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.