Oh lord, here I am, sticking up for Rishi Sunak, a politician I despise, because the odious and manipulative Nigel Farage is using the PM’s D-Day debacle to enrage and excite his rage-filled base.
On Friday, he added his voice to the swelling chorus of condemnation of Sunak’s decision to leave Normandy early. Fair enough, you might think, just electoral opportunism. But then the Reform leader injected virulence into the righteous anger. It’s what he does. He averred that Sunak’s departure from the D-day commemorations showed “he doesn’t understand our culture”, and therefore, by implication, can’t be an authentic patriot.
His comments took me back to a BBC Radio 4 Today programme interview way back in September 2000, when Norman Tebbit, one of Thatcher’s snarling patriotic bulldogs, suggested to me on air that having a British passport didn’t make me a true Brit.
Farage is a master of dog-whistle messaging, defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “an expression or statement that has a secondary meaning intended to be understood only by a particular group of people”. It’s all about intimations and implications. Farage’s growing fanbase understood perfectly.
Performative repudiations followed. Cabinet minister Mel Stride said the comments made him “very uncomfortable” and that he was proud the country has “a British Asian who is right at the top of our government”. Labour’s Shabana Mahmood warned the Reform politician had a “record of seeking to divide communities”.
That tactic has worked so well it has made Farage into a folk hero. Brexit diehards and other reactionaries see him as their redeemer, come back to save them. Most journalists excitedly follow his every move.
On the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Farage first tried to drive the interview off the road – “I know what your question is leading at: 40 per cent of our contribution in World War One and World War Two came from the Commonwealth” – then claimed he was not concerned about Sunak’s race and immigrant background, but the way he is “utterly disconnected by class, by privilege, from how the ordinary folk in the country feel”.
This from a toff who had a Coutts bank account. What piffle. Would he say King Charles, or Lord David Cameron, or indeed his own deputy, millionaire Richard Tice, are similarly disconnected from the people, that they don’t understand the country and its history?
You can see how obfuscation, deceits and tricks, pride and prejudice have made and boosted Farage and his party.
Just a few days back, Farage was interviewed by Mishal Husain on the Today programme. He made unproven statements about people in Oldham not speaking English. When she steadily pressed him about his own bilingual children and bilingualism, later about his immigration numbers – he was all over the place on both – he tried to speak over and disrespect her. Being held to account by a calm, erudite Muslim woman, would, I reckon, have been intolerable to the arrogant Mr Farage. The studio must have got hot and airless.
He and I have sparred. Once we spent almost two hours on what is now Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine show. He was then venerated as the man who gave us Brexit – a total disaster, as we now know. Filled with contempt and infinite self-importance, he tried the same tricks on me. At the end, I remember thinking, wow – assertive black and Asian individuals really unsettle this man of the people.
But here comes a twist: I am starting to think Farageism is a necessary evil in our body politic. The many voters now flocking to Reform must, one assumes, share their leader’s repugnance of diversity and fanatical embrace of monoculturalism. Those conspicuous glasses of lager and loose talk about invasions and the “real” people of this country prove xenophobia is thriving. The bogus claim that we are living in “post-racial” Great Britain has been exposed.
Sunak needs to face some harsh realities. Whatever his patriotic protestations and pathetic declarations about “our country”, he cannot win over a significant number of people, including some Tories. His wealth gives him a shine, that’s all. To some, he is still considered a bloody foreigner. So are Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel, James Cleverly and others of minority heritage who, for decades, have been in denial about British racism.
The PM has just discovered how the anti-immigration, jingoistic policies he has enthusiastically embraced end up denying legitimacy to all immigrants and people of colour – including him.
If the Tories get into bed with Reform, such hatred of minorities will become normalised. No one will be safe. Not even our public school-educated, multimillionaire Mr Sunak. This is a wake-up call for him.