Inequality, injustice, social divisions and Brexit: an expression of Nihilistic rage?

Perhaps one of the cruelest forms of psychological torture is to be educated but poor, living within an unequal and unjust society. Trapped inside a body that instinctively craves for more, requiring intellectual and creative advancement, but is held back by the invisible walls of society, such a person can easily become a burning mass of resentment. Black people know all about this in America, and the historical source of their resentment is well-known.

In England, the historical source of resentment is the injustices carved into the class system. The pride in the British (and in particular, the English) flag that some of the white working class there have feels especially ironic, given that the flag represents the same system of injustice that has existed there for a thousand years. The education system is designed to entrench social divisions within society, with the only way to get an education that is worthy of the name meaning you have to pay for it.

Born into the wrong background, and your intellect is simply wasted; this is the most basic meaning of “injustice”: to have something useful to offer society, but to have your productivity and intellect deliberately repressed by the barriers of the social system. Meanwhile, those whose intellect is objectively inferior and whose nature is less productive, are indulged by a system that rewards the fate of their wealthier parentage; this is the most basic meaning of social immorality and corruption, where the poverty of the poor is exploited by those who fear losing the injustices that keep them in their place. 

“Know Your Place”

Libertarians argue that such injustices would, over time, equal out under a free market; that intellect would naturally balance against any inequalities in the system. But this can only be true in a system where there is equal opportunity; where the rich have an equal opportunity to fail as the poor have to succeed. There is no such system in place in America, let alone in England.

In England, the social system is designed to instill a sense of “knowing your place”; a Westernized and more genteel version of India’s caste system. The historical injustices and prejudices within society were one reason people settled in America in the first place, it should be remembered, and the “American dream” still exists there in people’s hearts regardless of the harsher reality. In England, no-one really pretends that such a “dream” ever existed; only the myths that were projected by its ruling elite, with Churchill being among its most famous polemicists. Even during the days of Empire, the best way for people born there to thrive was to leave Britain itself and seek out a life in one of the overseas “colonies”.

This explains why some people still have nostalgia for the Empire, and see Brexit through the same revisionist lens. The “Empire” was seen as a success because people had somewhere else than Britain where they could make a stab at being successful. This explains why the Scots were among the most resourceful of pioneers and colonists; given the dearth of opportunity (and the ingrained prejudice) at home, they sought a more just chance at success overseas.

So when the empire began to fall apart after the Second World War, and the “homeland” itself became a destination for the “colonials”, the irony (and sense of injustice) was not long in being felt by the “natives”. That same sense of bitter injustice was the root of the racism that greeted those who came from overseas to settle in Britain; not a country with streets paved in gold, but a country with inhabitants that brooded in quiet resentment. Wind the clock on several decades, and that same brooding resentment is felt in many parts of the country; the source of it is the historical injustices mentioned at the very start that were never put right.

Deaths of Despair  

     

Industrialisation led to parts of Britain that had never known prosperity and productivity becoming more prosperous and productive than some towns closer to the capital itself. Added on with the effect of empire and a captive (and advantageous) overseas market, in spite of the still-entrenched inequality, the whole of the country seemed to be thriving.

After the Second World War, the trend that had led to some parts of the country losing their primary purpose of existence began to accelerate. Still trapped in the embrace of a fundamentally unjust social system, post-industrial Britain lacked the dynamism to find a sustainable economic model. Instead, the ruling elite turned to Libertarian morality.

The British economy is, in fact, slowly dying. Britain lacks a sustainable economic model for the 21st century. Creating an economic structure that relies almost entirely on collating power and wealth within the capital, it allows the rest of the country to atrophy; returning Britain to the same structural inequalities that existed prior to Industrialisation. Due to the corrupt injustices of its social structure, those in power lack the intellect to deal with the issues rationally, instead only seeing the issue through the lens of protecting their own interests. They would rather ignore the rest of the country’s suffering and resentment – thus not dealing with the issue rationally – and deal with the consequences of that resentment as and when necessary. This is the archetype of reactionary thinking.

