Could This Unserious, Mischievous, Frightening Man Be Britain’s Next Prime Minister?

 

Opinion

Guest Essay

Could This Unserious,

Mischievous, Frightening

Man Be Britain’s

Next Prime Minister?

 

By Samuel Earle

Mr. Earle is the author of “Tory Nation: The Dark Legacy of the World’s Most Successful Political Party.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/opinion/nigel-farage-britain-reform.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

Nigel Farage has always been a master of political innuendo. As a schoolboy in South London in the early 1980s, when neofascists and racists rioted across Britain, Mr. Farage’s favorite prank was to scrawl “NF” on the classroom chalkboards. The joke was that these were his initials and those of the National Front, the leading neofascist group at the time. The splendor of Mr. Farage’s school, Dulwich College, added to the transgression. Designed by the son of the architect that built the Palace of Westminster, the school — all haughty buildings and pristine grounds — surely seemed a world away from far-right thuggery. Yet Mr. Farage has always been curious about the potential for combustion, comic and otherwise, when those two worlds collide.

 

Today, the far right is once again on the march in Britain and Mr. Farage’s initials are once again all over the place. Now his playground is Westminster itself, where he finally won a seat last year. Since then, Mr. Farage has led his insurgent party, Reform U.K., to the top of opinion polls and become an inescapable influence. His face is everywhere: newspaper front pages, television bulletins and social media feeds. The ruling Labour Party, buttressed by an enormous parliamentary majority and yet anxious about its fragile popularity, cannot stop talking about him. Its leaders repeatedly explain why Mr. Farage should not be taken seriously — a fixation suggesting exactly the opposite. More and more, Mr. Farage is treated as leader of the opposition and even as prime minister in waiting.

 

Mr. Farage’s success is both a symptom and a cause of the newly febrile mood in Britain. The turmoil of the past decade, with its succession of six prime ministers, had already stripped the country of its reputation for stable and competent government. Lately, things have felt wilder and more menacing. Last summer, anti-immigration riots broke out across the country, recalling the heyday of the National Front, and there have since been recurrent demonstrations outside hotels where people seeking asylum are housed. In September, over 100,000 far-right protesters gathered in London for “a free speech festival” organized by Tommy Robinson, a far-right extremist who has served multiple prison sentences.

 

The simmering rage has many sources, old and new. Ever since the 2008 financial crisis upended Britain’s economy, a rotating cast of political leaders has pledged to raise wages and reduce immigration. And yet wages have remained static and immigration has continued to rise. The 2016 referendum to leave the European Union — in which Mr. Farage played a starring role — galvanized nationalists and then, when it failed to deliver its promise of a patriotic wonderland, stoked their frustrations. Labour’s assumption of power last year only inflamed nationalist paranoia. While Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s critics on the left see a meek leader wedded to the status quo, the mere sight of a Labour politician in Downing Street is enough to provoke panic on the far right.

 

Mr. Farage leads this angry mob, mostly by way of insinuation. He channels its apocalyptic undercurrents while maintaining a careful distance. He doesn’t attend protests or affiliate publicly with any of their organizers. He is quick to condemn acts of violence. But he does not hide his sympathy for the extreme anti-migrant sentiment that underwrites them. He has voiced concerns about “a growing Muslim vote in Britain” and “the safety of women and children.” And he repeatedly warns that, if he isn’t listened to, more violence is bound to come. “Remember, I am the moderate, reasonable, democratic, experienced, grown-up face of the fight back,” he said in July. “If I lose, just you wait.”

 

Mr. Farage’s growing appeal is about more than anger. Like his friend President Trump, whom he draws on for inspiration, Mr. Farage entertains his supporters. Through the pomp and ceremony of his rallies, the half-serious transgressions of his comic routines and a creative embrace of social media, Mr. Farage suggests that politics doesn’t have to be boring, that the public doesn’t have to swallow its frustration. With a conniving grin, and usually a pint of lager in his hand, Mr. Farage issues an invitation. Yes, the political establishment is rotten and the country is going to the dogs. But pull up a chair — and let’s plot some mischief.

 

Mr. Farage is a veteran of British politics, a fringe fixture for three decades. But until recently, the idea that he could ever be prime minister was, frankly, inconceivable. Before the 2024 election, Mr. Farage’s numerous failed attempts at winning a seat in Parliament — seven across 30 years — were a running joke. His place in the history books seemed fixed: a noisy outsider who wielded remarkable influence by pestering those in power. He might be a persistent thorn in the establishment’s side, but never a man on the inside.

