Call it confirmation bias. The media were the ones who wanted endless debates – the public would have been happy with one or two at most – and so it was inevitable that the media would declare them to be important waypoints on the campaign trail. But were they?
Sure, the debates were picked over forensically, but strip out the sound and fury and you’re left with very little we didn’t already know. Rishi Sunak might have been even more thin-skinned and tetchy and Keir Starmer rather more wooden than we might have imagined but this is all surface trivia. Nothing new in concrete policy terms was revealed. Just the familiar half-truths and evasions with which we are all too familiar. Manifesto pledges that almost certainly won’t stand contact with reality.
Time and again, Rish! has played the trust card. The country can rely on him to tell the truth. Sometimes you can only think he is taking the piss. On a masochistic urge to self-destruct. Because within minutes of him bleating on about integrity, the Tory press office was masquerading as “Tax Check UK” on Twitter, pumping out fictitious claims about Labour’s policies. The man who wants to be believed has no regard for the truth. He just looks needy, corrupt and desperate.
Meanwhile Nigel Farage can hardly believe his luck. Having started the campaign as very much the outsider, not even planning to stand as a candidate, he is now living his very best life. Things could hardly have gone better.
With the Tories lurching from crisis to crisis – insulting the vets at the D-day commemorations and then the insider gambling ring – and Labour offering a don’t-rock-the-boat, safety-first approach, the campaign has been low on energy. A low-wattage endurance test. Hell, no one said politics was meant to be fun, but some hope would be nice. Promising to make things a little less shit doesn’t really cut it. And there’s no vacuum into which Nige won’t jump head first. Anything for some attention. He’s learned his narcissism at Donald Trump’s knee.
The queue outside the Rainton Arena in Houghton-Le-Spring, near Sunderland, snaked back at least 100 yards. And that was at 11am, an hour before the start. While Sunak and Starmer have gone out of their way to meet as few members of the public as possible – one or two strictly controlled photo ops per day – Nige adores an old-fashioned rally. And it seems this crowd in the north-east are also more than up for it. They are looking for a politician who will make them feel good about themselves. One who talks to their insecurities and plays on their prejudices. Forget the policies, stay for the LOLs.
After brief warmup acts from two local Reform candidates, Farage takes the stage to some loud techno music pumped out through some ageing speakers, flashing lights and an indoor firework display. The audience rises to its feet to join in with the fun. Nige just stands there, lapping it up. He can’t get enough of the applause. It’s what nourishes him. He’s not here to make a difference. He’s here to feel whole. Without a crowd he’s uncertain whether he actually exists. Deep within what passes for his soul there is an emptiness that can never be filled.
But there is undeniably a connection. One that Sunak and Starmer would kill for. One that allows Nige to get away with almost anything. Because you’d expect a crowd like this to have worked out Farage long ago. A posh, establishment boy with no real interest in the north-east. Just another politician passing through. Yet their scepticism is put on hold. They appear to buy into his act entirely. They know he’s a fraud but they don’t care. At least he’s an entertaining fraud. A voice of disaffection. They like him not for what he is but for what he’s not. He’s not a Tory and he’s not Labour.
Let the show commence. And this is a show more than a speech. Nige’s time working the neocon circuit in the US over the past four years has paid dividends. He now has the air of a televangelist who you know will be arrested for tax evasion in a matter of hours. Asides to people in the front row. Conversational rather than oratorical. You half expect him to interrupt his flow and make an appeal for donations to his favourite charity. The Bank of St Nigel. And it would have been no surprise if half the 1,000-strong audience hadn’t handed over their credit cards.
He talked for well over half an hour. No notes needed because this was a greatest hits event. All to celebrate his own greatness. He couldn’t believe he had packed out the arena in a matter of days. A humblebrag. He’d have been devastated if no one had turned up. He was really connecting with the young people. Only, the crowd looked almost entirely middle-aged or older. He had always been right about everything. Nige is never slow to say I told you so.
Then into his familiar tropes. The country wasn’t working. You couldn’t move without someone wanting to rob or kill you. Probably a foreigner. Farage would be devastated to find out that most people aren’t afraid to walk the streets. People should be proud of their history, he said. Though not confident enough in it to question it. Nige doesn’t do critical thinking. Not his style. Keep your prejudices and hatreds mainstream.
Immigrants. Too many of them. He’d always said so. Even when there had been very few. Leave the ECHR. Join Russia and Belarus. “We must not set people apart from one another,” he said. That’s literally what he does. Then a few vague promises. Pay less tax. Though no mention of how he would pay for anything. Brexit, though with no apology for his part in its failure. Double down on Ukraine, though skip over his apparent support for Putin (although he has denied this, saying he dislikes Putin and is opposed to the invasion). It was all deeply unpleasant stuff. Nige in his element. The thrill of power with no responsibility. He’d be devastated to find himself prime minister.
Come the end there were no questions. Nige likes it best that way. And so does the audience. Because questions might puncture the mood. Because very little of what he says bears examination. In that respect, he’s even worse than the career politicians he claims to despise. At least Starmer and Sunak try not to deal in fantasies. Well, not all of the time.
But you can’t deny the numbers. You may hate it, but Nige is reaching parts of the country that no other party is. And it is all about him. If Dicky Tice were still in charge, Reform would be also-rans. People like him because he legitimises their anger. Gives voice to their discontent. He tears things down with no thought for a rebuilt future. Next week he will be in parliament. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
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