The result of that reactionary thinking has seen towns and cities across the country to slip into a kind of slow-motion social breakdown. These are the “deaths of despair” – of suicide or through the self-abuse of poor diet, over-drinking or drugs – that have seen a growth over the last few decades, and a surge in recent years. These are places that literally have no future; their economy has ceased to have an identifiable function, and the government doesn’t care enough (or lacks the intellect) to do anything about it.

In this sense, the future of post-industrial Britain may well follow the (nihilistic) prediction that the Conservative government made forty years ago: there are places in the country that will simply be allowed to wither and die. Such a sociopathic level of indifference is a damning indictment of Britain’s social structure, and there is a valid question to ask whether this structure’s own future is finite as well. How long will it be before the corruption at the top becomes so entrenched and so reactionary that it either eventually over-reaches or runs out of steam entirely?

Nihilistic Rage

There is a narrative (which has some merits) that the Brexit vote was the result of years of accumulated social frustration at the inequalities that had been allowed to fester within Britain, and England in particular. This is an over-simplification, as the vote would not have been possible without an at least equal sense of spoiled entitlement from the Middle classes of England’s rural heart also choosing to believe in a form of nostalgic revivalism, where a mythical cultural homogeneity could be restored. A more accurate representation would be to see the Brexit vote as reflecting both of these contradictory and opposing ideas;such contradictions only being possible in such an unequal society at Britain.

This social inequality explains the attraction of Brexit to those who feel they have no future. As they were told migration and the EU were responsible for their sense of resentment and despair, they turn to the politics of anger as the only way left that explains how they feel, regardless of who is peddling the message and what agenda might lie behind it. In this way, the "politics of anger" is also a manifestation of the nihilistic sense of having no future. If you have no future, you can easily become indifferent to what happens to everyone else now; as far as those people are concerned, they might well be happy to metaphorically let it all go to hell, if it would allow them at least a moment of grim satisfaction at seeing everyone else brought down to their level. These people seem to have become so nihilistic, they don't even care about their own future well-being: they simply want to have a single moment of feeling in control, even if all they want to do is press the self-destruct button.

This explains why the surge towards Nigel Farage's "Brexit Party" is at its most sudden and most incomprehensible in the parts of the country that would be the worst hit by the kind of "no deal" Brexit he advocates: the deprived post-industrial areas of Britain where there is already little in the way of a sustainable local economy. These areas are simply past caring; when you've already hit what feels like rock-bottom, outsiders telling you things will be terrible just sound as though they lack any ability to see things from your point of view. 

It is this psychological separation that is another manifestation of Britain's social divisions; parts of the country that economically and socially feels as though they are on a different plane of existence, as though "the centre" simply doesn't even know they exist.

This is how Britain has become such an object of morbid fascination to outsiders; hypnotized by the spectacle of self-destructive madness that is taking control of events: the all-consuming "black hole" that everyone seems to be dragged into.

Populism and esoteric thought: reactionary tribalism and historic parallels

There is an argument that can be made that the rise in Populism is a clear reaction against globalisation, social and technological changes and the effects of the financial crisis of 2008. Similarly, a concurrent trend has emerged in popular culture of a growing fascination with esoteric symbolism and fantastical escapism.
It's not only children who want to believe in "unicorns" these days, but some of our politicians, too.

We've been here before.
It seems to be an instinctive human reaction against social and economic change. The sudden growth of industrialisation led to various cultural movements in Europe; most notably the change towards stricter moral values in Victorian Britain and a spurt in romantic historical literature, which occurred as Britain was rapidly changing from an agrarian society to an urban one. Artistic movements like the Pre-Raphaelites can be seen as part of the same narrative. Britain's social change was rapid when seen in its historical context, especially when we consider how, in the 18th century, London's population of half a million was ten times that of Britain's second biggest city (Bristol); in other words, England before industrialisation was essentially a country with a bloated capital and an assortment of modest market towns. Put into this context, the social schizophrenia felt by those living in the middle of such sudden changes is unsurprising.
Meanwhile, in places like Germany (even before the nation itself existed), there was the concurrent romantic movement that had a large effect on art and literature (which, more darkly, saw themes such as underlying Anti-Semitism emerge in folk tales). This can also be seen as a wider expression of identity confusion, resulting in a need to hark to the (imagined) past as a form of social therapy.

