Nigel Farage has become a TikTok star. Yes, that app once so innocently used to promote silly little dances is now one tangled neck of the many-headed hydra that is the populist right propaganda machine.
On 1 December, our Nige posted a TikTok from his hotel. It involved him making a cup of tea (oh Nige, such a man of the people), and despairing at his milk choice. Semi-skimmed, oat (“what on earth’s that when it’s at home”), or almond. Nigel despairs: “All I want is proper bloody milk! Not left-wing options!”
Fellas, is it woke to drink semi-skimmed milk? Have the hotel industry aided and abetted with the Guardian-reading tofu-eating wokerati (TM Suella Braverman, 2022) to stop Real English Men from drinking full-fat milk?
Conspiracies have arisen concerning the extra space where another milk jug could fit, but is the Reform leader so desperate to stoke divisions in this country that he’d move it out of shot for his TikTok? Surely not. Not our Nige.
What would be the point?
Well, I suppose, if you’re asking… there’s a precedent for little zingers like these. The right has become so entrenched in populism across the world, using nonsense signallers and buzzwords to manufacture an incredibly electable outrage. What is already being referred to as Milk-gate is a symptom of the ‘culture wars’, a phenomenon used to create an us-versus-them divide that people like Farage have profited off of immensely.
GFAPism (good-for-a-pint-ism) has seen a monstrous rise in the UK in the last twenty years, where politicians feel not only do they need a solid hold of foreign economic policy, but also they need to appear affable and ‘fun’.
Farage is a master of this. Despite hailing from an upper-middle-class background, private school, the works, Big Nige has crafted a persona of the working man’s politician. A proper geezer, sticking up for the little guy in the House of Commons. Charismatic, funny, and down for a laugh are all elements of his persona that Nigel has desperately honed through years of being surrounded by regular politicians, with slightly less charisma and slightly less up for laughing about the issues that blight the world stage.
He was slightly exposed, Farage, when he did I’m A Celebrity – a show that weirdly has embraced the disgraced politician (see also – Matt Hancock – the stuttering, David Brentian mess). The public realised that maybe among politicians Farage was charming and funny, but among professional charmsters and funny people, he was just a politician. He came off like a drunk uncle at Christmas who you just want to nod off in his armchair.
There’s a new show just launched on Discovery Plus, called Meet The Rees-Moggs. Jacob Rees-Mogg is a very conservative Conservative politician, perhaps best known for lounging on the front bench like a melting lolly. Meet The Rees-Moggs is an attempted rehabilitation of his image via a Kardashian/ Osbourne style reality show, but after all is said and done they just come off as really posh, quite boring people .
This is endemic of the populist problem we have – ALL politicians want now to appear real, to seem like pub-going normies. Even someone like Rees-Mogg who previously would have relished his alien-like strangeness wants to be relatable.
Strangely, our current prime minister seems to steer pretty clear of this pretence. He talks football, sometimes – an avid and authentic Arsenal fan – and drinks a beer now and then, but overall he is a politician. He is fiercely private about his private life, keeping his kids far from the spotlight (certainly not putting them in a reality show), and focusing on policy far above personality. No-drama Starmer has done this so effectively that almost everyone thinks he’s incredibly boring.
Outwardly, this seems like a good thing. But not engaging in these practices means there’s no left-wing equivalent to the brash, loud personalities on the right; no leftie Andrew Tate, Farage, or Bozzer Jozzer.
Our 24-hour-news, social media’s scrolling miles, everyone’s so led by emotions and performance over policy or caution. Bold recklessness is perceived as conviction, and Starmer’s more blunt approach threatens to get lost in all the noise. No-drama doesn’t fail because it’s bad politics – it fails because it’s bad theatre.
It’s ironic that the politician Sir Keir is most closely compared to is the reason we’re in this mess: Tony Blair, and his fun-loving kickabouts, won a huge Labour majority too.
But it was different. Labour then were the party of optimism, and hope – Blair was elected because he was likeable, and could deliver real change. Starmer’s New New Labour won so big because they weren’t the Tories. Hope is dead, and they are the party of firmly tempered expectations. It’s great that a non-personality hire was made for the big job, but was it a fluke rather than a trend?
The leftie leader who is engaging most with this style of politics is Sir Ed Davey of the Lib Dems. During the election campaign, he was pictured bungee jumping, paddleboarding, rollercoaster-ing, and generally being a fun-loving affable chap. He’s also recently challenged the PM to a 1v1 on FIFA, and released a Christmas charity single.
When asked about his stunts, Sir Ed said “The importance of the stunts is to get people to engage and to listen, and they really achieve that.” This is a leader who plays the game, but understand the theatre serves the politics and not the other way round.
So… what happens next?
Either the right need to stop creating Trumps, Johnsons and Farages (which they won’t, as their winning strategy), or the left need to find a new leader. Someone funny, likeable, and maybe a little sexy.
Fine. You’ve twisted my arm. I’ll take the job.
