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The Apotheosis of Nigel Farage
There were local election in England and Northern Ireland yesterday. Everyone is expecting the Conservatives to get a drubbing for their Brexit perfidy. But the interest is really elsewhere. The commentariat have been surprised by the rise of Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party, who are not standing in these elections but are topping the polls for the European ones in a few weeks time. Below is a piece that is a wee bit different from me as I usually try not to write about myself. However, while I am far from central to the story my being there is necessary for the telling of it. As ever, apologies for my UK English…
A few weeks back I found myself driving to the city of Birmingham in the heart of the midlands. It was not my first visit as I’ve done quite a bit of work there over the years and I’ve always taken to the place. While no one driving through the industrial progeny of the ‘dark satanic mills’ lining the M6 would expect it, in many ways Birmingham is one of the most charming cities in England. York is certainly far prettier and Bath blessed with a noble heritage that is still captured in its modern setting. Yet with its canals and red brick Victorian buildings, Birmingham has a singular essence reflected in the earthy humour of its people, colloquially known as ‘Brummies’.
Indeed, apart from a few antediluvian areas, Birmingham could claim to be one of the most successful British cities at integrating its large number of ethnic minorities; a Brummie is a Brummie no matter their skin colour. Birmingham is itself a city at the heart of a greater conurbation encompassing market towns like Solihull and many old industrial areas including Wolverhampton, Dudley and Coventry – where Jaguar cars, such as the one I drive, were built.
It had therefore been with a cheerful heart that both ‘the Jag’ and I left Cambridgeshire bound for Birmingham and the first rally of Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party. But my mood darkened as we passed through the greenery of Northamptonshire and I reflected on the political situation that had led me to make the journey. The day before the government had extended Britain’s membership of the European Union for a further six months until October 31st, Halloween. ‘Trick or Treaty?’ had been Farage’s immediate response. I like to think I’m a natural conservative but there was no point kidding myself further that the Tory leadership had any intention of leaving in any recognisable way. We would now take part in EU wide elections to elect members to a meaningless parliament for a super state we had voted to leave. I was angry enough with my own tribe to take a look at the Brexit Party.
Still, I was conflicted. Driving across Shakespeare’s beautiful county of Warwickshire, I thought of the small band of eurosceptic MPs fighting overwhelming odds in parliament. Abandoning them, even if only spiritually, felt like a dereliction of duty. My mood improved as I reached Coventry. It was there that my Jaguar XJ6 had been built twenty-three years previously. Ford had bought the marquee British automaker a few years before and, after much needed investment, enabled the engineers to finally produce the car they had always wanted to make and I had always wanted to buy.
It was also in Coventry that the Brexit Party had been launched just the day before. They had then spent that morning campaigning in Birmingham before the rally in the afternoon. Farage had sold out Hall 1 of the National Indoor Arena having only announced the rally in the middle of the previous week. His first coup had been to unveil Annunziata Rees-Mogg, Jacob’s sister no less, at the formal launch on the Friday, but Farage would top that by himself on Saturday.
I’d heard him before and followed him regularly enough that none of his material was original to me, but the performance was certainly something new. Before the referendum Farage had been caustic and often spiky in the face of an exaggerated hostility, he now has an inner harmony that gives him gravitas. He has mellowed somewhat since that glorious morning when he thought his life’s work had been achieved. The fire had never gone out of course, but an outdoor bonfire had been replaced with the gentle roar of a stately fireplace. No longer the lonely voice, Farage has relaxed as others have made arguments he first formulated some time ago. The last three years have witnessed his apotheosis.
He has not been idle since the referendum. Once almost a pariah, he was now a respectable choice for a panel of talking heads. His weeknight radio show has been a success, so much so that the station gave him a slot on Sundays too. Trips across the Atlantic provided opportunities to pose as a John the Baptist figure to those Trump supporters for whom the president was a messiah. But it was not just a victory lap or a chance to bask in reflected glory, Farage has learned much from The Donald and refined his own act as he looks to drain the swamp at Westminster. He has also gained confidence from the alliances he has made. It is perhaps yet a germ, but that confidence provides the hint of statesmanship to his political makeup. And even if it is only still a hint, it is the hint of a quality few of his rivals can boast of.