The same esoteric themes were self-evident in the rise of the original Populist movement in the USA at the end of the nineteenth century, with the themes of tradition versus technology being played out in varying forms across the most rapidly-transforming places like Germany and Britain, and (to a lesser extent) Russia.
Of these three, both Germany and Russia had their own form of social collapse as a result of their involvement in the First World War. In Russia's case, it led to a complete embrace of technology in its use as enabling the aims of Bolshevism, though Russian nationalism was still strategically exploited later on by Stalin. In Germany, it ultimately led to the opposite, and the rise of the Nazis and Hitler, whose values were both highly nationalistic and ultra-traditional, yet also were in favour of strategically-exploiting technology (e.g. the modern media) when it suited them.
Of course, it was Italy that "broke the mould" in exploiting traditional values in the chaotic aftermath of the First World War. In this sense, that global continental conflict can see seen as the ultimate expression of chaotic modern values - technology leading to the destruction of human society in its most primal form. Put in this light, it is no wonder that some traditionalists led a counter-reaction against their experiences and led a political campaign - like the artistic movement a century earlier - to reconnect people with their "humanity".
The irony here, of course, is the reversion to "traditional values" led to even greater inhumanity in the Second World War.


Different versions of reality

In this greater context, then, the rise of Populism is as unsurprising as it was predictable.
The rise in "traditional values" can have many manifestations. Britain has now become a modern "nursery" for Populist strategy, with the rest of Europe and the world looking on in morbid fascination at how a country once looked to as an exemplar of democratic moderation has become transformed into a cauldron of irrationality and "magical thinking". Politicians there have been acting as though "Game Of Thrones" were a practical manual in applied strategy rather than a piece of small-screen fantasy escapism: life imitating art, and all that. They see dragons, and start to imagine that "unicorns" might well exist too.
The tendency to believe that the impossible is possible, and that reality itself can be doubted (or is only a matter of opinion), is a form of esoteric thought that its historic roots in pagan values. This fascination with "natural law" first came to into the popular imagination in the 19th century, with Victorian writers and thinkers in Britain, and romantic writers and musicians in Germany in particular; think of Wagner, for instance. This then leads, in a different interpretation, to the skepticism of Nietzsche. This thinking was later ruthlessly exploited by the Nazis.

Brought to the present-day, skepticism in reality - climate change skeptics, Holocaust deniers, the "flat earth" movement etc. - seems to have grown with how technology has been manipulated in the media for partisan effect. In other words, when the news more and more resembles "propaganda" by people with an agenda, people doubt the truth of what they see and read. This media partisanship has then been exploited by the Populist movement (such as Farage in the UK) to promote its own agenda and to disseminate a narrative that the press are lying about immigration (i.e. under-reporting its negative effects on society). This then gives an excuse for those Populist-leaning media outlets to feed their readers with stories to fuel their own prejudice even further.
The very concept of the "lying press" goes all the way back to the use of the by the Nazis to promote skepticism in mainstream opinion. In this way, by sowing doubt in the "reality" people are seeing on the media, it encourages people to believe in their own "version" of reality. This gives further contextualization of how, when presented with a world that makes no sense, feels constantly unpredictable, and reality itself seems contradictory, people turn to fantasy and science fiction as a form of escapist therapy. This also explains the growth in the far-right and its use of esoteric symbolism to promote its agenda - the whole "red pill" meme, for example. Symbolism that harks back to ancient values - such as a "chivalric" version of the St George's cross used by the EDL - has been increasingly used to provide both memorable imagery and to provoke an emotional impact. The signs are they have not been entirely unsuccessful.

In this sense, the growth in fantasy imagery in the media and the use of reality-skepticism in Populist rhetoric, are inherently linked. When reality itself becomes questionable and simply a matter of opinion, ideas that were once seen as absurd are now taken seriously; when the mainstream media disregard Populist ideas as either fantastical or paranoid, this simply feeds into the Populist narrative. In the Populist narrative, mainstream thought (i.e. that which is promoted by "the elite") is simply an agenda to make people supine and unthinking, accepting of their fate. In the Populist narrative, no conspiracy is too extreme an explanation.
Chaos and unpredictability are two tools used by Populist movements to create a reality-skeptical public and generate popular support for their rhetoric. These are themes that have been used in the past, but technology and the ability to manipulate perception are at a level where it becomes ever easier. This skepticism that becomes ever more prevalent in the public, leads to people becoming both paranoid and more prone to irrational thought.


