Farage’s dogs will soon turn on him

The British far right won’t put up with his double dealing for much longer

“Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day”

Hamlet

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Nigel Farage is finding out that even the most manipulative leaders can be undone by dog-whistle politics. The shock may finish him off.

For more than a decade, dog-whistling has served Farage well. He has used coded and suggestive messages to reassure the British far right that he is on its side, while presenting himself to the wider electorate as an unthreatening bloke who just tells it like it is.

The theory goes that, just as only dogs can hear high-pitched whistles, so only extremists can understand Farage’s coy hints.

Dog whistling doesn’t work in practice. Or, rather, it only works for a while. Eventually, the dogs get tired of being fed scraps. They demand red meat and turn on the leaders who patronised them.

If you want one image to encapsulate what has happened to US conservatism, think of Ramsay Bolton being eaten by his dogs in Game of Thrones.

For decades, mainstream Republicans pretended to agree with extremist voters, In the end, the voters grew tired of the games the party’s elite played. They turned on their masters and embraced Trump.

Fear of the same fate stalks Farage

His latest challenge comes from Rupert Lowe. Until he was suspended, Lowe was one of just five MPs in Farage’s Reform party, all of whom appear to loathe each other more than they loathe migrants.

Their infighting isn’t hurting Reform yet. Farage is doing well. Reform is still running level with Labour in the polls, and it will make substantial gains at this year’s local elections. Patrick O’Flynn and other sympathetic commentators are surely right to say this weekend that Lowe does not pose a threat in the short term.

The longer term is another matter. Beyond the poll gains and the embarrassingly sycophantic coverage of GB News and the Tory press, lies a real and ugly ideological divide that threatens the movement.

Lowe explained it well when he said that he believes in mass deportations and in using Pakistani groomers for propaganda purposes. This was the real reason, he suggests, why Farage suspended him from the party.

Many Reform voters agree with Lowe’s demands to shift even further to the right. Polling shows Reform voters split into three equal groups: those who think the party would do better, worse, or no differently (or don’t know) without Farage as leader.

An investigation by Joshua Nevett and Joe Pike of the BBC, published yesterday, showed the discontent in the party’s base. It reported that:

“The BBC has learned at least 12 interim chairs of local Reform UK branches have resigned over the conduct of the party's leadership in recent months.”

They complained that they weren’t allowed to openly support the far-right activist and criminal Tommy Robinson.

And here we get to the root of it. The riots that followed the Southport murders were a clarifying event in modern British history. If the mobs had broken the police line in Southport, Muslims would have been burned alive in the local mosque. If they had broken through in the English Midlands, asylum seekers would have died.

The rioters showed what those paying attention already knew: there is a far right in Britain that is happy with violence. Tommy Robinson is its hero. Beyond him lies a broader group of apologists, who blow the dog whistle while scuttling away from danger. Nigel Farage has been their mentor.

After Southport, he didn’t come out and say that he supported attacking the police or mosques. Instead, he gave his usual slimy performance, and said that the real scandal was that Keir Starmer was presiding over a “two-tier” justice system under which white rioters were punished, while Muslims went free.

It was the standard Farage act. He wants the votes of thuggish men and all who sympathise with them. But he does not want to get too close to the violence and the demand for mass deportations for fear of scaring the wider electorate.

Elon Musk has put a stop to that. Last year he was tweeting about the UK dozens of times a day. In effect he accused Keir Starmer of being a race traitor, who should be jailed for allowing rapists to go free to secure the Muslim vote.

But in the eyes of Musk, Farage was not much better.

Musk wants an uninhibited commitment to far-right politics. He wants a British party that will support Robinson and every type of anti-Muslim conspiracy theory. Yet, as we have seen, Farage will flirt, and drop hints, and blow on his dog whistle – but he won’t actually commit,

Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to lead Reform. But Rupert Lowe just might. Lowe’s “statements online that I have read so far make a lot of sense,” Musk concluded.

Do not underestimate the power of greed. There’s a reverse beauty parade going on in the UK as the ugliest people in Britain compete for the attention and money of the world’s richest man.

For Farage, the riots have begun a crisis he has spent his whole career trying to avoid.
Chris Grey, one of the most perceptive writers on post-Brexit Britain puts it like this: