Farage’s new vehicle, the Brexit Party, was only launched six weeks ago but is already a serious force. With more than 100,000 registered supporters, millions in funding and considerable potential in blue and red territory, Farage finally has something that he has never had before: a serious, professional, well-funded and well-organised movement. [...]
Farage’s return is a clear symptom of his opponents’ complete failure to make sense of our post-referendum world. As a result, they are baffled and wrong-footed by his return. Farage has outplayed them all. But rather than meet this moment with imagination, too many in our politics and media have shown that they have no imagination at all. Rather than chart a new course, many have sought shelter in the dusty attic from which they plucked the unsuccessful arguments of 2016.
Instead of meeting Farage-ism head on, his opponents have recycled uninspiring, managerial and incredibly weak arguments about process; about how parties are funded, about Arron Banks, about money. It is telling that this week a former Prime Minister, leader of the Labour Party and political heavyweight, chose to focus his attack against Farage on the issue of PayPal. Ideas have left the building. [...]
Most of them, as we know from several studies, share a cluster of intensely-held concerns; they care deeply about a loss of national sovereignty, the clear lack of control over immigration, a political system that no longer looks or feels responsive to citizens and a wider dismissal of the one thing that they cherish more than anything else: the national community.
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