Welcome to Fantasy-Land

This explains the British movement that has led around a third of its electorate to lend their support to Nigel Farage's "WTO Brexit" and his "Brexit Party".
By all rational analysis, Britain trading with the world on WTO terms alone (i.e. a "no deal Brexit") would be economically-disastrous. But people's sense of reality has become so skewed that the most popular party in the country is one that supports this very scenario. In their "reality", any negative consequences would be the fault of the EU and other co-conspirators within the UK, while any negative consequences would be both "not that bad" and "worth it in the long-run".
In this sense, the supporters of this scenario are able to believe two contradictory ideas at the same time - they believe that their future would be worse but also better. This is why appealing to reason is pointless, and missing the point. What they believe is more important to them than what they experience. Their sense of reality is not what they perceive with their senses, but what they believe exists in their own mind. It is, in a cognitive sense, a separation of the senses from their consciousness.
Without going too deeply into this, what this tells us more generally is that followers of this movement are acting like members of cult: they are brainwashed into believing what they have been told supersedes what they experience with their own senses: their "reality" is literally different from someone outside their group. The obvious danger of this psychology is that it can lead to potentially dangerous behaviour, such as "mob rule" fueled by hysterical rhetoric.

Britain is currently experiencing a form of collective nervous breakdown, where reality itself seems to be under question by its politicians. Goaded by the poisonous rhetoric of "betrayal", the mass of the electorate accumulating around Farage's "personality cult" are leading the country towards a reactionary and self-destructive path. The tribalism of the past has been turned on its head by Brexit, leading to a new form of "primal" tribalism: the tribe of the fantasy-believers.

The Brexit Party and Farage's "moment": the charisma, the strategy and the opportunism

Here's a quick reminder of where the British government stands currently.
It has a Prime Minister who leads a government that has no leadership: its ministers can say almost anything they want on the most important political crisis in living memory. The government is in a parliament in which it has no majority to agree on any decision relating to the most important crisis in living memory. The Prime Minister’s own party is desperate to get rid of her, but she refuses to relinquish (her meaningless) power, and they lack the means to force her out before more damage is done.

The governing party cannot agree how to deal with the most important political crisis in living memory, but neither can the opposition either; in this way, the two main parties are each divided into three or more incoherent and contradictory factions. The only established party that has a coherent position on the issue (the Liberal Democrats) are themselves being challenged by other (newer) parties, thus fracturing their wider cause into disconnected and uncooperative elements.

Given the nature of the crisis and the intellectual inadequacies nakedly displayed by the people involved, a way out of the current crisis looks impossible. All that can be agreed is to defer agreement on how to deal with the crisis, which has now simply resulted in the sudden emergence of the “Brexit Party”, with Nigel Farage poised to take ruthless advantage. There are no options on the table now that do not look bad for the main parties; only a menu of choices ranging from politically bad, to terrible, or apocalyptic. Nigel Farage looks likely to be able to exploit all of them.

In this way, Britain’s political class is divided and rudderless as never before.

As mentioned, into this “perfect storm” rides Nigel Farage, strategically positioned to take advantage of the “black hole” that Brexit has sucked in the Westminster establishment to a death-spiral of political oblivion. Using a strategically-adept sense of timing, Farage has allowed Westminster to simply destroy itself from within, its established parties simply displaying their own innate contradictions and failings in the face of Brexit.

Farage is both politically smarter than his established opponents give him credit for, and strategically more adept in understanding the fundamentals of modern politics compared to those who have only worked within the anachronistic structures of the Westminster bubble.

