The stranded Reform U.K. Party leader is the most consequential British politician of the 21st century, certainly more important historically than any of the last eight prime ministers. Tony Blair is the only realistic rival.
Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party as Reform U.K. was originally branded, at a Conservative Political Action Conference in 2018. (Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk
Without Nigel Farage, the U.K. would never have left the European Union. Farage’s role in forcing the issue to the top of the political agenda, and putting electoral pressure on the Tory Party which former Prime Minister David Cameron sought to assuage through a 2016 referendum, was indispensable.
Subsequently Farage has been central to placing racism at the centre of British electoral politics.
Farage has been key to redirecting the frustrations of ordinary people at 20 years of falling living standards, while wealth concentrates to an incredible degree in the hands of the billionaire class. That the blame for this has been loaded onto hapless immigrants, rather than those looting the economy, owes much to Farage.
He has more than anybody made U.K. elections revolve around who can promise the most blood-curdling measures against immigrants.
In doing so, Farage appeared to have shattered the U.K.’s two-party system. He certainly brought about the biggest shift in Labour/Tory dominance since 1921.
It was entirely thanks to Farage splitting the right-wing vote, that Keir Starmer, now the outgoing prime minister, could gain a thumping parliamentary majority with just 32 percent of votes cast, under the U.K.’s appalling electoral system.
Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer casting their votes in the 2024 general election in London, July 4, 2024. (Keir Starmer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Reform had the same effect in the recent Scottish parliamentary elections, enabling the Scottish National Party (SNP) to win 57 out of 73 constituency seats despite a 10 percent drop in their vote.
Even after all the abuse hurled at Farage by the media in recent weeks, Reform still leads in U.K. opinion polls.
I am by nature diametrically opposed to Reform U.K.’s brand of politics. For me tolerance, empathy and compassion are the most important virtues in life, and I deplore the atavism and racism which is Reform’s stock-in-trade.
I also detest their anti-intellectualism, while the stupidity of believing that the hardship to ordinary people caused by the structural imbalance of late capitalist systems, is somehow the fault of poor refugees, fills me with contempt.
I am however relaxed about leaving the E.U.. It has become a right-wing bloc of a very unpleasant nature, under leadership of E.U. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her vice president Kaja Kallas.
The sight last month of MEPs chanting “send them back” in the European Parliament was chilling. I am glad to be out of it. However the decision to reject all sensible trading arrangements with the bloc has greatly damaged the U.K. economy and harmed the prospects of young people.
Again at base this was due to Farage’s electoral pressure on the Tory Party and Boris Johnson’s desire to exploit the sentiment which Farage had created.
I would argue that former Prime Minister Tony Blair is in fact a more harmful and more evil figure than Farage.
The ‘Uniparty’ Began With Blair
Blair, while prime minister, addressing a session of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2005. (WEF/ Remy Steinegger/Flickr/ CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Blair fundamentally changed British society by gutting the political instrument prepared to use the power of the state to improve the condition of the working class — the Labour Party — and turning it into another reliable agency of neoliberalism.
The Uniparty in Britain started with Blair. His government furthered privatisation, particularly of services within the National Health Service (NHS), and ended free university education.
Together with Gordon Brown, then Blair’s chancellor and later his successor as prime minister, Blair brought in the ruinous Private Finance Initiative, to guarantee looting by private capital of public provision. Brown went on to bail out the banks in the biggest single transfer of wealth from poor to rich in history.
Brown, at left, with fellow former prime ministers Blair, John Major, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Prime Minister Cameron during U.S. President Barack Obama’s address to Parliament in June 2011. (White House /Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain)
Blair killed hope and progress — in addition to the millions he killed in wars. He now rakes in large multiples of the money made by Farage, from even dodgier sources, while receiving none of the media scrutiny.
Farage of course did not change history on his own. He was relentlessly promoted by both state and corporate media for decades. He has been by a mile the most frequent guest on BBC Question Time, and the relentless media promotion started when he ought to have been an obscure figure, from a party, U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), which had never won an election.
In 2005, when I left the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and went on to fight Jack Straw in Blackburn in the general election that year, Nigel Farage contacted me and invited me to lunch.
As an Independent I had obtained 5 percent of the vote in Blackburn. UKIP had got 2.2 percent of the U.K. vote. Despite having just 2.2 percent of the vote and no MPs, Farage was already all over the BBC and massively promoted by the newspapers.
Farage said he wanted to explore my joining UKIP. I did a little research, and declined the invitation, finding too much evidence of racism. But interestingly, Farage’s approach to me emphasised his opposition to the Iraq War and to the attack on human rights in the name of the “War on Terror.”
I believe he was genuine about this — and it is forgotten now that Farage was an outspoken, though in 2001 not very important, critic of the Iraq War — a position he has never repudiated.
Farage backstage at BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions in Hurstpierpoint in May 2017. (Steve Bowbrick /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 2.0)
All main party politicians are frontmen for other interests. They are owned and controlled by the defence industries, by Big Pharma, by the Israeli lobby, by media barons, by the media industry.
Sometimes there is an element of symbiosis, where a politician becomes so confident in the power they exercise in the state as to feel able to address the billionaire class on equal terms, but this is rare.
Farage was promoted, systematically, into a major political figure by intense media coverage. He took full advantage of this, and is a canny operator. His bluff manner and ease in social situations makes him appear different to polished politicians — he can drink a pint without making it look like a rare stunt for the cameras.
He was of course always a creature of the wealthy, who promoted him so assiduously.
But having helped turn the dial of politics so far to the right, Farage has been left stranded as it moves rightward still. One problem for Farage is that he is not actually a real racist. He is prepared to pander to racism, to whip it up and exploit it for votes.
That is perhaps morally worse than being an actual racist. But Farage does not actually hate brown or Muslim people. Nor is he enthusiastic for war or NATO expansion.
In the age of the apartheid-nurtured, openly racist Elon Musk, the forces that propelled the career of Nigel Farage now want Tommy Robinson and his ilk. Farage is not a stone-cold killer. Trump has cooled his relationship with Farage, and even Farage’s eventual coming round to support Trump on Iran hasn’t changed that.
In U.K. politics, competing with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch, Farage actually comes over as slightly more decent than they are. Politics have moved so far to the right that Farage has nothing really to offer.
When it comes to downright vicious authoritarianism, the Reform U.K. Party’s Robert Jenrick and Restore Britain’s Rupert Lowe and others now look a far better prospect to the billionaires, with Tommy Robinson as their king (mostly) over the water.
So poor Farage has been dumped. With an extraordinary coordination, all of the media suddenly savaged him. The BBC, the Murdoch press, the Daily Mail, all of those who put him in place have bitten great lumps out of him in just the last three weeks. Farage’s sordid personal financial dealings are revealed bit by bit.
I don’t see a way back for Farage, though he will get re-elected in Clacton. Mainstream media exposure has been his only weapon. It was devastating when fully lined up behind him, but what has he now?
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support.
Subscriptions to keep Craig Murray’s blog going are gratefully received. Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, Murray has set up new methods of payment including a GoFundMe appeal and a Patreon account.
This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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