 

Mr. Farage first entered politics in the early 1990s, after a hedonistic decade in the City of London as a trader. (“The booze culture was mega,” he later recalled.) He was a founding member of the U.K. Independence Party, a single-issue party committed to taking Britain out of the European Union. For the next 20 years, the party was dismissed as ridiculous and shambolic — most famously by David Cameron, the Conservative leader at the time, as “a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.” But Mr. Farage patiently built his movement, survived countless controversies — usually concerning racist, sexist or homophobic statements from fellow UKIP politicians — and, at last, won his main demand: an in/out referendum on E.U. membership.

 

Mr. Farage’s new party, over which he holds total sway, has required no such patience. Started in 2018 to exploit political gridlock after the referendum, initially as the Brexit Party, it soon won the European elections, pressured the Conservatives into appointing a more Brexit-friendly prime minister and helped to secure Britain’s formal exit from the bloc in early 2020. Renamed Reform in 2021, it secured five seats and 14 percent of the vote in the 2024 election, comprehensively won local elections earlier this year and now leads the national opinion polls. Although forecasts come with the heavy caveat that an election is several years away, one recent poll suggested Reform could win 373 lawmakers at the next vote — a comfortable majority.

 

Given this newfound ascendancy, it’s interesting that — absent the anti-E.U. rhetoric — Mr. Farage’s pitch to voters is mostly the same as it ever was. Immigration, he intones, poses a grave threat to the country, and the two main parties, Labour and Conservative, are indistinguishably contemptible. The first message has always had wide purchase, amplified by Britain’s right-wing media. The second message now reaches an ever larger and more receptive audience. The two main parties have never been so unpopular. Support for the Conservatives has collapsed and Labour’s dour and directionless year in power, defined by a centrism of the blandest variety, has led Mr. Starmer’s approval ratings to reach record lows in record time.

 

If Mr. Farage’s message has remained consistent, the manner in which he delivers it has transformed. Here, Mr. Trump’s influence is unmissable. Mr. Farage is more of a showman than he once was. Where he used to take the stage with little ceremony, now he tours the country with elaborately choreographed rallies, featuring booming music and pyrotechnics. “Unlike everybody else, I like to plunge in the crowds,” he has said. He has taken to referring to his opponents by nicknames: Mr. Starmer is “Two-tier Keir,” referencing a far-right conspiracy theory that the prime minister disproportionately criminalizes nationalist protesters; Robert Jenrick, a senior Conservative politician widely tipped to be its next leader, is “Robert Generic,” comically deflating his efforts to mold himself into a Faragist.

 

On X and TikTok, where he has 2.2 million and 1.3 million followers each, Mr. Farage cultivates a closer relationship with his supporters, sharing quick-fire responses to news events and occasionally embracing the more feral aspects of social media. He recently shared an A.I.-generated video of himself rapping in a white fur coat. “You thought it was Farage — nah mate, Nigel Garage,” his avatar sings. “Prime minister of the pub, of the pint, of the people. Bo selecta.” Union Jacks beam from his eyes. Mr. Farage also invites his supporters to join “Reform FC,” one of the party’s most prominent initiatives: a fictional soccer team that sells Reform-colored jerseys with Mr. Farage’s name on the back, emulating a MAGAesque fandom. “What a season we’re having,” he says in one recent video.

 

Much of Reform’s policy agenda has a distinctly Trumpian hue. Although Mr. Farage is well-versed in stirring up fears about immigration and crime, the calls for “large-scale raids” and “mass deportations” — along with the suggestions that “our worst violent criminals” could be sent to places like El Salvador — are obvious imports. Reform’s unembarrassed appropriation of “DOGE” makes explicit its debt to America’s new brand of conservatism. Reform has also discussed restricting access to abortion, which is barely a political issue in Britain, and positioned itself as the party of cryptocurrency deregulation, with Mr. Farage announcing his intentions to make London a “crypto powerhouse.” He even promotes a meme coin that carries his name.

 

Reform’s interest in cryptocurrencies reflects another of its most notable traits: its deep ties to the financial sector. Richard Tice, its deputy leader, is a former property investor; Zia Yusuf, its head of policy and former head of DOGE, previously worked at Goldman Sachs; and Arron Banks, a longtime ally of Mr. Farage, made his fortune in insurance and wants a “big beautiful Reform bill.” Though they join in the immigrant-bashing, they probably find Mr. Farage’s economic promises more exciting. Despite occasional feints left, his instincts are libertarian and bear a striking resemblance to those of the Conservatives’ shortest-lived prime minister, Liz Truss. Her program of tax cuts and financial deregulation — which Mr. Farage lauded at the time — was so disastrous that she was forced to resign almost immediately.

