social media.
This is a Tory Shadow Minister
And this of course is Nigel Farage.
Tory and Reform MPs are banging the drum. Right-wing pundits on GB News and Talk TV are parroting the falsehoods, amplified by The Mail and the Telegraph:
Even the BBC has been equivocating, trying to report both sides of the argument, which only fans the flames.
Maybe it’s ignorance. After all, these are reporters and politicians who mostly went to public schools, have never done a proper day’s work, and wouldn’t recognise a payslip if it hit them in the face. Understanding how NI works requires, well, actually having paid it.
But more likely, it’s deliberate disinformation. Reform and their dwindling Tory allies are lying, plain and simple, and using social media to manufacture outrage.
And here’s the kicker: this is exactly the sort of trade deal Brexit was supposed to make possible. Turns out, the people who campaigned hardest for Brexit are now furious about the very outcome they claimed to want.
Or maybe that was never the point. Maybe the real goal was to keep a chunk of the electorate in a permanent state of rage—confused, manipulated, and too angry to notice who’s really pulling their strings.