He’s back.
I want you to imagine for a minute a country in which a local radio DJ can announce, without a hint of self-awareness, that they are “returning to front line politics.” I’m joking of course. You needn’t imagine such a country, because it already exists. It is Britain. Nigel Farage has announced that he’s back.
I pledge my absolute and total support to Leave Means Leave and will go back on the road to campaign.
Over the last few months, scores of people have stopped me in the street to ask: “When are you coming back?”
Well now you have your answer: I’m back. https://t.co/7gTH9uNVuC
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) August 17, 2018
That’s right. Nigel Farage is back, though quite what he’s coming back to remains a mystery given his electoral record of seven losses from seven.
Seven times the Great British public has resolutely and conclusively rejected Farage at the ballot box, but it appears he is not in the habit of respecting the will of the people.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the far-right Walter Mitty claimed that people regularly stop him in the street to ask when he is returning to politics. “Well, now you have your answer. I’m back,” he told readers.
“It is now beyond doubt that the political class,” added the MEP of two decades, “and many of their media allies do not accept the EU referendum result.”
“Well I’ve had enough of their lies, deceit and treachery. The time has come to teach them a lesson – one that they will never forget.”
Farage committed himself to the Leave Means Leave campaign and insisted he “will go back on the road”, like something out of the David Brent movie.
Let us not forget that this is the man who was deemed too electorally toxic by the official Leave campaign – a campaign headed by Michael Gove no less! – that he had to have his own rival vanity campaign bankrolled by his political sugar daddy Aaron Banks, a sort of Ian Beale voodoo doll made of sackcloth.
Brexit was achieved not because of Nigel Farage, but in spite of him. He is a fringe character known more for singing Hitler Youth songs at school, addressing far-right rallies in Germany, doing deals with Holocaust deniers and bemoaning the ‘disproportionate power’ of Jews than for doing any actual work in the European Parliament.
He is a vanity politician, desperate to join the Westminster club he pretends to rail against. A public school-educated former commodities broker play-acting as an everyman, Nigel Farage deserves no place in the political discourse of this country.
For too long Farage’s own media allies, be they LBC producers or BBC bookers, have needlessly amplified a fringe voice. It’s time we consign him to history, a footnote in the story of the country he has sought to divide.
