Nigel Farage swirled his wine in an ante room at Glaziers Hall on London Bridge last Thursday, looked in the eye the three journalists – including this one – who were standing around chatting to him, and swore blind he wouldn’t run in Britain’s general election.
Looking perma-tanned and at ease, the veteran Brexiteer and bete noire of successive Tory governments said he simply did not have enough time to get a constituency campaign off the ground after prime minister Rishi Sunak had called a snap election for July 4th. He sounded convincing.
Farage had been at the venue to announce a new anti-immigration policy for Reform UK, the right-wing party he cofounded and served as honorary president. The policy gathering was ostensibly hosted by Richard Tice, the party’s then-leader. But it was really Farage who was in charge.
Four days after his London Bridge show of adamance that he would not stand in the election, Farage returned to Glaziers Hall on Monday to announce his candidacy for the Essex seaside seat of Clacton, where his Ukip forerunner of Reform had done well in several previous elections.
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Part of Farage’s reasoning was that other politicians could not be trusted to do what they had previously said they would do. Then he metaphorically elbowed Tice out of the way and took back the Reform steering wheel as party leader, having days earlier suggested he would take a back seat.
Within hours Farage was releasing slick campaign videos on social media showing him traipsing through adoring crowds to a soundtrack of Eminem’s Without Me. “Guess who’s back?/guess who’s back?/…. Now, this looks like a job for me/So everybody, just follow me/’Cause we need a little controversy/’Cause it feels so empty without me…”
For Farage the election is all about him. But for some of the people of Clacton it is about all sorts of other issues. The constituency includes Jaywick, the most deprived electoral ward in England. It will be interesting to hear Farage’s ideas to address Jaywick’s problems.
The return of Farage proves again the old theory that usually it isn’t policies that generate excitement during election campaigns but personalities. British media have been starved of personality narratives in this campaign because both of the candidates to be prime minister, the Tory incumbent Rishi Sunak and the Labour favourite to take his job, Keir Starmer, are such low-key individuals.
Jeremy Corbyn, the previous Labour leader who was barred from standing for the party by his successor Starmer, might recoil at the description of him as a political personality. But the vibe at his campaign launch as an independent in Islington, held the night before Farage first graced Glaziers Hall, suggests that is exactly what he has become.
Whereas Farage and his colleagues laid on wine and worked hard to create a sense of media bonhomie, things were a bit different at Corbyn’s launch in the Brickworks community centre. Many Westminster journalists, especially those from the right-wing press, were not invited to the event. Others who showed up found it difficult to get inside.
The community centre was filled with people who could best be described as Corbyn fans. Several women wore bright red Team Corbyn T-shirts. The crowd of about 250 waited patiently for his arrival for over an hour. Whereas Farage prefers Eminem, a Corbyn crowd warms up with Bob Marley: Get up, Stand Up blared from the sound system, which then failed once the political speeches started.
After a series of lengthy warm-up speeches from various Islington community activists, Corbyn gave an impassioned speech in which he railed against child poverty, a lack of housing and the dominance of the most powerful in society. “The media are supine in the way they lay down in front of them,” he said to loud applause.
Corbyn moved on to the need to end wars, the state of the water system, transport and healthcare. He hit every touchstone issue. But what his speech notably lacked were any policy proposals to fix the problems he had so eloquently identified.
In a way this didn’t matter much to Team Corbyn, who were happy to be wedged together in the late evening heat inside a community centre in the less salubrious part of Islington North. It didn’t really matter what Corbyn argued; they were going to agree with him anyway.
What mattered most to them was that it was Corbyn who was saying it. And in that mould any interested outside observer could spot certain similarities between him and Farage, whose supporters similarly venerate him just for who he is.
Both politicians have a decent chance of upsetting the old duopoly by winning seats from the outside. If they do it will be their personalities that get them there.