Can Farage come back from this?

[noblegiraffe]

Up until recently, it was generally accepted that Nigel Farage had a good chance of being the next Prime Minister.

But now? Even if you forget the corruption investigation and imagine he is cleared of wrongdoing - he made a whiny speech, resigned in a huff, it backfired, and now everyone is laughing at him as he enters a face-off against a bin.

And the fact that he has to take it seriously while Binface very much doesn't take it seriously is making it look even more ridiculous. We know he doesn't have any shame from the stupid Cameos accepts money to do (why, when he can just tap his mates for another 5 million?), but surely even he must have his limits?

Is there now still a serious path to his becoming prime minister after becoming a laughing stock? Or should he bin his political ambitions and fuck off to America to earn the big bucks that he so clearly feels he deserves?

After a cynical attempt to regain control of the trip of the narrative as his finances were finally under genuine scrutiny, I’m delighted to watch the situation immediately spin out of his control and leave him looking utterly foolish.

The Trump/Farage playbook is looking so well worn at this point it is depressing that there are still people willing to embrace it. Neither man is “anti-establishment” in any genuine sense, certainly not in the sense of wanting to rebalance power between the existing Establishment and the bulk of society.

The only sense in which they are anti-establishment is that they want to grab power and wealth for themselves, and they resent anything that stands in their way - whether that is an existing in-group that dislikes them, or a rules based system that stops them doing whatever the hell they want

Either way, they want to insert themselves into the place of the “Establishment” and reap the personal benefits of that - there will be no gain for the people who help them get there.

By positioning themselves like this they are proving particularly useful to a certain section of very high net worth individuals, who see Trump and Farage as useful tools to exploit.

Firstly - they both continually focus on immigrants as the key source of their respective nation’s ills. Immigrants are a perfect target - they lack ecomonic and cultural power, and are usefully “other” when you want to appeal to emotions like security, and belonging. People can easily be made to fear immigrants, and any conversation quickly becomes highly emotive and divisive.

This is all perfect as it stops people looking at issues like the shocking increase in wealth inequality, and the fact that our country’s wealth is becoming concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer ultra wealthy individuals. That has far more impact on the life prospects of the good people of Clapton, and on the populations of the UK and the US generally - but the people who hold that wealth would far rather everyone stay focused on immigrants as the great evil. Trump and Farage both make sure that happens - and very wealthy people are willing to pay them handsomely to keep doing that.

Secondly - both Farage and Trump show a
hunger to make money, and a willingness to step around established rules like insider trading, anti-corruption etc in order to do that. This too is music to the ears of the ultra-wealthy, who see in these men an opportunity to be fully free from all existing constraints, so they can become even richer.

Farage and Trump don’t just gently step around those restrictions though, they do it blatantly, proudly. They mock the existence of the restrictions, they try to convince us that everyone is on the take, there is no such thing as financial morality any more - greed is not just good, it is the only sensible way to behave and more fool you if you don’t do the same!

It can be quite depressing to trace the path that got us here, and even more so to see people who still look at Farage and Trump and believe they offer genuine hope for ordinary folk, when nothing could be further from the truth.

I really do hope the tide will turn, but they are very well funded and voters are so desperate they seem willing to cling to anything.

Personally I would rather put my faith in a man with a bin on his head.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I wasn't defending Farage!!

I think this is the good news arising out of recent events in general, from the decline in Reform's polling numbers over the last year or so to their losing in Makerfield to this latest malarky.

We all just have to accept that there is a hard core of Reform support that is so utterly brain dead that no kind of reasoning, policy argument or incriminating events will make any difference. They have settled on a simplistic narrative in which immigration is the reason for all of society's problems and Farage is the only politician willing to address it, and that narrative is so important to their making sense of the world that it can't be challenged in any way. You might as well try and challenge a Scientologist or a Flat Earther.

What does appear the case, however, is that Reform are unable to extend their appeal much beyond that core support to people who can actually think about things. And that the core support is not large enough to deliver an electoral majority.

Farage will probably "win" Clacton. However the self-inflicted damage done to his brand, followed by the fallout from the donation enquiry, will be a huge step in relegating him and his supporters back to their rightful status as an annoying but largely irrelevant distraction.

I agree. I don't think this will affect his core supporters, but it will put a cap on the number of voters he can pick up from outside that core. He has blown his cover really hasn't he.

And I think he’s hit the wrong tone with British sensibilities. We are not Americans. We don’t really go in for woe is me narratives. Trump might be able to trick the American electorate into thinking he’s a victim but that won’t work for Farage. What he should have done in that speech is start with why he’s resigning, and then go straight into why he’s the best candidate and what his party will do that is so different from the establishment.

Watching a multi-millionaire doing the poor me dance during a COL crisis has not worked in the way he expected.

Possibly. His constituency was dumb enough to vote for him and I doubt if they are bright enough to have second thoughts.

Oh I don’t think he’ll lose his already-established voters, I would just be surprised if he is able to expand on the established pool with his latest antics, and let’s face it, he needs a hell of a lot of new voters if he wants to be PM.

Probably, he appears to be Teflon coated

That makes 2 of them then.

No

I am not sure he really wants to enough either

There was an article on the bbc website re what locals think - they are all saying he’s alright and people are just trying to make him look bad, ‘there’s a poison campaign against him’ kind of thing.

It’s the Trump effect. The stupider you talk or act, the more support you get.

Yes. There are enough bigots out there who want to buy what he's selling.

Of course he can come back from this. A lot of his supporters are low life and they really don’t care about him breaking the law.

Of course he can.

A significant number of his supporters think he's got he major parties on the ropes and this is their way of trying to take him out.

