Nigel Farage lost the general election battle but has already won the political war
Paste BN' Lewis Goodall says the Brexiteer figurehead could be formally welcomed back into the Conservative Party.
Wednesday 13 November 2019 09:28, UK
There are few figures about whom so much is written yet so little understood.
It's somehow fitting. Nigel Farage is a man who deals in bright, clear primary colours, most of all in red, white and blue.
There is little room for nuance, for the bleeding of messy greys and beiges onto the canvas of his political personality.
Yet the at-once complex and contradictory impulses of a man, who in so many ways has both propelled and epitomised the trajectory of British conservatism in the last decade, tells us much about the space in which British politics currently sits.
It hardly needs stating that this is a person who enjoys the limelight, who values being at the centre of the cut and thrust of the political battle.
He is also a man who has prided himself for years as the thorn in the side of the British establishment. He relishes that status as a prizefighter.
That, alongside his not inconsiderable pride and ego, explains why he could not quite bear to withdraw from the battlefield entirely yesterday.
Yet he cares about the Brexit project he has done more than most to build.
His concern that it was in jeopardy, was real. As was the concern that he might come to be blamed for its nullification by the wider Brexiteer family. So, he retreated.
Consider too, that he is also a man who has fought for years to be taken seriously, who might have spent his years lobbing political hand grenades from outside the castle walls but who perhaps always yearned to be let inside the citadel.
He has established himself as a key, if not pivotal player of the British political game. There is a part of him, I sense, that wistfully eyes being welcomed into the fold.
But crucially, this is a fold of his own making.
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It is so easy to sneer at him, as many not of his politics are inclined to do.
They are both dismissive and fearful of the ever-lengthening shadow the man casts. They prefer to comfort themselves, to laugh, to mock, in the hope that perhaps he isn't so important, after all, that the Brexit emperor has no clothes.
But they ought not be so comfortable; for though yesterday was a retreat, perhaps even a near total capitulation for a man who was insisting on demands in every direction only a week before, it does not alter the fact that Mr Farage has won, almost completely.
That the Brexit Party leader can work with this Tory Party, that he can effectively endorse them, reveals much.
It is unimaginable that he would would have done the same for David Cameron's Conservatives, or even Theresa May's.
It is equally unlikely that they would have much welcomed his approval.
Mr Cameron, in particular, spent years attempting to move his party away from the more strident instincts of social conservatism and more jingoism, that many in his party held and to which Mr Farage so embodies.
But today, it is the Conservatives who are recast in Mr Farage's image, not the other way around.
On virtually every aspect of policy, on Europe but on much else besides, the Tories have moved in his direction.
Those Conservative politicians, against whom at rally after rally I have heard him rail, have been expelled from the party.
The purpose of the Brexit Party was, in essence, to remove Theresa May and her version of Brexit. It was successful.
Without its presence, a vanguard, breathing down the Tories' neck, the course of this year might have flowed much differently.
Instead, the Tories' leadership was changed, the party purged, the policy altered, now the party of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel and Owen Paterson, rather than Amber Rudd, David Gauke, even of Philip Hammond.
His conservatism triumphant, even Nigel Farage couldn't find a reason to fight himself.
He has frequently been written off but this likely marks the final stages of Nigel Farage's status as independent political force.
The air is likely to slowly empty of the Brexit Party's balloon. He has declared his hand: he is now to all intents and purposes, an adjunct to the Tory campaign.
For years, he has successfully navigated distance away from his Tory roots, away from both sides of the establishment he has always claimed to revile.
It is a game he can no longer play. All of the components that have made Mr Farage such a compelling political actor, have been undermined if not removed by this new act.
It is likely an ending or at least the beginning of an ending for one of the most remarkable political figures of the post-war period.
I suspect, sooner or later, he could well be formally welcomed back into the Conservative Party.
That there is a place for him, tells you all you need to know. Mr. Farage lost this battle, but he conclusively won the war.
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