As fireworks lit up the theater stage in the English seaside town of Clacton, the 800-person crowd cheered and the lyrics of an Eminem song rang out: “Guess who’s back, back again?”
The answer is Nigel Farage, a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, a Brexit campaigner and Britain’s most famous political disruptor, who leads a new insurgent party that opposes immigration and promises to upend Britain’s upcoming general election. Mr. Farage, who has never been elected to the British Parliament, is running to represent the Clacton area, and opinion polls show he has a strong chance of winning.
“The establishment is scared, the Conservatives are scared,” Farage declared triumphantly, referring to the ruling party, which is trailing badly in opinion polls ahead of a July 4 general election. Britain was “a broken country”, he added in a speech attacking targets ranging from asylum seekers to the BBC.
Mr Farage, 60, is a controversial, combative figure and a highly skilled communicator who helped the Conservatives to a landslide victory at the last general election by not fielding Brexit Party candidates in some key areas.
This time his plan was very different. He wanted to destroy the Conservative Party by taking away so many of its votes that he could then replace — or take over — what was left of it. When a reporter asked him early in the campaign if he wanted to merge the Reform Party with the Conservatives, he responded:More like a takeover, dear boy.”
Farage has tried and failed seven times to be elected to the British Parliament and his Reform Britain party is likely to win only a handful of seats in an electoral system that disadvantages smaller parties.
But for two decades he has shaped the British political conversation, advancing the cause of Brexit, overtaking the Conservative Party and pushing it further to the right. win Conservative leaders in Clacton could elect him as a powerbroker in the battle for the soul of the Conservative party.
Farage appeared relaxed and confident during an interview last week at his campaign office in an arcade in Clacton, cracking jokes while clearly enjoying his return to the political front line.
“What we’re looking at is what happened in Canada in 1993, where the Reform Party actually turned the tables on the incumbent Conservatives,” Mr. Farage said, referring to the 1993 election when another insurgent party, after which Reform UK is named, helped crush the established Progressive Conservatives. “That’s a possible model,” he said, adding that the Reform Party could grow organically over the next five years.
“End of the Route”
Clacton is the last stop on the northeast London railway line. The history of Clacton has been intertwined with that of Mr Farage since 2014, when Conservative MP Douglas Carswell took over. Defection He switched to the populist UK Independence Party, then led by Nigel Farage. Carswell was re-elected, becoming one of only two MPs ever to represent UKIP in the British Parliament.
Clacton, with its high unemployment and poverty rates, has become a focus for policymakers and columnists trying to understand the rise of populist politics. In 2016, Clacton voted with nearly 70% to leave the European Union.
Mr Farage told me that Clacton was “the end of the line” but also a place where people “feel very, very British and really identify as British” – and clearly some here are nostalgic for the glory days of the seaside.
In 2019, Conservative Giles Watling was elected with 72% of the vote. In normal times, his majority of 25,000 votes would have been almost unassailable. But these are not normal times for the Conservatives. Mr Farage’s Brexit Party did not stand here in the 2019 election.
Mr Watling did not respond to an interview request, but Conservative campaigner Chris Griffiths acknowledged that Mr Farage had “brightened up what could have been a very dull campaign”.
Maurice Alexander, another Conservative activist whose parents emigrated from Belgium during World War II, was less positive about Farage. “He scares me,” he said.
Immigration figured prominently in Farage’s speech in Clacton, as it does in most of his speeches. “The quality of life for each of us is declining because of the population explosion,” he thundered, adding: “It’s time to stand up and say ‘enough’.”
‘What he says has consequences’
Earlier in the day, Labour candidate Jovan Owusu-Nepaul was going door to door to promote his candidacy.
“There’s a lot of people against Farage, and there’s a lot of people for Farage,” said Owusu-Nyepaul, 27, who was born in Birmingham and is of Ghanaian and Jamaican descent. He said voters generally rate him positively, but that he sometimes falls victim to “the dog-whistle tactics that Farage is so good at using.” Just that day, someone told him, “Go home, we don’t want you here, immigrants get out,” he recalled.
“I think Farage’s coming here has stirred up a level of tension,” he added. “There are consequences for what he says — consequences that affect people like me, people like my friends, people who I didn’t even know existed in this country but who are suffering because of what he’s preaching.”
Mr. Farage Criticized a conversation on social media in 2019 One of the American students posted: “Going into 2020 I will continue to speak out about racism and the fact that I regularly drink white people’s tears.” Mr Owusu-Nepaul responded: “My favourite drink.”
Mr. Owusu-Nepal said his remarks were meant as a joke and contained no concrete content.
On the morning of the rally, Mr Farage visited the Veterans Breakfast Club in Clacton, where he enjoyed bacon, fried bread, black pudding and baked beans. “He listens to veterans, he knows what we want,” said David Bye, who served in the navy and organised the club.
Other fans included retired beautician Lynn Tuckwell, who attended a later meeting. A Brexit supporter, she said she was disappointed with the result but did not blame Mr Farage. “It’s not Nigel’s fault the Conservatives didn’t deliver Brexit. Nigel got us Brexit and he’s back to get us out of this mess.”
Nationally, Mr Farage is both loathed and admired. Provoking the Ukrainian WarHe was subsequently fiercely criticized by all sectors of the political spectrum.
Reformist candidates have crossed other lines, with one saying Britain should continue Remaining neutral in the fight against the Nazisand another one using Anti-Semitic tropes And claimed that Jewish groups are “encouraging large numbers of Muslims to enter the UK”.
It is not clear what type of MP Mr Farage might be. Interviewed by The Times of London in Februarywhen he was still considering whether to run for Parliament, he mused: “Do I want to spend every Friday in Clacton for the next five years?”
Farage said it was not an insult to the city but a rhetorical question about returning to the political front line. “I said it was a decision – a very big decision – and I had decided ‘yes’.”
Caswell, now CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, thinks Farage will likely win in Clarkton but urged him to focus on a nuanced campaign.
“You don’t need to have a gathering of 1,000 people in a public hall,” Caswell said by phone from the US, adding: “You need to convince people who didn’t come to your launch rally, convince people who don’t follow you on Facebook and social media.”
About two miles from Clacton is the village of Jaywick, once one of the most deprived areas in the UK and part of the region Mr Farage seeks to represent. Terry Haggis, 66, lives there and remembers the good times of holidaying there when he was young. “I’m disappointed, it was a holiday town and it was lively when I was young. But not enough money has been invested here.”
He has not yet decided how to vote, and is leaning towards the Conservatives because he fears a vote for the Reform Party could benefit Labour. Another of his concerns is that Clacton might help him more than Mr Farage.
“My question is: Is he going to use this to further his political career?” he said. “Is this a backdoor way for him to get into the United States and do what he wants?”
