Trump’s Return and the Farage Blindspot: Dismissing What We Disagree With in the Hope It Will Disappear Isn’t the Answer – Reality Proves Otherwise

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.”

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.

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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.

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 shocked by her rival Robert Jenrick’s overly “racist” campaign videos. He believes that Farage’s Reform and the Tory Party will merge in the years ahead – a move now made more likely by Donald Trump’s re-election in the United States. The same view has also been expressed by the Conservative writer and journalist Peter Oborne, who has described the party’s trajectory as “far-right”.

Reports are now suggesting that X (formerly Twitter) owner, Trump administration advisor, and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has his sights on the UK and Farage. 

According to The Times, Musk is considering making a $100 million donation to help him ascend in British politics. “If the donation materialises, it is likely to be made through the British branch of Musk’s social media company X… which would enable him to get round rules preventing foreign donations to a political party, according to those familiar with the discussions,” the report states.

The newspaper quoted Farage as saying of Musk: “I’m in touch with him and he is very supportive of my policy positions. We both share a friendship with Donald Trump.”

Musk – who has used X to criticise Keir Starmer’s Government, who claimed that civil war was “imminent” during this summer’s riots, and whose tweets on UK politics have made for front page stories in the Telegraph – has ‘liked’ Reform posts on the social media platform.

The Tesla boss has also interacted with the account of Yaxley-Lennon, who is currently in prison for contempt of court. Last month, he questioned on X why the activist had been jailed and shared the documentary at the centre of his conviction to his more than 200 million followers.

After Trump’s re-election, posting a video of Musk having his photo taken with the Trump family, Yaxley-Lennon’s X account wrote on his behalf: “The next four years are going to be great, not just for the USA, for the free world as a whole. Take note Starmer and co, your tyranny is coming to a quick end.”

Meanwhile, former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon – recently released from prison for contempt of Congress – confidently told The Times that he believes Farage will be Britain’s next prime minister.

The far-right ideologue – who incisively once noted that ‘politics is downstream of culture’ – told the newspaper: “The term Republican or Democrat is irrelevant. They’re old categorisations that don’t matter. You’re either a populist nationalist or a global elitist.”

It is a narrative already being advanced by Reform and Badenoch’s Conservative Party. 

Byline Times has previously revealed the millions being poured by those who funded Trump’s most recent presidential run into London’s Tufton Street network of opaque think tanks, a number of which have links to figures in the Conservative Party. 

Whether these connections across the Atlantic between Trump’s MAGA Republicans, the world’s richest media oligarch, the UK’s far-right, and Farage and his Conservative rivals will solidify into something more substantial remains to be seen.

But it is a nexus that must be noted.

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Improbable Impossibilities Become Possible

A Musk-funded Farage as Britain’s next prime minister? Does that sound a bit outlandish, conspiracist, wild, even? Sure. But that’s exactly why we should pay attention to it.

When Farage suggests that whether abortions at 24 weeks should be allowed is “worthy of debate in Parliament”, we should listen. Especially when, as Byline Times has reported, he has teamed up with the controversial US campaign group Alliance Defending Freedom, which aims to outlaw abortion. Not because there is a realistic chance that it will immediately have an impact in British politics. But because the mere possibility of disruption is exactly what politicians such as Farage, Bannon, and Trump want to embed in our political culture. 

When this possibility is too easily dismissed as an improbability – particularly by their political opponents – it gives credence to the notion they present to the public: that their more radical political solutions are what is necessary to break the status quo.

Left unchecked, these seemingly ‘outlandish’ possibilities can become concrete realities – as we found out with a Brexit driven by a campaign of misleading statements and xenophobic fears; and the return of a convicted felon to the White House.

Both were powered by the channelling of people’s more psychological and emotional instincts, facilitated by the algorithms of social media platforms. Both were considered beyond possible, until they became possible – in part because of an underestimation and misunderstanding of what they tapped into.

That is why I do not believe that the likes of Nigel Farage can simply be ‘ignored’ and not given the ‘oxygen’ of a platform. What he says and does should be rigorously scrutinised and taken seriously – just not in the manner of the unwarranted ‘publicity’ that too easily elevated his status over many years without dealing seriously enough with his politics.

To report on his links to Trump and Musk is not to present Farage as ‘more important than he is’ – it is to confront the reality that his connections to these figures is of importance in a way that bears consideration, given the context we now find ourselves in. It is a context in which the rise of Reform cannot be sidelined, and which could see Farage holding the balance of power when it comes to future political agendas in the not-too-distant future.

These ‘disruptors’ are willing to ‘call out’ a system that too many feel doesn’t work for them. It is in the interests of all those who disagree with, or question, their beliefs and tactics to confront them – even if their rhetoric is not based on rational fact, and especially when it involves a different interpretation of political values that are shared.

One of the most memorable insights I learned about politics on the right came from an experienced political campaigner on that side of the spectrum, who once told me: we must deal with the world as we find it, not as we hope it to be.

I believe there is room for hope. But only if we make room for a good deal of reality first.

Hardeep Matharu is the Editor-in-Chief of Byline Times