What counts as beyond the pale these days? Having successfully pushed back the cordon sanitaire that surrounds British politics, Nigel Farage is struggling to work out where, precisely, it now lies. Some decisions are simple. Attacks on Grenfell victims are, and have always been, beyond the bounds of decency. Farage promptly sacked Simon Dudley last week after the housing spokesperson mused of the victims that “everyone dies in the end”.
But on other choices Farage dithers. Not wishing to sound prudish to his more hard-boiled supporters, he previously dismissed accusations he was racist at school as “banter in the playground”. It was only in January that he did what any other mainstream politician would do with likely unprovable claims of racism and denied them completely.
