Look who's back

A couple of years ago I suggested that Nigel Farage had passed the high point of his influence and that history would judge him as a useful idiot for those pushing to get the Brexit referendum over the line (here). It looks like I was wrong. The latest opinion polls put Farage’s new Brexit Party at over 30% – well ahead of either the Conservatives or Labour, with a double-digit lead. He has brilliantly tapped into the dissatisfaction with the main political parties, telling his supporters that they have been betrayed over Brexit and that the establishment is out to crush them. As is always the case with Farage, there is a tiny grain of what almost passes for truth in his argument surrounded by bombast and obfuscation. He remains what he has always been – a political irritant, a rabble-rouser and a liar. But underestimate him at your peril.

The fact that he is back on the political stage at all is because he is right about one thing – the political establishment has played a bad Brexit hand in the worst possible manner. Both the main parties are split and there is no indication that the two parties which together hold more than 85% of the seats in parliament will be able to agree on a Brexit deal. Since the autumn our TV news bulletins have featured late night parliamentary sittings which have shown that the only thing MPs agree on is to disagree. In this febrile atmosphere, almost 100% of MPs’ time is taken up with Brexit-related issues with no substantive progress on the things that matter to most people’s lives (the health and education systems, environment, transport and housing to name but five). Farage’s Brexit Party has grown because it feeds on popular discontent with the political establishment – a concern even felt by members of the main parties, with large numbers of Conservative members reportedly ready to vote for Farage’s party.

Try as people might, it is very hard to lay a glove on Farage who is a brilliantly elusive operator. Last Sunday, for example, Farage went on the BBC’s main weekend political show (here for the full interview) where he was confronted with some of the things he said – and we saw the clips – but when faced with those issues that he would rather not be reminded of, Farage responded with denial followed by bluster and anger. He went on the offensive to accuse the BBC of being “in denial” and later justified his response by saying “The idea was to use up all the time talking about irrelevances and inaccuracies, rather than talking about a major election taking place next Thursday. That's why I took the attitude that I did.” Arguably, there was a good reason for holding him to account in this way because his party has not actually produced any form of manifesto. Farage is the party and the party is him and in order to understand something about the issues on which they are standing it is right to pose the questions.

His response split viewers, with roughly half suggesting that he got a grilling from which he did not emerge well whilst the other half thought he gave more than he got. In short, it had no impact on the debate. Farage is undoubtedly a charismatic politician and an effective media performer but he has no answers to any of the questions about how Brexit can be made to work. More importantly, people do not want to hear them. It has become an article of faith amongst people who support the Brexit Party that it can be made to work. As Farage put it “we can be better than anybody if we just believe in ourselves.” There is no sense that the economic damage resulting from leaving the EU can only be minimised if some form of accommodation can be reached with the EU.

And this is where things start to get dangerous. Farage and his ilk do not believe that they have any duty to deliver Brexit – their role is merely to demand that government delivers it for them. When the policy proves impossible to implement, the hard core Brexiteers cry betrayal, thus further whipping up public resentment. This is not the conventional evidence-based policy which many of us have grown up with. It is dog-whistle policy designed to appeal to a core group of supporters to serve whatever purpose the leader has in mind. And it is not just a UK problem. Donald Trump dismisses inconvenient facts as fake news and populist leaders across Europe are similarly capable of ignoring facts in favour of lowest-common denominator politics.

But Farage is a league apart. Unlike Trump, who at least had some family money to fall back on (though quite how much is disputed) Farage never made a huge amount of money before going into politics. He now earns between €147k and €197k per annum from his media work alone, according to records covering the first four years of the current European parliamentary session and in the year to May 2018 he reportedly earned almost £400k. In an interview two years ago, Farage claimed to be “53, separated and skint … there’s no money in politics.” Whatever else he might be, he is not short of money.

Of course, Farage is not the only representative of the people whose financial interests have improved during his term of office. But more than most, he is a snake oil salesman posing as a man of the people when his background and lifestyle suggest he is anything but, and who peddles a policy he has no idea how to implement. But large numbers of people don’t care. They see him as a refreshing antidote to the political establishment, telling it as it is. Consequently, his party will almost certainly do well in next week’s European parliament elections.

But the real problem is less Farage than how the establishment responds to his success. The government will almost certainly interpret it as a strong case for delivering Brexit (despite the fact that his party is unlikely to take much more than 30% of the vote share). As we saw in 2014, when UKIP took 27% of the vote in the EU elections, this might panic the government into a wrong move, such as drifting towards acceptance of a hard Brexit. But the lesson of 2014 is that the EU elections are not a good guide to anything. A year after the Conservatives came in third in the EU election, they won their first parliamentary majority in Westminster for 23 years. The only lesson to be drawn from the European parliamentary elections is that they are a useful way for the electorate to register a protest vote. Perhaps that is why Farage has been so successful in them, despite having failed seven times to be elected to Westminster.