Three characters are in search of an audience. These are large characters, accustomed to playing the part of principal boy, greedy for attention and applause, and expert in obtaining it. They are, to the distress of those whom they distress, unemployed, active and looking for work.
Last autumn, I wrote a piece for Prospect in which I suggested that these three characters—Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump—might take advantage of the troubled times and come back on stage, with a roll of the kettledrums and cries of delight from an audience starved of their presence.
I wrote then that “None of these men have much, if any, patience with the slog and grind of power. Instead, they all excel before audiences of supporters, and have the gut instinct to single out themes that reflect mass concerns and to supply simple solutions. These are not ‘men of the people’, but present themselves as ‘men for the people’, who have at different times been chosen by ‘aggrieved segments’ (a phrase of the US writer Robert Kagan) to bear a standard the liberal elite has trampled on… chafing in their temporary absence from power, these are the possible leaders of a populist insurrection.”
These three are an American and two Brits (they might prefer “Englishmen”). Johnson and Trump have been on the sharp end of efforts to sink them over years and have, in surviving, attracted the adjective of “unsinkable”. So did Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi: only death could sink him. The same is likely to be true of them.
My bet was that they would, if they wanted to make a play again, create a party of the new or far right around themselves. Such parties are diverse in nature but have a common core of aversion to the EU and to globalisation; deep respect for the family and the Christian faith, coupled with fear at their weakening. Their diversity is mostly in their closeness to their fascist roots: most claim to have cut these roots a long time ago, but some have done so more convincingly than others. The UK has not had such a thing since Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts in the 1930s, who relied heavily on an assumption of widespread Jew-hatred, which was limited in the 1930s and is thankfully negligible, at least as a political mobilising factor, now.
A standard explanation for this gap in the British political market has been the sheer voluminousness of the Conservative Party’s ideological tent, which has had room for both compassionate (David Cameron) and socially reactionary (Jacob Rees-Mogg) conservatism. Since the party was very clubbable, and was substantially organised round London gentlemen’s institutions, there was an inbuilt attraction to staying in.
The European governing parties were weak when Mosley built his fascists. Now the weakness of conventional politics is again evident: in Sweden and Italy, a new right party is either influential on government or (as in Italy) forms it; two governments, in Hungary and Poland, solidly still in power after years of rule, are themselves part of the new right and act as protectors and models for the fledgling new right parties; two such parties in Austria and Spain are likely soon to be in coalition governments; Marine Le Pen of the National Rally (until 2018, the National Front) is the most popular politician in France; the Alternative for Germany is the second most popular party there; and in all of the other European states a new right party has a major presence. A British party of the new right will have a range of influential allies, delighted to welcome it into their big tent.
Ukip, rapidly created and headed by Farage, accomplished its task of Brexit and changed into Reform UK, with Farage as an advisor and the former Tory minister Ann Widdecombe as an active member. It must still prove itself. Farage has spoken in interviews of the need to return to active politics because of what he sees as the still uncompleted exit from the EU and the un-conservative nature of the Conservative Party. He is the most likely of the three to do what he moots doing, and, aged 59, shows no public signs of flagging, in spite of the beers and cigarettes.
Would Johnson be tempted to join him? He is very unlikely to be accepted by any leadership of the Tory party, certainly not by this administration, and likely by no conceivable future one. His furious letter denouncing the House of Commons committee that judged him as a serial liar to the Commons over Covid parties in Number 10 was Trumpian in its extremes of contempt. The stumbling block would be joining together in one party and sharing power with Farage: he has shown no aptitude for doing this. A deal whereby they would rotate the party leaderships, as the prime minister(s) of Ireland presently do with government, would need great forbearance. The more likely option is that the two create competing parties and see which is the last one standing.
Donald Trump might again be president of the United States after the election in November 2024. The field of would-be nominees grows daily for an election about a year and a half away, but, presently, Trump still commands it. If elected, he would govern more aggressively: he has no learning curve and he knows, or says he knows, what he will do. One of these tasks, to which he continually returns, is revenge: pursuing those who have pursued him, if possible, into jail. Another is to withdraw US support to Ukraine. A third is to pardon those imprisoned for the 6th January attack on the Capitol. This is a presidency that would shake the world, more vigorously than the last.