Playing the long game

While Farage is no intellectual, he has shown on several occasions a extremely canny reading of the political landscape, content to play the long game. Over a period of twenty years, he has succeeded in making an issue that very few people thought about (EU membership) become the defining issue of British politics. While his career has shown ups and downs, looking at things in the current situation, the trend of his political career has shown an unquestionable movement towards a greater and greater domination of the British political landscape. Yes, his career has had knock-backs (such as the numerous times he has failed to become a MP, and his various spells as UKIP leader); but the wider trend shows how he has been able to take an opportunity to make political capital of a situation and exploit it ruthlessly.

This is what has made him a political figure that his opponents have underestimated at their peril. While his appeal was initially marginal, his charisma seems to have appealed over time to a larger and larger segment of the electorate, when measured against his political opponents. In this sense, while Farage’s initial charisma was seen as a trivial distraction from the serious work of politics, the leading politicians in Westminster have over time simply displayed more and more of their inadequacies. Farage has the advantage of not needing to demonstrate his intellect compared to his political “betters” because his persona has that factored-in from the start. His supporters follow Farage because of his charisma, not his intellect; his appeal is his persona as a “man on the street” (regardless of whether it is a true reflection or not).

This was the impression he gave from the very beginning, so everyone identifies with that aspect of his personality. People like Cameron or Miliband could never hope to project that same impression because they would always be known for their orthodox political careers; they were “regular” politicians, and any attempts to show their charisma would always be balanced against that.

May and Corbyn, the “next generation” on, have other failings. May’s personality issues are now well-documented, while Corbyn’s charisma is, while genuine, limited in impacting only on those who share his old-fashioned view of politics. Given the changes of leadership in the mainstream parties, Farage is in some ways now an “established insurgent” in the political scene, given his long career on the sidelines, and his sharp rise in influence since 2010.

As said earlier, Farage’s high public recognition gives him the advantage of familiarity (everyone knows who he is, even if they disagree with him). Then the fact that his charisma is equally well-established in the public consciousness is another advantage. The last remaining factor is the actions of his opponents. Back at the “height” of UKIP popularity five years ago, Farage’s party came top of the European parliament elections (finishing in the high twenties), just above the other main parties. Five years on, and thanks to the collective rank incompetence of his opponents, he has been given an open goal (or at times failed to appear on the pitch at all); this explains how his new “Brexit Party” can manage to poll in the low thirties, at least ten points ahead of the next party.

The situation is extraordinary in every sense of the word, but Farage’s opponents have simply been doing most of his work for him, destroying each other’s credibility when not destroying their own. Farage simply has to step back from the fray (as he had been doing until a few months ago), and wait for the moment to strike. Worse, his opponents have given him all the rhetorical ammunition he needs to stir the emotions of the electorate in his favour. 

The “betrayal” narrative is now in full flow; the people who voted for Brexit have been stabbed in the back by traitorous politicians, who have simply rolled over to appease the European conspiracy against British independence. See? That’s how easy it is say such things, regardless of how many distortions and mistruths that narrative might involve.

Farage knows how to play the rhetorical game to a tee, though, and seems not to care too much about where that might lead. As said earlier, Farage may well have been playing a ”long game”, not too bothered about the means used to get what he wants, as long as the “end” is ultimately reached. He may have once been pilloried by Russell Brand as a “Pound Shop Enoch Powell”, but in the longer view, such slights can be laughed off or dismissed as the complaints of the “metropolitan elite” who simply play into Farage’s own well-established rhetoric of outsider victimhood. Beyond the city limits of London, Farage’s sentiments would be shared by many.

Given that the politicians in Westminster were never able to play a “long game” like Farage, they were only interested in generating the next headline in the “Daily Mail”; and such short-termism has consequences, as David Cameron found out. Theresa May’s own political strategy has been arguably even more cynically short-term (and a sign of her lack of intellectual foresight): she seems to be only ever interested in doing what is necessary to stay in power until the following month, which explains her Brexit strategy of delaying any decision where possible, or finding a route that can avoid her position being challenged.

The "Betrayal Party"

Now that the “betrayal” narrative has a willing and captive audience, Farage can exploit this to make as much political capital as possible. As the “last man standing” from the Brexit imbroglio, it is quite possible that he will be the only politician with public recognition that many people will be willing to trust. The advantage of Farage’s well-established rhetoric is that he has made it easy for himself to deflect blame for any errors on his part towards the actions of his opponents: he can play the perpetual “victimized outsider”, targeted by an elite only interested in suppressing his "popular uprising". He has already used the term “coalition against the people” to describe Westminster and Whitehall, while in the past has referred to his movement as a “people’s army”. This is the rhetoric of a Populist demagogue.

