By Mahil Vasanth, leader of the RGS Green Party.

Farage claims his supporters are paid actors, what does this mean for democracy?

In the past week on account of reporting from Channel 4 News and planned and spontaneous public stunts, Reform UK’s leader has found himself answering for what seems like an unmitigated history of racism, and spineless bootlicking within his party. 

In an interview of campaigners for the Reform party, followers and claimed friends of Farage pointed racial and homophobic slurs at British institutions, argued for the reformation of such institutions into tyrannical paramilitaries, and argued that immigrants should be shot in the waters.

For anybody in tune with the British political sphere over the past decades, the statements from Farage’s supporters are as abhorrent as they are unsurprising. Farage’s campaign has been one of conflating British issues with racial groups and immigrants, or siding with those with similar rhetoric for as long as his was a household name. Be that through: him calling Syrian refugees “ISIS terrorists” and immigrants “illegal benefit claimants”; his friendships with Donald Trump, who has called LGBTQ+ people “child groomers” and Mexicans “drug dealers”; or through Vladimir Putin, who has claimed that Ukrainian are “republicans” and Western neo-liberals are “Nazis.” This is a history; documented, known, proud and, to anybody with a sense of history, little more than fascist populism. 

His responses have asked the question; why would he be so fast to distance himself from supporters whose beliefs are so true to his ideology? And further, why does this present a genuine threat to his political platform? Well, simply because his mystique is alluring, Farage knows that his tax plans aren’t costed and that his party members are incompetent. He also knows that what he has is not a genuine political platform, but a machine which can manufacture financial support, news appearances, and outrage. Nigel Farage isn’t surprised that his supporters advocate ‘target practice’ on immigrants, or that they want to form police paramilitaries, but he also knows that many of his supporters are just angry with the ineffective political system as it exists, and don’t share such views. At this point Farage’s own beliefs become obscured. Surely if he cared that his supporters didn’t create such an environment, he would stop them, and surely if he supported them, he would not condemn them. Now, as the foundations of his platform crumble, he turns to conspiracy theories, claiming that those who say the quiet part out loud are ‘actors’. Farage is no longer a political figure who can draw supporters from reason and fact; he is figure whose allure is himself. 

Farage knows one master. Not the working classes, nor British society, nor the whims of logic and reason. He knows one master: capital. Farage does not care about you, any more than you have a vote, and he will fight so you cannot have any power if you cross him. He is dangerous. Tread carefully.