You know nothing about cults or cults of personalities if you don't think the 'im being persecuted because they know I'm right and they're scared, this is where the fight begins' narrative is a very, very powerful one.

Perhaps the most worrying thing about Reform is that it is not a political party where members can elect a leader, vote on policy at an annual conference etc. It is a limited company founded by Farage so he (and his fellow leader) have control. This is total disdain for our democratic heritage where you vote for a party/leader/policies. As in Germany of the 1930s the leader (Hitler) and his policies once in place, cannot be overturned by democratic vote from within. There is no mechanism. So once elected it could be also virtually impossible to remove him as PM. He only has to declare eg a national emergency (so no national elections) and we will never have an opportunity to vote him out again.

Ha with those Teflon shoulders?

He'll be out shouting loudly that he'll kick out all the foreigners and save the UK 50 billion pounds and people will be voting for him in droves.

I fervently hope not. I always thought he was a nasty little spiv.

The King could dismiss him if it got to that.

I agree it is a one man band in all but name.

Farage won't allow anyone, even or especially the King, to intervene. It's not that it's a one man band, it's that it is not a political party as we understand it at all. We'd be voting for a rightwing dictatorship with no way to get rid. No membership rights to out vote him, to change/influence policy etc. He will say /promise anything to get power. We should be very afraid. I'd look to any incoming politician/political party to ban such supremely undemocratic organisations taking part in elections. It goes against everything we've been fighting for since the 17th century when the Monarch's absolute power was overthrown by Cromwell. Then the gradual introduction of male suffrage/election rights to vote in the 19th century and finally women's rights to vote in the 20th century.

To be honest, I have family members who would vote for Farage or someone like him. They aren't stupid, and they aren't racists. They aren't either (contrary to narrative) particularly hard up or badly done by, by society (although probably would think they are. That's a different thing and it's very hard to do much about because if someone really enjoys the feeling of justified grievance Reform give their voters they aren't going to let anyone take it away. Not by reasoning, and not by improving their already OK lives).
BUT I love them, and basically we just have to accept that we have very different political opinions. I think if more than 50% of the population were full on Farage supporters I would be in despair and it would, if I'm honest, be a lot harder to accept it from my family members without getting emotionally swayed. But basically about 25% of the population are like that, and a big chunk of the that 25% will always be like that and part of living in a democracy is sharing space with people like that.

I think some of the "Clacton voters/Reform voters/British voters are awful. We're doomed" online narrative feels designed to whip people up into a state that leads to them being overly negative which then furthers the "everyones against us" narrative. Apart from the tendancy to take on a victim stance for no real reason, the people I know are decent. It's just that's a character flaw they have, I know they have it because they're my family so Im quite familiar with their flaws as they are with mine. It's unfortunate that it gives people like Farage some power but it's also fortunate that there's an upper limit on people with that character trait.

@noblegiraffe
Up until recently, it was generally accepted that Nigel Farage had a good chance of being the next Prime Minister.

Really? In what reality? I get that Farage is popular for all the reasons that have been stated in the thread already.

However, there are 650 MPs. Reform have 8 currently. That means they would need to gain 318 seats in the next election to win. While this isn't impossible, it is hugely unlikely. So it has never been 'generally accepted that he has a good chance of being the next PM'. At best he probably needs two or three general elections to gain that much ground.

As for the current farce, I only hope that the good people of Clacton realise that they are paying for this. Local elections cost a lot of money and guess who pays? The constituents. And for what? Any investigation will just continue should he be re-elected. Binface would make a much more effective representative for the constituents. Hopefully he gets in and pits an end to all this rubbish.

Of course Farage's base isn't laughing.😬

Everyone else is though.😆

I don't think you've been paying attention. Despite only having 8 MPs, a few months ago Reform were polling numbers that would give them a majority in the next election. Currently polling less but would still be the largest party. Labour have been polling disastrously, the council elections were dreadful for them. There was serious concern that Starmer wasn't the man who could beat Reform and he has resigned. The Makerfield by-election shows that Burnham can beat Reform in Reform-y places and this is why he has so much support from Labour MPs.

So while you think it's hugely unlikely that Farage would be the next Prime Minister, everyone else has been taking the idea very seriously.

Remember, everyone thought after Corbyn that Labour would be unelectable for at least 10 years. Starmer managed to turn that around, but also support for the Tories completely collapsed, and he won with a huge majority that no one would have predicted a few years ago. These things can change very quickly.

How long was Boris Johnson PM? Farage could still do it as he has backers who want him to disrupt and win. He’s a lazy arse but he is popular and has a lot of money behind him. The whole party is a shit show but if the new King of the Labour Party fucks this all up and holds an election, I think Reform will get a lot of seats.

There was serious concern that Starmer wasn't the man who could beat Reform and he has resigned. The Makerfield by-election shows that Burnham can beat Reform in Reform-y places and this is why he has so much support from Labour MPs.

So while you think it's hugely unlikely that Farage would be the next Prime Minister, everyone else has been taking the idea very seriously.

Count Binface also stood in Makerfield - same manifesto, I believe.

Reform was historically a limited company with Farage in majority control, not especially a party with a lot of faith in elections doing the job - a fluffing mechanism for Farage.

Looking at the engineering around Burnham's progress put into motion by his party, and the voting results that have given Reform more traction, it could be said that both are now showing their hands and the way that democracy can be manipulated (it seems that they think: should be manipulated) within a very narrow set of bars, a necessary evil for the advancement of people who are considerably richer/ cleverer than you. And who, on the basis of recent events, won't really have to live with their decisions long term if they do get the post. The joke candidates remind me of the old Blackadder 'Rotten Borough' scenes where the independent with the most trivial policies threw in abolishing slavery and giving women the vote -"Oh, we just made that up for a laugh."