Niggardly Nigel and the Centrist Swindle
or, A New Lowe for an Old Hack
The signs were always there, especially when Nigel Farage boasted for years about having defeated “the far-right” in Britain. But they became more obvious and cringeworthy in 2024 when his party Reform began openly - and proudly - kowtowing to ultra-establishment/leftist organisation Hope Not Hate when it demanded they drop candidates. In an act of stunning cuckservatism, Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice even voiced gratitude to “various organisations and the media” for vetting candidates on the party’s behalf. This was of a piece with Farage’s previous project, the Brexit Party, which in 2019 ousted leader Catherine Blaiklock to appease HNH. In 2017, HNH had sarcastically “offered” to help his first big project, UKIP, to root out extremists. Then an acolyte of Farage revealed that, in fact, UKIP had been secretly collaborating with HNH since 2010.
The 2010s is one thing, but the 2020s is another. To my mind, HNH have never been in a weaker position, have never looked more pathetic and petty and irrelevant, than now. This is the most ridiculous time to be giving them credence. But, for a party like Reform which is ostensibly on the Right, no time is a good time to give HNH credence. They are your enemy! It is possible to learn from one’s enemy, but the idea that one should literally take his advice on battle tactics during the battle against him is absolutely ludicrous. HNH knew exactly what they were doing in identifying candidates for Reform to deselect. They were not seeking to make Reform more respectable - as its leaders pitifully interpreted their “advice” - but to castrate and demoralise the party by separating it from its radical base.
Radicalism has become a dirty word in Western politics in recent decades. In Britain this was started, not by Tony Blair in the 1990s as is commonly believed, but by Neil Kinnock in the 1980s when he disavowed Militant and “the Loony Left”. That was a strategic necessity for Kinnock in order to get the organised Left back under control and stop it haemorrhaging normie public support. But it was only a temporary measure. Actually from Tony Blair onwards, the disavowal of leftist radicalism reversed. Labour continued claiming to be centrist, but found new life by reuniting with their radical base, seeking its advice, celebrating it, funding it, professionalising it, and being inspired and energised by it.
While the Left claimed to be “reasonable” centrists, behind the scenes they were entertaining their radical base’s most extreme ideas - gay marriage, trans children, industrial mass immigration, “decolonising” education, etc. They transformed entire countries while claiming to be moderate.
New Labour was extremist politics masquerading as dull managerialism, and its result is a Britain that is febrile masquerading as stable. What is needed now, direly, is an equally radical response. Nothing less than radicalism can save White countries now. There is no “centrist” path back to sanity from where we are in 2025.
However, in line with post-1945 thinking, the Right “did the decent thing” and “took the respectable path”. They took this advice from the Left - their enemies - to heart, and were feverishly loyal to the centre ground, to the point of betraying all their principles (certainly those which pertained to culture rather than economics).
But the centre ground is not where politics finds new life, so what this shift has achieved is to make the Right rudderless and low-energy, dull, boring and bored. Its politicians are now incapable of the necessary thoughts, the necessary attitude. This explains the emergence of Donald Trump in 2016, and the AfD and Reform now: the mainstream Right has become unfit for purpose, so the public want to replace it.
This is the clarion call that Nigel Farage is ignoring. Several other politicians who have “made it”, such as Rupert Lowe and Ben Habib, heed the call. They probably fear it, but they understand that the status quo not only doesn’t work, but is destroying Britain. Farage thinks the call can be ignored, put in a box and locked away, swept under the carpet, and he can continue playing the game he has been playing for thirty years.
