The British establishment media has pivoted to full assault mode against Brexit’s Nigel Farage this past week, scrabbling to prevent him from achieving escape velocity at the UK elections on Thursday.
The central point of this piece is simple, so let’s get it done with right at the top. The legacy media in the United Kingdom love Nigel Farage because they see him as a weapon they can use to destroy the real enemy, the long-hated Conservative Party. Yes, you may hate the Tories now, and well deserved that is too. But for senior journalists in most of this country’s news media, this has been an ambition longer than many of us have been alive.
They see Mr Farage, with whom they profoundly disagree on absolutely everything, as a hot water faucet that can be turned up and down as desired to damage the legacy right.
At the beginning of this election cycle, Mr Farage faced what may have been the friendliest media environment of his life. The metaphorical faucet of allowing him media exposure was turned up high, pouring down scalding water on the heads of the Conservatives with weeks of barely critical reportage and endless –absolutely endless – polls showing his Reform UK on the up. Cynical perhaps, but remember Peter Hitchen’s view that the true purpose of polling may not be to measure opinion, but to influence it.
Mr Farage is a canny operator, almost certainly one of the most effective British politicians of modern British history. He knew what was happening, is apt at playing the media at their own game, no doubt happy to be used and reckoning he could break free of this abusive relationship by achieving escape velocity before the MSM had time to react. And now, they most certainly are reacting.
The question is whether he can break the media domination now the faucet is being aggressively, urgently shut off. Like the Democrat grassroots after this week’s debate, the British left is having an ‘oh shit’ moment as they desperately try to put Farage back in the box they’re making for him.
Make no mistake, to the British legacy media, Farage has now served his purpose. The Conservatives have been catastrophically damaged by their own incompetence in the first instance, and finished off by the media telegraphing to the voting public it’s OK to vote for an alternative in the second.
Consider Nigel Farage’s BBC appearances this campaign so far. Two weeks ago he was given totally free reign to dominate a seven-way debate. There is no question he comprehensively won that. Indeed, I’d argue this was a more impressive performance than President Trump’s this week. Mr Farage’s opponents in the ring weren’t asleep, for one thing.
Then the BBC interrogations of Mr Farage two Friday nights in a row, now, coming after the sudden day to night switch engaged everywhere from Farage as useful to serve the agenda to Farage a dangerous extremist that broadcasters have a responsibility to destroy.
There was astonishingly little talk of policy last night on the BBC’s Question Time special. And little wonder, it was 30 minutes of Mr Farage being repeatedly told by host and studio audience alike that he is a racist and should go away. The evening started with host Fiona Bruce explaining the show format to Mr Farage and that he wouldn’t be interrupted. Some hope.
Farage and the Reform campaign has now, realistically, lost a whole week of campaign time being stuck on the defensive. It isn’t like the attacks coming now – that Farage made comments in 2014 and the unexpected snap election gave him no time to hand pick quality candidates – are new information. The broadcasters knew all this when they were in ‘use Farage’ mode three weeks ago, it simply wasn’t expedient.
It looks like Reform needs an urgent reset. The last five days of the election can’t be dancing to the BBC’s and Channel 4 News’ tune, stuck perpetually on the back foot.
Mr Farage makes much of his friendship with President Trump. So here’s the best possible time to take a leaf out of his book: when the spotlight of intense attention is turned on you, as it is now, go on the attack. Go absolutely buck wild. Prefacing every speech you give for five whole days with an apologia for a decade old prediction that war was coming for Ukraine really achieves nothing but keep a distracting and energy-consuming story alive.
This is important stuff because this election really is a stars-aligning moment. If Mr Farage can achieve escape velocity on Thursday, get a Parliamentary group big enough that he can’t be ignored, then he’s on track to build his national team and prepare for the next election in 2029. The opportunity to fundamentally change Britain’s political landscape really only comes once a century but for Farage, somehow, it has come twice.
Thanks to the vagaries of Britain’s electoral system, it is conceivable the outcome of this vote is a big city, middle class, left wing party – Labour – forming the government and being held to account by a small city, middle class, left wing party. That’s the Liberal Democrats by the way, and no fault to you for not having heard of them. Small and otherwise inconsequential as they are, their ground campaign game is good and this void-to-be-filled stars-aligned election could just as well benefit them.
The Conservative party has already surrendered any claim to be the centre-right opposition in this country. They did that themselves with cynical calculation so effective it’s hard to believe it isn’t deliberate. This country needs an effective right-wing opposition. The crown is in the gutter, Mr Farage. Please, God, pick it up.
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