Nigel Farage is dominating the Tory conference, just as he did the Labour conference. Both parties quiver before him because polls indicate he could be the next Prime Minister. Hence the unseemly Tory defections to his party, Robert Jenrick’s antics and Kemi Badenoch’s increasingly desperate, hyper-Reform policy announcements.
Millions of voters see Farage as a saviour. I see an unpleasant, ruthless, egotistical demagogue. Must go to Specsavers. I joke, but what’s unfolding is not funny. It’s deadly serious.
Some adore the Reform leader because he, like Donald Trump, simultaneously disrupts and exploits the democratic system. Those who want to make their country white again are drawn to his anti-immigrant nationalism. And many hope the millionaire will deliver them from wretchedness and hopelessness. Yes, really. The man who has repeatedly said he wants to “fundamentally rethink” the NHS and voted against measures to extend and employment rights is their man. They won’t listen. They do not know how.
A 2029 Reform government now seems inevitable, given the momentum created by pollsters and the media. Remember, though, predictions so far ahead of the next elections are at best precarious, and at worst extremely foolish. This drift to the hard right can be opposed; its capture of our democracy can be reversed.
That needs a fearless fightback, unity between defenders of democracy of all persuasions, public engagement and pushing the national conversation away from its pro-Reform premises, exposing its leaders and their deceptions.
It can be done. It must be done.
Tory grandee Michael Heseltine did that this weekend, in a majestic column for the Observer. He wrote this: “The majority of asylum seekers want to share in our [higher living] standards and escape from persecution or civil war. To describe them as thieves and rapists is not only dishonest but encourages the worst sorts of prejudices in our communities.” And this: “We must make it clear that we will never have any part in the populist extremism of Farage.” On Monday online, in a striking, moving video, football pundit Gary Neville condemned “idiots spreading hate speech” and causing division, and said: “We must stop elevating our voices towards them and it needs to stop now and get back to a country of love, of peace, of harmony and become a team again.” Amen.
Most Britons are not populists. They remain humane in this hostile environment. One of those is Tina Fenner, a middle-aged woman from Sevenoaks in Kent, who has fostered around 50 asylum-seeking children and helped them settle here. Letters to this paper by readers who repudiate the spreading xenophobia move me to tears.
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Anti-populists need to understand where it all started. Thatcher’s economic libertarianism and militant acts against unions led to a collapse of wages and job security. Her rhetoric on the enemies within and “alien cultures” swamping her nation diverted people from her destructive policies. That led to where we are now: unregulated market banditry making the rich unspeakably richer, and those at the bottom either serving the haves or falling into deep poverty.
George Osborne’s austerity project punished the least well off. Johnson, Sunak and Truss continued his legacy. Meanwhile, public services were either underfunded or exploited by big business. The corruption and greed of this class were revealed in Covid Contracts: Follow the Money on ITV last week. Friends of Tories profiteered from the pandemic. Baroness Mone has been publicly shamed. Others were far worse.
Ordinary folk had their aspirations and lives dashed by free marketeers, not migrants, the usual scapegoats when the going gets hard.
If you are worried about the state we are in, read the short, accessible The Little Book of The Populist Right, by academic Jon Bloomfield and playwright David Edgar. They warn against ersatz Faragism – now being espoused by both main parties – and continuation of the bankrupt neoliberal model.
They investigate American billionaires funding populist British think tanks and individuals. Most usefully, they, like Heseltine, notify readers that Reform is part of the hard right resurgence across the West and that what is happening raises memories of the 1930s, when fascism was enabled and emboldened by well-connected influencers. This is where we are, here and now.
Poppies will soon be on lapels, reminding us of the vow: never again. If you want to honour the dead and keep that promise, distance yourself from Farage and co and their posture politics. They will tear down the ties that bind us and create a Trump-like state of perpetual conflict. We won the war against fascism. Its modern incarnation will defeat us unless we step up.
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