Analysis
Farage’s
photo with Musk and Nick Candy defines his Trump tribute act era
Peter Walker
Senior
political correspondent
Eight years
after an awkward ‘bad boys of Brexit’ snap at Trump Tower’s lift, Reform’s
leader is a Mar-a-Lago insider
Wed 18 Dec
2024 14.42 GMT
As a photo
it is visually striking and politically resonant: Nigel Farage, the man who
loudly proclaims he will be the UK’s next prime minister, alongside two
extremely rich supporters, all bathed in the golden glow of his hero Donald
Trump.
In terms of
raw politics, the significance is what may follow from the talks involving the
leader of Reform UK, the party’s new treasurer, Nick Candy, and Elon Musk at
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday, immortalised in a photo eagerly
released by Farage’s media team.
Musk, the
world’s richest man, who spent more than $250m (£200m) of his fortune helping
Trump regain the presidency, is rumoured to be so enamoured of Farage – and
aghast at what he sees as a “woke” leftwing Labour government – that he may
donate $100m to the populist rightwing Reform party.
This may or
may not happen – and even if does, it remains to be seen how much impact such a
windfall would have on a party Farage concedes is still lacking in organisation
and election-winning knowhow.
But this is
a photo that arguably sums up where UK politics, or at least a part of it, is
right now. That is the second age of Farage as a domestic tribute act to Trump
– one in which, Farage hopes, he also ends up with an election win.
For context,
it is illustrative to look at another slightly gaudy photo, one taken almost
exactly eight years ago when Trump had just won his first presidential term.
Also widely
reproduced at the time, this showed Farage standing next to Trump in front of
the gold-plated lifts at Trump Tower in New York, flanked by a group who
greatly enjoyed being called the “bad boys of Brexit”.
This was a
different era, and it is in some ways a markedly different image to the one
from this week. The awkward stances and Trump’s raised thumb makes it look like
a snatched photo between an indulgent celebrity and a group of excited fanboys.
Farage was
already a significant political figure, fresh from the triumph of the Brexit
referendum, but his entourage was slightly more low-rent, including Arron
Banks, the insurance millionaire, and Raheem Kassam, a hard-right former Ukip
activist who now scratches a living on the fringes of the Trump circus.
Eight years
on, the differences are clear. Farage is no longer a supplicant lurking in the
lobby of a Trump residence but is on the inside, holding talks with the man who
is – at least for now – the returning president’s most influential acolyte.
The more
freewheeling style of the second Trump term is reflected in the attire. The
lineup outside the gold lift shows six men in near-identical dark suits. The
Mar-a-Lago snap sees Farage and Candy in the same – although Candy eschews a
tie – but Musk, fixing the camera with a curiously plastic half-grin, is
dressed in a sheepskin-lined leather jacket.
Musk-watchers
swiftly identified it as a much-seen staple of the billionaire’s wardrobe, made
a few years ago by Belstaff, a UK company which began making protective gear
for motorcyclists in the 1920s but now makes more leisure-oriented offerings
for £1,000 or more.
Perhaps the
most striking element of the new photo is the painting in the background,
showing a much younger and suspiciously slim-looking Trump bathed in the glow
of a setting sun while wearing what, to British eyes, looks like a white
cricketing jumper.
This is The
Visionary, a 1989 work by the late society portrait painter Ralph Wolfe Cowan,
once described as “the Palm Beach Van Dyck”, who made a living from his
generally flattering depictions of people including Monaco’s royal family, the
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and the former first lady of the Philippines
and shoe aficionado Imelda Marcos.
Cowan called
his style “romantic realism”, a method summarised by one critic as making the
subjects “20 pounds thinner and 20 years younger”.
The Trump
portrait, which in fact shows him in tennis gear and hangs in the library of
Mar-a-Lago, was originally left intentionally unfinished – one of Cowan’s
trademarks – with Trump’s left hand little more than sketched. After much
complaining from Trump, who did not appreciate this, Cowan updated the picture
more than a decade later.
An updated
version of the latest photo – could it show Farage the election triumphalist
alongside Musk the UK mega-donor? – is awaited.
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