Farage doesn’t need to win over a majority to get what he wants; he only needs to convince enough people that their will is being betrayed, and already around a third of the electorate seem to fall into that category. In this sense, Farage’s “Brexit Party” could more fittingly be called the “Betrayal Party”: it is supported by those who feel they have been betrayed. These people are happy to lend their support to a one-man personality cult whose agenda is opaque beyond evocative slogans and divisive rhetoric. They seem happy to place it all on trust; and given the dearth of quality shown in the leading parties, you can see how they would do so. A vote for Farage is both a vote for blind hope and selfless trust. It is support out of desperation and anger. It might not be the first time that politics has led people to turn to turn people and agendas they didn’t fully understand, preferring to see what they wanted to see rather than the ugly truth hiding in plain sight; but it is the first time in living memory this has happened in Britain.

A couple of years ago, the author wrote that it had appeared that Theresa May had found a way for a mainstream party to exploit Brexit for their own advantage. Farage seems to have seen the reality, though: Brexit is a decisive “turn” in politics that none in the old order are able to deal with without it destroying them. It was only a matter of time before that revealed itself.

The opportunity lying before Farage is an extraordinary (and dangerous) one, unprecedented in British politics. Never before has the entire British political class looked so intellectually and strategically moribund; a beast on its last legs, just waiting for the end to come. It is a frightening prospect to witness. Westminster is an establishment on political life support, seemingly in a fatalistic end-of-days mood, unable and unwilling to deal with reality outside its doors. But reality, in the face of Farage’s peculiarly British brand of Populism, is camped at the doors, seemingly just waiting the moment to act.  

Nigel Farage and "The Brexit Party": feeding off the Westminster political chaos (and the carcass)

The signs are all there that Britain's political elite are running out of road, Theresa May in particular.

The whole issue of "Brexit" became Farage's own vehicle for his career advancement, going back to the first "breakthrough" that Farage had with UKIP in the 1999 European elections. The financial crisis was the real turning point, however, which saw the Conservatives come to power through supporting a policy that surrendered the narrative to Farage: by Cameron committing to the impossible of reducing migration into Britain to the tens of thousands in 2010, it soon became open season within Cameron's own party on the whole issue of "migration" and the EU.

We know where that led; by surrendering to those forces within his party, with Farage and UKIP threatening, Cameron quickly became a hostage to events, forever responding to the narrative that Farage had established. In this sense, Cameron was barely a leader in a real sense of the word - it was Farage who was the main personality behind the whole agenda to get Britain out of the EU. Farage and UKIP, it can reasonably be claimed, effected the downfall of one Prime Minister (Cameron), and in his new "Brexit Party", Farage seems likely to able to claim the destruction of his successor (May).

It is now twenty years since UKIP and Farage's first encounter with the European Parliament. What is now clear is that UKIP was used by Farage as a vehicle for his own brand of personality politics; in his various spells as leader, he ran the party almost like a personality cult, allowing little time for other individuals to challenge his domination of the party.
After winning the EU referendum, he stepped back from the leadership. It could be argued his reasoning was as highly-strategic as personal; in his mind, perhaps Farage would have liked to think of himself as "retiring" from the public sphere to see how events panned out (and rightly predicting the high likelihood of Brexit being mishandled by the political elite). In this way, while he stepped back to allow Westminster to slowly destroy itself over Brexit, it would provide him with the right kind of reason to step back into the spotlight at the right time; in the manner of a "Shakespearean hero", able to maintain his own sense of honour, returning to save the day, victorious and all-conquering.


The smartest man in the room, or just the last man standing?

The narrative above sounds absurd, or at best a silly flight of fancy, but the current status of events in Westminster gives an astonishing amount of legitimacy to the narrative described.

