Monday, September 16, 2013
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| Ever hear the one about Cameron's EU policy? |
Anyone
acquainted with the UK’s difficult relationship with the EU will have come
across a certain Mr Nigel Farage MEP, the flamboyant leader of the United
Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). In the UK (mainly England) he’s widely
considered to a peculiar sort of chap, but affable enough to share a pint or
two with down the pub. Perhaps this is true, but what has that really got to do
with anything? Was good policy ever constructed at the pub?
Nigel
Farage has a talent for the ancient arts of demagoguery, he is excellent
at it. Moreover, Farage taps into the long held British affection for the
affable amateur. Unlike nearly everyone else in his party, he manages to avoid
appearing like an offbeat, angry white person. Instead, with the help of
the media, he has cultivated the image of Nigel, everyman's jovial drinking buddy –
who just happens to have some particularly strong political views. He’s on a mission
to make you think that his insights are incredibly reasonable and fair, what he
likes to call “common sense”. He is only outdone in this lovable rogue routine
by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who has perfected this act to fine, election-winning, art.
Like Johnson,
Farage is not seen as a ‘normal’ politician who inhabits the establishment in the
usual sense, which allows him to create the allusion of being a more real,
likable and untarnished figure. Professional politicians have to worry about
policies that might actually be implemented and how the media will spin every
syllable that is uttered from their mouths. Farage the ‘amateur’ has the luxury
of making it all up as he goes along.
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| I drink lots of beer, vote for me! |
Leading
UKIP is also the perfect racket for him. For one, he is by far the
best politician in the party and he likes it that way. He could not function in
a ‘normal’ political party where his ego would not be able to handle being contradicted, forced to follow the party line or serious internal competition. For all his howling about the
anti-democratic nature of the EU, Farage runs his party like a personal
fiefdom. He sits at the top of an autocratic power structure, a
Prince amongst men; himself and the party becoming interchangeable. More
disturbing still, is the cult of the personality that he has built around this
position of power – part vanity, part megalomania.
How
does he get away with this? It helps that his party doesn't really have any
policies to be scrutinised. Even the keystone pledge of withdrawal from the EU
is deceptively straightforward. Were the UK to leave it would create the mother
of all legal quagmires regarding its pre-existing international commitments,
signed as an EU member.
Mr Farage is remarkably quiet on such fundamental details.
Having
said this, UKIP’s recent surge in popularity has very little to do with policy
and a lot to do with not being the political establishment. But this still is
not enough to explain how he and his party have managed to shape the debate on
EU membership over the last decade. It’s
tempting to say that he gets away with propagating what is essentially a
self-serving, anti-EU narrative of half-truths and nationalistic bravado because
he is such a good debater and so at ease in front of a camera. Like the man at the bar you
couldn't possibly win an argument with.
The
problem however is more structural than that. Much of the British media doesn’t have the foggiest idea how the EU functions. A majority of them don’t want to. They
pretend to for the camera, or when penning all-knowing articles, but it is
mostly illusory. It takes genuine understanding to call-out a wily rhetorician
on deceptively spun half-truths; usually that knowledge simply isn
Mr
Farage might be a cheeky chappy,
a rascal, a rogue and a charmer; but this well-crafted narrative is a distraction from the project that Farage has been successfully building.
The views expressed in this post are strictly mine; but you can borrow them.
