Nigel Farage’s latest wheeze is to send dangerous British prisoners to El Salvador - because nothing screams “credible prime minister-in-waiting” like outsourcing criminal justice to a Central American strongman regime. It’s not a policy. It’s a headline. A stunt. A deliberately ludicrous idea dressed up as “common sense,” launched not to be implemented, but to feed the outrage machine. That’s the point. It always is.
Farage has no intention of governing. He wants attention, influence, and donations - but not responsibility. Power is meetings and consequences, civil servants and compromise. It’s boring. Worse, it’s measurable. You can fail. So instead, he plays the eternal outsider: the pub-bore prophet howling at the gates. And it works - because his followers aren’t there for policy. They’re there for the hormonal high.
Farage doesn’t lead a movement. He manages an endocrine system. His rallies are biological flashpoints: adrenaline to make you afraid, noradrenaline to keep you angry, dopamine to reward you for being angry, testosterone to make you feel powerful, and oxytocin to bind you to the man with the pint and the permanent sneer. It’s not politics. It’s chemical theatre - marketed to a base carefully cultivated not to think too hard.
He needs followers who don’t read past the headline. Who confuse feeling informed with having seen a meme. Who don’t want policy - they want enemies. People for whom a 30-second TikTok of Farage shouting at an interviewer carries more weight than any white paper. I came across one of them the other day, in full outrage mode over a newspaper story warning of a £2,500 fine for flying the Union Jack. He was convinced the government was coming for bunting and garden poles. But the article - had he bothered to read it - was about long-standing planning rules on flying flags from public buildings, not someone’s front porch. Twenty years old. Dressed up as something new and clearly click-bait. And he fell for it. Loudly.
This is Farage’s ideal supporter: ill-informed, emotionally primed, and ready to rage at shadows. The moment they start reading in depth, the spell breaks. So he makes sure they don’t.
He triggers panic, then offers himself as release. The migrants are coming. The elites are laughing. The BBC is lying. Britain is broken. But don’t worry - Nigel sees it too. Pint in hand, tie askew, he’s here to say what “we’re all thinking.” You’re not mad - you’re right. And you’re not alone. That’s not a political platform. That’s a serotonin trap.
This isn’t a party aiming to govern. Reform UK is not a serious political project. It’s a grievance franchise with a lion logo and a terminal allergy to policy detail. It exists to scare the Tories, not replace them. Farage walks a tightrope: just enough support to hijack the agenda, never enough to be handed the wheel. If it ever looks like he might win something, he sabotages it - say, by suggesting we deport prisoners to El Salvador and watching the press implode.
Because Farage is not a revolutionary. He’s a coward with a brand. He rules by flattening his own party. No rising stars, no competing visions - just Nigel, endlessly reheated. Richard Tice exists not to lead, but to ensure no one else does. Reform UK is Farage. Inextricably. Without him, it’s a domain name with a Facebook page full of lion memes and spelling errors.
But here lies the real danger - not Farage, but his Röhm moment. In 1934, Hitler purged Ernst Röhm because Röhm had become too powerful to control. Flip that: Farage lives in fear of being Röhm-ed himself. That someone inside the party - someone younger, sharper, more interested in winning than whining - might realise he is the problem. That Reform UK could go further, faster, if Nigel just got out of the way.
So long as Farage holds the reins - or holds the puppet who does - the danger is illusory. The clown bars the gates. But if he’s shoved aside by someone hungrier, someone not afraid of spreadsheets and grown-up power, the structure he’s built could finally start doing real damage. And that, not Farage, is what the main parties should be worried about.
Until then, let him rage. Let him bellow. But don’t mistake him for a leader. He is the angriest man in the pub, shouting at the telly, who - when finally offered the keys - smirks and says, “Nah, mate, I’m good,” and drops them down a drain just to make sure.
And pray no one else picks them up.
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