A few years back Mark Steyn named Farage a great man. Arguably he is, but while I cannot agree with those already calling him the most significant politician for seventy years, he is certainly the most impressive political figure in Britain right now. Jeremy Corbyn might have inexplicably reinvented himself as a kind of modern-day William Jennings Bryan, despite being the worst orator in Labour’s history. However, his image is now tarnished amongst his followers by his euroscepticism and with the public by his anti-Semitism. Yet of today’s politicians only Corbyn has seen, to Britain’s shame, the sort of welcome that greeted Farage as he stepped onto the stage in Birmingham.
The rally was not about making any arguments. The subject was betrayal. Broken promises, spineless MPs and Cabinet weaklings, a political class with no sense of honour or shame, but overarching it all was betrayal. One does not have to believe in the Whig interpretation of history to recognise the franchise as a birthright hard won by previous generations. To betray that was so rank, cutting at something so intrinsic to what it actually means to be British, that they all gathered there dumbfounded at the brazen nature of it.
They had come to hear the man who had long predicted it. A man that many of his enemies labelled a pound-shop Hitler was now furnished with a willing audience and a betrayal narrative like that which once blackened the name of Nuremberg. That man’s moment had now come.
Charlie Chaplin famously lampooned Hitler in The Great Dictator, but if Chaplin were alive today he would find Farage’s performance owed more to his early work. There was a touch of Music Hall to the event, with Farage’s chummy repartees reflected by the humour of the midlands crowd. With comedic timing that many stand ups would do well to study, Farage pulled off a remarkable feat by enthusing the dispirited and reminding them that they had lost a battle, not the war. That they were lions led by donkeys. He urged them to not give in to despondentcy and never vote again, fight them at the ballot box and we will win again was his message; we know we are in the right as much as they know they are in the wrong, the underlying sentiment. All this was interlaced with anecdotes of drunken Eurocrats and past spars with political opponents, some he could claim to have vanquished.
There was no menace in the air but much mirth. Speaking without notes, Farage wanders the stage and draws everyone along with him. As he paused for half a breath after uttering the name ‘Theresa May’, a Brummie wag piped ‘is a witch!’ with such alacrity and glorious overemphasis that the hall erupted into gales of laughter. The pantomime continued as Farage reeled off the names of other betrayers to be met with ever louder boos. Yet even these were good natured, throw them out rather than lock them up.
As they streamed out, a mere thousand or two in a city of over a million, there was a renewed sense of purpose; somehow their ship was back on course. A Sky News journalist of a Remainer persuasion, slightly taken aback by his own reaction to what he was seeing, noted ‘They all took a Brexit Party placard home. I watched them each take one and leave enthused, clear what they are fighting for.’
Farage and the Brexit Party left Birmingham but the rallies continue, moving on to Nottingham in the east midlands and then to Clacton in Essex. They wowed Newport in south Wales, where it was standing room only, before attracting huge crowds in Newton Abbot in the south west of England. This may look quaint and the numbers small to American eyes, but this is not normal for the UK, at least not in my lifetime, excepting the referendum, and certainly not these levels of enthusiasm. We do not have primaries and, since the Blair years, political campaigning is usually done for the cameras with a fake crowd of picked supporters. Farage is at the head of an altogether more organic movement. The influence of the Trump campaign is evident as Farage successfully employs a rally-first-and-the-media-will follow strategy. Like my Jag, the product is authentically British but improved by America.
He has been rewarded in the polls with most putting the Brexit Party as favourites to win. What that portends for a general election few can predict, but both Labour and especially the Conservatives have reasons to look over their shoulders. The upcoming by election in Leave voting Peterborough could furnish Farage’s new outfit with their first Westminster MP, if none of the present ones do not defect before then. Many of his critics see this as a one-man band but his allies come from across the political spectrum, with former Conservative MPs on the one hand and former marxists on the other, all agreeing that political philosophies are useless without the democratic means to enact them. Nor are the Brexit Party’s candidates just the usual recycle of failed politicians: Businessmen, civil servants, charity heads, military heroes and opera singers make a strange new model army for a latter-day Cromwell, yet Farage is riding a wave that could remake British politics.
Published in General
Thanks – our media doesn’t really spend much time on Brexit
I’m sure by October 30th we might care again.
Wonderfully written.
