If there were an award for brass neck, Britain’s chattering class would win it every time. For years these folk devoted every ounce of their energy to making Britain a hostile place for populism, and yet now they’re having a good old chuckle at Nigel Farage for buggering off to America. ‘Some patriot!’, they’re yelling in their online echo chambers in response to Farage’s announcement that he won’t be standing in the General Election and instead will be crossing the pond to help Donald Trump get back into the White House. The front! They all but criminalise populism in the UK and then mock populists for going elsewhere.
Of course, Farage deserves some stick for his ‘bombshell’ announcement – as the Independent describes it – that he won’t be standing for the Reform Party in the 4 July election called by Rishi Sunak yesterday. ‘Important though the General Election is, the contest in the United States of America on 5 November has huge global significance’, he said. Oh, thanks dude. Way to make British voters feel small. Apparently we’re ‘important’ but not ‘significant’. It is sad to hear the man who did so much to spearhead the global earthquake that was Brexit now speak of Britain as a poor cousin to populist America.
His ducking out of the election is very bad news for Reform. Polls suggest it is Farage’s involvement in the party that entices some Brits to back it. A More in Common survey found that a quarter of Reform voters support it because they support Farage. Only seven per cent support it because they support Richard Tice, the current leader. It was always unlikely that Reform would execute an upset and storm like a populist fox into the technocratic henhouse. Yet now, Farageless, bereft of ‘Mr Brexit’, their electoral fortunes seem even poorer.
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