Very good article by the editor of the Independent on Farage.
He gets some things right, but overdoes Farage's opposition to globalization, because immigration is only a small subset of globalization.
He says that the battle between Farage and Carswell is between nostalgia and modernity. But this is wrong - it is a battle between common sense and progressive politically correct metropolitan elite muddled, fashionable thinking. The editor, Amol Rajan, doesn't understand that because as he admits he is metropolitan elite and proud himself. He cannot see the big picture because he is in the metropolitan forest.
"It would be hard to overstate how rewarding a lunch companion Farage makes. He is mobbed most places he goes, whether by fans or foes. The first time we ate together — in the Wolseley, the favored canteen of London’s media class, located near the Ritz — several people spanning the generations and genders came up to him to offer support and thanks, or just to say hi. He is a celebrity now, and loves it. He is also a raconteur, with a bank of excellent anecdotes built up over several decades in business and politics, and a range of specialist subjects that is dazzling. He can talk for England, literally, on the key moments of both the Great and Second World War; he knows phenomenal amounts about cricket; and his knowledge of European politics is far more sophisticated than is suggested by his tub-thumping reputation
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None of which makes us natural boozing partners, of course. I represent, and love, three things that Farage’s party has risen to prominence denouncing: immigration, globalization, and the much derided liberal metropolitan elite. I’m a proud version of the former and member of the last, and strong advocate for what goes in between.
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My own father aside, Farage works harder and longer than anyone I have ever met. He does so while drinking and smoking more than any politician I know, and — perhaps most remarkable of all — enduring permanent and often acute neuralgic back pain.
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Douglas Carswell, the Tory convert who sits for Clacton, and of whom more in a moment. The tension comes from the fact that Carswell, Mark Reckless (another Tory convert, but one who lost his seat), and Dan Hannan, a maverick Tory MEP, don’t want Farage to front the referendum campaign for the ‘Out’ (of Europe) camp. These Oxbridge “posh boys” believe there is a sober, pragmatic, and economic case to be made for British exit, or Brexit, and that Farage’s brand of populism is toxic to it. Having garnered those millions of votes, and worked tirelessly to build UKIP up from a bunch of loonies to the electoral force it is today, Farage quite understandably disagrees. Pride has kicked in, too
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Nostalgia versus modernity: This is the conflict between Farage and Carswell.
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Farage may be remembered in history not for a phantom civil war he unleashed within his own party, but a real civil war he fought within British conservatism itself — one that he ultimately lost, but not before a phenomenal effort, and several memorable lunches."
www.politico.eu/article/lunch-with-nigel/