Looks as though the Conservatives have lost 600 seats as of 1430 GMT on Friday. Labour lost almost 100 seats as well. Liberal Democrats were the gainers at about 400 seats. Liberal Democrats were the only pro-Remain party in the last general election.
And May is trying to do a deal with Corbyn for a Customs Union with the EU. The only box that will tick will be free movement of people to/from the EU. Britain would not be able to sign its own trade agreements. And if it is done in the next couple of weeks, there will not be European elections. So Farage may have fizzled. That’s what May and Tory Central Office seem to be counting on, and in the meantime she can hand on the reins to someone else to pick up the pieces. And Brexit isn’t the only turd that May has left – there’s also Huawei.
Huawei is the Chinese telecoms firm that will be integral to Britain’s 5G network. The US is warning that it will not be sharing intelligence with the UK as a result of May’s decision to go with Huawei. Gavin Williamson, the Defense Minister, leaked the news – or so May has alleged – and was dismissed from the cabinet. Williamson was opposed to the deal and had an interview with a Telegraph reporter. The Telegraph were the ones to release the leak.
May is making two decisions that go against American interests – customs union without possibility of a trade agreement and Huawei.
Nick,
Damn it, Nick. I wish I was there just to hear Nigel & Annunziata roar. We’ve just got to get it started.
Regards,
Jim
The subject was betrayal. Broken promises, spineless MPs and Cabinet weaklings, a political class with no sense of honour or shame, but overarching it all was betrayal.
Interesting how the so-called Conservatives in both hemispheres are behaving this way. A great post, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Nick.
Mr. Farage, Mr. Reese-Mogg, and Mr. Johnson are,perhaps, some of the finest exemplars of stout-hearted Britons in the U.K. today.
Those men and women like them have everything to lose by being stand-up pro-Brexit leaders. Isn’t that rare today? Those causes that actually count? High-risk-high-reward. One benefit to the mockery and disdain eurosceptics receive from the comfortable continental breastfeeders, is that only those who actually believe in the cause stick around. And, that will put the steel in a parties spine like nothing else, yknow?
et carter
copy1
Brummie here. Born at the old QE hospital in 1954.
Thank you for your kind words about my fair city. It doesn’t get much good press these days. More miles of canals than Venice, and a world-class museum too.
I have no doubt that, were Dad still alive, he’d be signing on with Nigel. For the beer, if nothing else.
How does the outcome of the largest vote in British history simply get ignored? I can’t wrap my head around the fact. How is May still standing? Why hasn’t her party forced her out? I fear the answers because I assume that means there are very few Tories who actually support Brexit. The anger must be palpable among Brexiteers. Thanks for this enlightening post, Mr. Nick.
And not to derail this thread completely, @mrnick, but do you have any insights to share regarding the government’s declaration of an “environmental emergency” and the effects of such a declaration? Also, what is the deal with May and her rejection of fracking and the resignation of the fracking czar? Energy production issues drive me crazy because it’s always those who suffer the least from higher energy costs who seem to dictate policy. Drives me absolutely crazy. Thank you in advance.
Cameron was a Remainer. None of those guys had any idea how they would follow through. Now supposed conservatives think that they should have another vote. It’s outrageous.
There are Republicans here that think it’s all swell. They love no account centralized government
It’s all of a piece unfortunately. Brexit, climate alarmism, the sacking of Sir Roger Scruton and the resignation of the fracking czar, Huawei, dirigiste policies, the lionisation of the NHS…. The ‘modernisation’ project has meant the Conservative Party has been taken over by progressives who would feel right at home in Hillary Clinton’s or Al Gore’s Democratic Party. When I say taken over we are talking about roughly a third of the MPs and the politicos who run central office too, the membership are still pretty sound. One MP parachuted into a safe seat by central office at the last election had actually worked for the Clinton campaign the previous year while at the same time, or so rumour has it, Daniel Hannan was blocked. Yet in the seats where the retiring MP had a hand in choosing their successor, or the local association was strong enough to thumb their nose at London, you will find the children of Thatcherism were selected.
These progressive managerialists are responsible for the Paris Climate Agreement, which voluntarily saddles Britain with some of the highest energy costs in Europe, all because something must be done. They are similarly attached to the Iran deal too. They are run by their civil servants, who are of course only too happy to increase the powers of the administrative state. Consequently a vote for less government – Brexit – should be ignored, but a protest by a few hundred jobless middle class twits – led by a sixteen year old from Sweden – calling for the equivalent of the Green New Deal should be heeded.
