Nigel Farage has come out in support of fox hunting. Not as an aside or a slip of the tongue, but as a deliberate flourish. He knows perfectly well it is unpopular. He also knows it plays beautifully with his hardcore membership – that tight little knot of culture warriors, libertarian fantasists and people who believe the Countryside Alliance is a persecuted faith, and who would not know one end of a horse from the other unless it was racing at Kempton Park.
This is not a misstep. It is choreography.
Fox hunting is political poison if you have even the faintest intention of governing. Large majorities oppose it. Even most rural voters have moved on. Which is precisely why it is useful. It signals absolute loyalty to a narrow tribe while guaranteeing you never drift into the dangerous territory of broad appeal. It keeps you noisy, marginal, and safely unelectable.
Which is the point.
Farage is not funded to take the levers of power. He is funded to move them. His role is not delivery, but distortion. He shifts the Overton Window, then stands back and watches other parties chase him across the field, breathless and panicked, terrified of being outflanked by a man who has never once shown the slightest interest in building anything that might survive contact with reality.
Brexit was the masterstroke. He laid the scent, persuaded the Conservative Party – once a broadly sensible, if self-interested, governing outfit – to abandon its remaining grip on sanity and become a fully fledged nutter collective, and then stepped aside while they smashed the furniture. When it all went wrong, he was already down the pub explaining how it was nothing to do with him.
The collateral effect was even better. As the Conservatives careered into culture war cosplay and economic illiteracy, Labour quietly slid rightwards and parked itself in the abandoned One Nation Conservative space. Fiscal restraint. Institutional respect. Boring competence. A phenomenal outcome – just not for the Tories.
Immigration followed the same pattern. Loud claims. No workable mechanisms. Endless outrage. Now fox hunting joins the parade – a position that achieves nothing except signalling and spectacle. Perfect for a man whose entire business model depends on permanent insurgency.
Taking power would end it. Government demands numbers, trade-offs, delivery. It demands that slogans grow up and turn into spreadsheets. It demands accountability. Worst of all, it kills the grift. You cannot pose as the bloke shouting from the sidelines while holding a red box full of consequences.
And this is where the metaphor becomes almost too neat. Farage is not the fox. He is not the huntsman. He is the drag in a drag hunt.
He lays the artificial scent. He excites the hounds. The press bays. The parties charge off after him. The country is dragged along behind the spectacle. And at the end there is nothing there. No fox. No policy. No responsibility.
Just another successful run, another shifted debate, and Farage already off laying the next trail.
All motion, no destination. Noise without consequence. And judged by the wreckage left behind and the space he forced others to occupy, a phenomenal success for his backers.
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