 

Yet Mr. Farage’s economic proposals receive scant attention amid his repeated prophecies of civil war. While reassuring his friends in finance that even bigger bonuses are to come, he foments a dangerous sense of persecution among his base of supporters. He insists that anti-immigration protesters are singled out for punishment by the state because of their patriotism, when by far the highest number of political arrests in the past year have applied to those demonstrating in support of Palestine. He declares that the political establishment — “the uniparty,” as he calls it — showers people seeking asylum with luxury at the expense of struggling British citizens, whom it disdains. He warns, again and again, of a “growing anger” out on the streets, while apparently doing everything he can to grow it.

 

In December 2003, several senior E.U. officials received letter bombs from anonymous protesters, narrowly avoiding injury. The next month, Mr. Farage issued a controversial statement essentially saying that the bloc had it coming. “We have spent 10 years warning that the route the European Union has chosen for itself, to swallow up nation states without giving the people of Europe the final say, was destined to end in civil unrest and violence,” he said. “It would appear that that prediction is now coming true.”

 

Twenty years on, the people of Britain have had their say. Britain is outside the European Union. But Mr. Farage is still warning that unless he is listened to, more violence is coming. “Without action, without somehow the contract between the government and the people being renewed, without some trust coming back, then I fear deeply that that anger will grow,” he declared in August. “In fact, I think there is now, as a result of this, a genuine threat to public order.”

 

Mr. Farage’s concerns are hard to take seriously when he finds so many ways to profit from them. Besides leading his insurgent party, he boasts an impressive array of side hustles. He is a news anchor for GB News, an increasingly influential television channel inspired by Fox News that has accelerated the Americanization of British conservatism. He is the face of Direct Bullion, a precious metal dealer, which he suggests investing in because “if you get a big capital gain, you don’t have to pay any tax on it.” He will say almost anything on Cameo, the short-video app, for $95. And he also has a line of spirits, Farage Gin, although it seems that this venture is winding down after little consumer interest.

 

His unseriousness is a strength rather than a weakness, allowing him to draw from the darkest reaches of British politics without being overshadowed by them. A recent interview was illustrative. In September, a journalist asked Mr. Farage whether he thought it was true that Haitian immigrants in America were “eating cats and dogs.” The Reform leader replied with a hypothetical. “If I said to you that swans were being eaten in royal parks in this country,” Mr. Farage said, “by people who come from cultures that have a different …,” he trailed off. The journalist asked if he was referring to tabloid stories about “Eastern Europeans” doing exactly that. “So I believe,” Mr. Farage said, before bursting out laughing and throwing his hands in the air. “But, you know, I’m not saying that, I’m just putting it back as an argument!”

 

This peekaboo prejudice — now you see it, now you don’t — is reminiscent of another master of political mischief and innuendo, Boris Johnson. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Farage share several qualities: blokey personas that elide their elite backgrounds, senses of humor that evade accountability, a narcissistic pleasure in transgression and destruction. But they belong to different parts of the political spectrum. While Mr. Johnson’s buffoonish populism allowed him to lean further right than his colleagues, he remained a Conservative. Mr. Farage, starting from the radical right, leans toward something altogether more dangerous and extreme.

 

The popularity of his program should not be overstated. His ascendancy is premised, above all, on the collapse of faith in both major parties and the concealment of his economic agenda by his anti-immigration policies. But Mr. Farage’s quest for power is clearly gaining velocity. It took his first party, UKIP, 20 years to upend one pillar of British politics: its membership in the European Union. His second party, Reform, has upended two more in a quarter of the time: the two-party system, which has held pretty much for 100 years, and the dominance of the Conservative Party, which has been one of the two main parties for the entire history of Britain’s democracy. It is now possible to imagine Mr. Farage as part of a frightening far-right sweep across Europe, claiming France and Germany, in the near future.

 

What will emerge from the wreckage? Mr. Trump’s presidency may offer some clues as to what an “NF” premiership could stand for: mass deportations, attacks on democratic institutions, reckless tax cuts and privatizations, total disregard for environmental policies, emboldened racism and nativism, a political atmosphere that seethes with recriminations and resentment. But perhaps the most terrifying aspect of Mr. Farage in power is peculiar to Britain. Unlike Mr. Trump, he would have no formal constitution — no rigorous system of checks and balances — to stand in his way. He does not even have a political party to constrain him. Unlike a Labour or Conservative leader, Mr. Farage is his party.

 

By razing Britain to its bare foundations — dynamiting its main parties, its ties to Europe, its public infrastructure, its financial regulations — Mr. Farage may hope to have the last laugh. Perhaps, underneath the rubble, he will even find what he’s looking for. Or maybe destruction is the point. Because for all his apocalyptic warnings, Mr. Farage has never looked happier.

 

More on Britain and Nigel Farage

 

Samuel Earle is the author of “Tory Nation: The Dark Legacy of the World’s Most Successful Political Party” and a Ph.D. candidate at the Columbia Journalism School.