There’s turmoil in the EU as the far right advances. Macron risks all, trusting that people vote in protest for the remote EU parliament, but vote for real governments at home. After all, we sent Nigel Farage to fart rude taunts and abuse at MEPs for 20 years until Brexit, and he got nowhere much in the UK.
But Britain, with a resurgent Labour party set to sweep in, is on a reverse path. Our own hard-right wing, in the form of Farage’s Reform party, may relegate the Conservatives to third place in votes, and the sideshow battles between the rump right will be a fascinating farrago. But the future is all with Labour and how it governs.
These demagogues are good at their art. A snap poll anointed Farage the “winner” in last week’s TV debate on Britain’s Got Talent criteria, his booming oratory shamelessly free of factchecking. Only one sulphurous issue propels him, the same immigration fears and factoids that power the far right across Europe.
That political elixir blends nationalism with disappointment and justified grievance, so easily blaming migrants for a lack of housing or NHS appointments, low wages, bad jobs. Those raw emotions have too often felt too visceral for conventional politicians to dare confront, leaving them mumbling awkwardly and promising the impossible. Borders do matter, determining nationhood and who shares in taxing and spending. Porous borders signal a state malfunction, as images of arrivals – mainly men – packed in perilous inflatables allow this small proportion of immigrants to be gleefully misrepresented as the bulk of big numbers here by invitation.
Farage thrives on shock – not dog-whistles, but blasting full-foghorn racism at Rishi Sunak. “He doesn’t really care about our history … This man is not patriotic. Doesn’t believe in the country, its people, its history or frankly even its culture,” he tells the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. He and Boris Johnson, outstanding rogues of the era, are gifted performers licensed to say whatever pleases: theatricality, quick wit and a dose of sociopathy is all it takes (other EU populists share those traits). On the BBC, Farage gifts squillions in tax cuts, all to be paid for by sacking NHS diversity trainers. Taking the side of ordinary folk against the “liberal elite”, he knows the magic of Orwell’s “ignorance is strength”.
But those who use immigration to lever themselves up have only one strong point. People have been tricked and lied to time and again. “Stop the boats,” Sunak emblazons on his lectern, exaggerating impossible promises made by every government. Farage’s “net zero” immigration pledge is barely less preposterous. Governments must strive to control undocumented arrivals, but Canute would have warned about the futility of simply commanding “stop”.
Instead of explaining the need for foreign workers, governments took the coward’s way and promised what they can’t and shouldn’t deliver. Tony Blair said there’d be only 13,000 net migrants a year from newly admitted EU countries in 2004;