Beyond that you have to understand the role of the BBC in all this and that great fraud posing as a national treasure, David Attenborough. They have made Climate Change the new religion and the political-media classes, the Mediocracy, do not take kindly to heretics.
So, even if some Conservatives MPs had reservations, it was much easier to just fold on the non-binding motion over the environmental emergency. As we are already almost on a par with California when it comes to green lunacy, the plastic straw-man ban for example, we will continue to ape them. The government quango, the Committee on Climate Change, were right on hand with a raft of suggestions including a zero emissions target. Petrol and diesel are already due to be banned in 2030…
I read both the Times and the Telegraph every day. There are often comments to the effect that Boris Johnson and the ERG should be booted from the Conservative Party by Conservative Remainers over on the Times pages – both columnists and those commenting. Evidently Theresa May is following this advice. As a result, Conservative support in local elections collapsed and they lost over 1,400 seats and over 40 council majorities.
Farage’s Brexit Party is going strong on the Telegraph’s comments section and is on track to finish first in the EU elections later this month. The establishment Times-reading Conservatives got their wish and are facing a thrashing.
The Torygraph has made an effort to hoover up discontented Daily Mail readers after that paper changed its editor and softened its Brexit line, therefore it is easily the most eurosceptic of the quality papers. The Sunday version is edited by Allister Heath, a columnist on Thursdays, who has made it a much more Thatcherite paper.
May and her clique are less concerned with the Tory press than they are with the BBC, keeping to that supposedly centrist line has been the priority. Some of May’s favourite Cabinet Ministers are so interchangeable with BBC journalists that when they are being interviewed it is easy to get them confused.
As for Theresa May’s strategy, I refer you to my comment in a previous discussion which is becoming a more persuasive thesis everyday.
Far too much advertising to read the Daily Mail online. Plus I can never sort out what is real and what is News of the World. And they don’t even have a Page 3.
Oh, The Beeb. One of my classmates was in charge of production of programs and was good at deciding what Americans would like. We’re suckers for BBC dramas.
As for the news, whole different kettle of fish. But no more biased than here in the US. Maybe that should be equally biased.
@mrnick, thank you for the detailed response! It does help me understand the dynamics at work in England. I am an anglophile – mostly owed to my love of Agatha Christie mysteries and PD Wodehouse prose. It pains me to witness the absolute cannibalization of a once glorious culture. Do you think England will experience anything like the “yellow vest” protests currently seen in France? One last question – and forgive me if you’ve addressed this before (just point me in the right direction if you have) – what are your thoughts on Tommy Robinson? I reflexively support him because I know he says inconvenient things especially concerning Islam, but maybe that is misplaced? Thanks, again. Best, Nerina
What about UKIP? It doesn’t surprise me to hear that the press is focusing more on Nigel, as that goes along with UKIP’s line at the moment of Nigel being an establishment figure out to split the Brexiteer vote, but is it really the case that the Brexit Party are expected to win most of the contests they’re in?
Have you ever worn a yellow vest? Horrible things which make you sweat excessively, why anyone would voluntarily don one is beyond me….
Seriously though, I doubt we will see a gillet jeune movement. Smaller peaceful protests certainly, but the ballot box is still seen as the means of revenge, hence Farage’s recent success as something of a safety valve. Beyond the political crisis the country as a whole is doing ok, the economy is growing and has been, at a sluggish rate, for a good while and employment is at a similar level to the US’s with a much better labour force participation rate. Nor is inflation high. Unless the government were to significantly hike fuel taxes we will see few yellow vests.
Tommy Robinson biggest problem is his accent, our effete mediocracy will not even listen to what he says while more widely it also turns off others who are of a similar social status. The last vestiges of the British class system are at work here and poor Robinson’s accent marks him a ‘chav’, almost our ‘untouchables’. He has become a convenient bogeyman for pretty much everyone in politics, painted as little better than a street thug for daring to point to things the powers-that-be are happy to ignore so long as they remain in isolated backwaters. I know a little about him that is not in the public realm – I have a sister who is a friend of a friend – and I do think he has been treated unfairly. I also suspect he has been played by certain people, but I do not believe he has been coerced so he must see some gain in it. I wouldn’t say that your sympathy is misplaced, trust but verify would be the best advice I guess.