As said above, Farage seems to have been able to predict the mess that would gradually transpire in parliament. With Theresa May having her own self-destructive and anti-social brand of "leadership", she has succeeded in making herself both poisonous to her party and her party's image poisonous to much of the public (and even to its own members).
Meanwhile, Labour has lost all sense of direction, and the groups that are clearly pro-Remain are as divided as they are lacking in proper leadership of their own. While the Liberal Democrats have recently had a strong recovery in support when in comes to local government, when it comes to Brexit, the pro-European votes are split between them, the Greens and "Change UK". A 1980s-style "alliance" of some sort might make more sense electorally between these groups, but the clash of egos and the narcissism of small differences seems to get in the way.

In the meantime, there is Farage's new political bandwagon: "The Brexit Party". As said earlier, when he was in charge of UKIP, he led the party almost like a personality cult; given that this new "party" doesn't even technically have any members (it has "supporters" that financially contribute), it is an unashamed personality cult in all but name - the "Farage Party".
Farage timed its launch to perfection, seeing the way that Brexit had been so dismally handled. After stepping back from front-line politics, he allowed UKIP to be taken over by the "culture war" narrative that has led to Tommy Robinson's involvement - allowing them to say overtly what Farage had always implied covertly. In this way, Farage would be able to claim that the party had been taken over by extremists and giving him a reason to create a newly-honed identity for the Farage brand.
However, UKIP without Farage would still serve a useful function for the wider agenda, in extending the earlier "culture war" narrative that Farage had initially exploited. In the new form that UKIP took, a more raucous and dangerous form of Populism would be harnessed, while this would allow Farage - free of UKIP's awkward mantle - to exploit the political ground vacated by the self-destructive Tory Party. He could claim to be "above the fray", while still being able to exploit it for his own advantage.

The Farage "brand" (2019) could therefore be seen as a highly-strategic (and highly opportunistic) form of personality politics more usually seen in authoritarian cultures.
This is the divisive "betrayal" narrative that has been gaining traction. Given that Trump's appeal is fueled by the narrative of a "conspiracy" against his supporters, Farage and Trump are politically peas from the same pod. This explains Farage's links to Bannon and Trump, and the selfsame wider global agenda that they share.

With the self-destruction of the Conservative Party now seemingly just a matter of time, and with Labour seeming almost as clueless, Brexit's esoteric power seems to be to destroy the old order that has ruled Westminster. A party that didn't exist three months ago and is led as a charismatic personality cult is almost certain to win the most seats in the Britain's European elections, and is currently even second on opinion polls for Westminster elections.

Apart from the timing of the launch of Farage's new "project" early this year so that it gains attention just as things are falling apart in Westminster (and with the original leave date being imminent), the simple imagery and the principles behind it, are what seem so attractive to the layman.
With a name like "The Brexit Party", there can be no doubt to the onlooker what it represents. Apart from the simple clarity of the message (like the famous "Take Back Control" of the leave campaign), is also the implicit message that this party represents "the will of the people" (i.e. those that voted to leave) and that others, like the Conservatives, have shown themselves to be insincere at best and Machiavellian at worst.
Another smaller issue, but one worth mentioning, is the imagery of Farage's party itself: a rightward-pointing arrow on a pale blue background (itself formed out of the space between the "E" and "X" in "Brexit"): this seems to suggest a borrowing of the colours of the Conservatives (but in a more soothing tone); meanwhile the arrow can have both an overt meaning ("Forward"?), and a covert meaning (pointing to the right, implying the real political agenda). In this sense, the real Libertarian agenda of Farage and his financial supporters is hiding in plain sight.

Few people will look that deeply into things, of course. Farage's new vehicle for self-promotion is still perfectly timed to take advantage of the meltdown of leadership in Westminster; the "betrayal" narrative has taken little nudging to gain traction given the abject failure of the political elite to deal with the Brexit negotiations with any intelligence or rationalism.

All it takes is an extraordinary set of events and the right kind of person able to exploit them, and you have the makings of a political earthquake. Farage possesses all the necessary political tools and the right set of circumstances to make it happen. All the indications are that Britain is but a few missteps away from a fundamental collapse of the political order.
Events are ideally poised for Farage to take absolute advantage; to what end, no one is quite sure.