Nigel Farage is back
The man most responsible for Britain’s seismic exit from the EU has made a noisy re-entry into politics to shake up the general election. The aim is a “reverse takeover” of the Tory party. Jane Lewis reports
“What I’m really calling for is a political revolt,” said Nigel Farage as he announced his surprise re-entry into frontline politics at a noisy campaign launch in the faded seaside town of Clacton. In a trice, reported Fox News, the “maverick populist leader” sent “shock waves through the British general election”. Farage – who has taken leadership of the upstart party Reform UK, and is contesting a Westminster seat for the eighth time of asking
– had previously hinted about heading to the US to work on Donald Trump’s re-election drive. “I changed my mind,” he said, because “I can’t turn my back on those millions of people who followed me, believed in me.” His campaign promise is “to make Britain great again”.
Remaking the British right
“Rishi Sunak’s bed of nails just got a lot more uncomfortable,” says Bloomberg. The “architect of Brexit” is a “charismatic figure – a ‘regular bloke’ with a pint in one hand, a cigarette in the other” – who supporters claim is willing to say “what everyone is thinking”. A consummate political operator, Farage “aims to do for the Tories what Donald Trump has done for Republicans”. The goal is “to remake the British right” via “a reverse takeover” of the Tory party, and create a new movement that would speak “for the little guy”, says The Economist. Last year’s Coutts debanking scandal helped Farage burnish his credentials as a man of the people: trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare of institutionalised prejudice and wokery.
Polls suggest Reform has already made considerable headway since Farage threw his hat into the ring. A YouGov survey, taken after the launch of the Conservative manifesto this week, puts Reform UK just a point behind the Tories, with 17% of the vote. Ipsos is predicting a likely “crossover moment” before the campaign ends.
Born in 1964, Farage grew up in the Kent village of Downe, once home to Charles Darwin – the son of a “colourful” City stockbroker. He describes his background as both “very patriotic” and “traditionally Conservative”. Educated at Dulwich College in South London, he joined the party in 1978, inspired by a talk given by Margaret Thatcher’s mentor, Keith Joseph. On his last day at school, says The Times, a teacher predicted he would make an impact. “It’s fame or prison for you, dear boy.” Farage followed his father into the City, becoming a commodities broker at Drexel
Burnham Lambert and then RJ Rouse & Co. At one point he set up his own business, Farage Futures, which he wound up in 2002. But politics came to dominate. Enraged by the Major government’s signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, he became a founder member of the UK Independence Party (Ukip) and in 1999 was elected to the European Parliament – beginning a lengthy political dance with the Tories that would ultimately lead to the 2016 referendum, and Britain’s seismic departure from Europe.
A Cavalier by instinct
When Farage celebrated a landmark birthday in April, at a knees-up held in Boisdales in the City, Trump appeared by video-link to congratulate him. He has always had a sense of his own destiny. “I am lucky. I am lucky,” he told an interviewer in 2012 – a belief reinforced by surviving three near-death experiences: a car crash in his 20s, testicular cancer and a plane crash while campaigning in 2010, says The Times. A keen historian, who once observed his ideal job would be to work as a tour guide on the Somme, his particular interest is the English Civil War. “I’m a Cavalier by instinct and by lifestyle. I mean, I don’t like Roundheads,” he once observed. But he has an almost Cromwellian belief in his providential rise.
“After the Brexit vote, Farage languished without a guiding cause,” says The Guardian. He appears to have rediscovered it. Whether or not he triumphs in Clactonon-Sea, he has once again put a grenade under British politics.
“It’s fame or prison for you, dear boy”