Subscriptions
Read Our Monthly Magazine
And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
Inconvenient Truths
It’s a very human instinct to dismiss that which we disagree with. By distancing ourselves from an undesirable reality, we think we can remove its power; make it less possible. But the blindspots created in the process can increase the dangers we are trying to minimise.
An insightful new BBC documentary on immigration recently illustrated why underestimating the undesirable can be a risky strategy.
Its first standout moment for me was Nigel Farage stating a truth so obvious it is rarely expressed: “If I could link in the minds of the British people immigration with membership of the European Union then everything would change.” The significance of this connection wasn’t one his political opponents fully understood.
His notorious ‘Breaking Point’ poster – which depicted masses of men of colour coming to Britain with the words ‘we must break free of the EU and take back control’ – “worked”, Farage told the BBC. “Why? Because it got the argument back onto immigration in the last few days, and that was very difficult after the murder of Jo Cox.”
Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered in the street by a far-right extremist on the same day during the EU Referendum campaign, 16 June 2016, the poster had been unveiled.
Then came an insight from Craig Oliver, Prime Minister David Cameron’s director of communications during the referendum campaign. While the official Vote Leave group – fronted by Conservatives Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – distanced itself from the poster and the Farage-led Leave.EU campaign, to Oliver’s mind, this was part of a wider strategy of overt distance but insidious influence that benefited both camps.
“I think the official Leave campaign was happy that Nigel Farage existed,” Oliver told the BBC. “They were able to say ‘he’s not part of us, he’s over there, we can’t take responsibility for him’, while being very happy to travel in the slipstream of his borderline, and sometimes overtly, racist statements about what was going on in terms of migration. The ‘Breaking Point’ poster, I think, was the object example of that.”
The Psycho-Social-Techno Politics of ‘MAGA’ Trumps Democracy – And the Liberal Left Has No Answer
Donald Trump’s second victory in the United States is a warning sign to democracies everywhere of the centrality of emotions – and their manipulation – in the new politics of gross inequality and psychic rebellion fuelled by tech-driven alternative realities, writes Hardeep Matharu
While Johnson and Gove understood the resonance of Farage’s framing of immigration in terms of the EU and the need to ‘take back control’, Cameron underestimated Farage because his political instinct was to dismiss the methods and impact of an opponent he didn’t agree with. This refusal to engage with how psychologically astute Farage’s campaign was arguably led to one of the most momentous changes in Britain’s political culture in a generation.
The cause championed by Farage and his supporters over three decades, ultimately, triumphed.
This is why he cannot be dismissed as a political operator of considerable ability. Now that the Reform UK Leader has a seat in Parliament, particular attention should be paid to what he does and what he says he wants to achieve next with his ‘anti-establishment’ political movement.
Transatlantic Ties
While July’s General Election seemingly indicated a decisive result for Labour in our ‘winner takes all’ electoral system, Reform came second in 98 constituencies – 89 of these to Keir Starmer’s party.
In the days after the election, race-fuelled riots swept across the country, fed by far-right figures such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (known as ‘Tommy Robinson’). Farage baselessly questioned “whether the truth is being withheld from us” by police over the Southport killings, which sparked the unrest.
A Byline Times investigation at the time uncovered a number of Reform supporters’ Facebook groups awash with far-right views, with some discussing the ‘optics’ of keeping their distance from ‘Robinson’, despite the synergy between Reform and Yaxley-Lennon.
Just days before the election, Reform activists had been filmed undercover calling the then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, a “p*ki”. When Farage responded by saying that, “in most cases, they’re just speaking like ordinary folk”, I warned that the established press had a responsibility to rigorously scrutinise Farage’s actions and words – particularly because it had spent years affording him a disproportionate media platform as the ‘man of the people down the pub with a fag’, without the requisite questioning of his positions.
People of colour are but one group who cannot simply ignore or dismiss what Farage says and does – not despite them disagreeing with him, but because of this.
The Politics of Farage and Reform is No Joke of a Matter – The Established Media Must Learn Its Lessons and Start Holding Them to Account
The normalisation of racism and dog-whistles will only get worse if the press continues to treat Farage as an entertaining figure representing the ‘real views’ of the British people – it must stop, writes Byline Times’ Editor
This is becoming increasingly important.
One former Conservative minister recently told me he was glad that Kemi Badenoch had won the Conservative leadership contest – only because he had been outright