Exclusive: Farage: Capitalism is Dead, We’re Living in Corporatism

Economic growth is being strangled by an “unholy alliance” of big business, big banks, and big government and protecting blue-collar workers means standing up for true capitalism, Nigel Farage tells Breitbart London.

Thatcherism is no longer a relevant or useful political approach for post-capitalism Britain, Nigel Farage told Breitbart at a campaign stop on Monday evening, as he unpicked what the emerging Faragism of pro-“little guy” populism means. Apparently putting aside the Thatcherism that was so clearly the preferred model of his predecessor in the party leader’s seat, Richard Tice, Mr Farage said a different approach was needed to fix the problems of 2024, not 1975.

He told Breitbart News: “Thatcherite is irrelevant. It’s half a century old…. What I do think has happened over the last few decades is the power of the big corporate companies has got bigger and bigger. Capitalism is dead, it doesn’t exist, we’re living in corporatism. An unholy alliance of big business, big banks, and big government… I genuinely think we won’t get economic growth if the country is dominated by six giant multinationals, none of whom pay tax on-shore.”

Mr Farage asserted his credentials on fighting those big powers, from his time grinding the European Parliament down to his campaign against debanking, and said he now has his sights set firmly on the government rules distorting the market, holding people down, and allowing corporatism to thrive. He cited overbearing regulations and soaring taxation on small businesses and the self-employed, as well as the insidious environmental rules which have become a major campaigning point for the Brexit leader.

British regulations on pollution have succeeded in bringing down the UK’s emissions, Farage said, simply by sending manufacturing abroad and the jobs that creates with it. He said: “you close down the steel industry, you close down heavy shipbuilding, that business then gets conducted in other parts of the world. But you say ‘aren’t we glorious, we’ve reduced CO2 emissions more than any other country in the western world’ — which we have — but we haven’t actually reduced CO2 emissions, we’ve just exported them to other countries. The whole thing is a con, the whole thing is a nonsense. We’ve lost a whole lot of jobs for no environmental gain whatsoever.”

As for the solution, Mr Farage says the answer is real capitalism creating jobs and opportunities, not the stitch up between state and big business. “I want to help make it thrive”, he said.

Farage spoke to Breitbart News shortly before striding onto stage at a short-notice rally in Devon, South West England. Called at just 36-hours notice and not in an area the Reform Party appeared to be heavily targeting earlier in the campaign, a party spokesman told Breitbart extra tickets had been released to meet demand and even so this reporter witnessed a large group of supporters who turned up without tickets, and listened in to Mr Farage’s speech from outside the secure zone.

With nearly 2,000 people in attendance, the rally may be the largest of any political party of the election campaign. Speaking from the stage to the crowd, Mr Farage said of the turnout: “… at five o-clock on Saturday we didn’t have an event. We’d sold zero tickets. And here we are, less than two days later and we’ve had to close the gates because we’re at capacity. And I tell you what, I know it, I can feel it, something is happening out there and it’s very, very big indeed. ”

Separately, Mr Farage told Breitbart that the turnout spoke of high levels of support for Reform in the rural South-West of England going undetected by pollsters. He said: “the whole game has changed… Reform, if we’re on 19-20 [per cent] nationally, we’ve got to be mid-20s in these seats, and some of these seats could be three-or-four-way marginals. If you want to know what’s going to happen in the South West, do not look at any MRP poll. They are a waste of time. So goodness knows what happens here.”

The UK General Election to choose the next Parliament takes place in nine days time, on July 4th.