UKIP have been floundering since the referendum. Before Farage departed there was an incident that left one of their MEPs knocked out by a colleague, since then their more telegenic figures have followed Farage out the door. They needed a new signature issue and the anti-Islam vibe is a niche issue for a national party.
I have a neighbour in London who is a UKIP activist and he takes the Farage ego trip line. Personally I think a lot of it is bitterness, there was a civil war within UKIP and Farage’s followers failed to inherit the party. When the split came the rump were left without their first eleven.
Farage an establishment figure? If only. He is referred to as ‘Sir Nige’ because the establishment never accepted him.
The Brexit Party are looking good for the unwanted Euro elections. The strange party list system – rather than first past the post – means they should do very well if the Remain forces remain divided. Beyond that will be the challenge. Many of the key background figures are Thatcherite Tories, Farage is one himself, but the candidates are more mixed politically. Developing a policy platform will be interesting. Free trade and reform will be the easiest areas, size of the state and economic liberalism will be more difficult to agree on.
Thank you, @mrnick! You should have a podcast on “all things England.” P.S. I quite like TR’s accent.
The problem with the Brexit vote, not counting the obvious fact that what Brexit actually meant was never clearly defined for the people to make a clear choice on, is that it had no official legal demands. It was simply a very large opinion poll conducted by the Government. It was always up to Parliament to decide the exact nature of the UK’s relation ship to Europe. They have the legal power and responsibility to do that, with or without the referendum. So the vote can be ignored for the same reason that the popular vote can be ignored in US presidential elections. Because it has not real legal standing only a general moral one. It imparts some level of moral legitimacy, which politically can be useful, but legally is irrelevant.
The British people have no one to blame for the current Brexit indecision but themselves. They elected the current Parliament.
The Brexit vote was an attempt by David Cameron to marginalize Nigel Farage and those wanting to withdraw from the EU because UKIP had been draining lots of votes away from the Conservative Party. Cameron expected Remain to win and rather convincingly. It was a political ploy that backfired on the establishment.
Brexit had one meaning: withdraw from the EU. On what terms was not settled and still is not. However, you had both Labour and the Conservatives in their manifestos promising to withdraw from the EU. You had May running around saying “No deal is better than a bad deal”. Asked about it just the other day, she claims she meant it in the “abstract” – whatever that means. More likely, she didn’t think she would ever be called on it. And even worse, she won’t go. She will have to be forced from office. That was the upshot of what she told Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, yesterday. Brady had been protecting her flank by saying that the rules would not be changed on removing May before December by a vote of no confidence. It will be interesting to see if he will continue to do that. I hope not. May is definitely a problem for the Conservatives and an enormous benefit to Farage.
It would be up to the government – i.e., the Prime Minister – to decide on the exact nature of the UK’s relationship with the EU if they had a PM who had the confidence of her Party, which in turn had a majority in Parliament. May has squandered both.
They have legal power only partially since the EU is also part of the key in determining what the relationship with the EU will be after withdrawal. They could have been out at the end of March, but Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, chose not to prepare to withdraw without a trade agreement. That had always been an option and one May should have prepared for AS SHE SAID SHE WAS WILLING TO. But she was lying. Really no other conclusion can be reached.
No it isn’t like the popular vote. But ignoring vote is the opinion of the establishment. As a result, they will not be the establishment much longer.
That’s not true. They can blame those who subvert the will of the people.
The will of the people is poorly defined, and often of two minds. It was the will of the people to leave May in charge.
If the people’s will is to be directly consulted it should be asked exact questions, ie. to take May’s deal or not. The leave proposition was too vague, as demonstrated by the fact that people can clearly define it as either complete cut off of all ties or nominal removal from the organization or anything in between.
Poorly defined, too be sure, and also contradictory. But the people elected the mps who left May in charge. I don’t think the people voted for her directly. There are advantages to such a system of indirect control of the government, but it doesn’t leave much room to claim that the people have no-one to blame but themselves.
I think you might have missed the fact that an awful lot of MPs have reneged on their 2017 manifesto commitments to such an extent that the usual casuistry and sophistry won’t wash. See here and here for two MPs from both the main parties who sponsored the anti-Brexit bill having promised the opposite to get elected.