Nine years ago, I was in Ramsgate with a lot of blokey Ukip supporters who were getting the pints in. “Nigel” they told me may be “a right bastard. But he is our bastard”. The more they drank, the more obvious it became to me that they had not previously voted and were mostly not even registered to vote. I did not consider it my job to tell them how to.
Certainly, not all Ukip voters are beery blokes; I met some nice women who were concerned at that time about “Bulgarians” but whose daughters worked in the local hospitals where the immigrants there were the “good sort”.
These people, on the whole, felt they had not got what they had been promised; better rail links and something to replace the big local employers, like the Pfizer factory, which had closed down.
Farage was hoping to be their next MP, despite hardly ever visiting their constituency of Thanet before. What did they think he would do for them, I asked.
And I ask the same of voters in Clacton, Essex, which also needs some TLC and an MP who represents local interests.
Farage, who has announced he will run as a candidate here, represents Farage and no one else. Local politics don’t concern him. This Putin apologist is standing probably because his prospects with Trump aren’t as rosy as they once were.
No, I am not a fan of this man who stirs up racial hatred and promotes a fantasy politics – zero net migration – which, in actuality, would mean the collapse of the NHS and social care system.
But whatever his politics, I cannot relate to a man who talks as if he is 80-something. This man is the same age as Keanu Reeves, Lenny Kravitz and Harry Hill, none of whom, unfortunately, is about to take Clacton.
What is it about extreme Right-wing views that are so very ageing? Why does he bang on about D-Day, fishing and wars he didn’t fight in? Well, he may have been born middle-aged because even when he was very young, he was exhibiting what we might politely call “fascist adjacent” views. Now his appeal is to old men.
Women on the whole are not enamoured of Farage, but old guys are and Clacton is a town full of old men. Farage harks backwards because he paints the future as dark and threatening. He dwells in an imaginary past and that is what he sells.
This man of the people is a man of privilege. Dulwich College and then into the City, as establishment as they come. He married an Irish woman, then a German one and now has a French girlfriend. Patriotism only extends so far.
Watching him in the jungle on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here was to watch an arch media manipulator flashing his flanks in the shower but uncertain what to do with any personal displays of emotion - campmates crying or even asking him about films he liked. Whenever he appears on TV, I am distracted by the inside of his mouth which looks black. A portal to a void.
Who is Nigel Farage? Do any of us really know? The one thing Nigel Farage stands for is Nigel Farage. Poor Clacton.
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