Rejecting Farage is a strategic error for the British Right

You don’t instantly turn into the AfD by endorsing Tommy Robinson at the behest of Elon Musk

As of the time of writing, Elon Musk has initiated what might be the opening salvo of a campaign to jettison Nigel Farage as leader of Reform UK, or at least as the leader of the British Right outside of the Conservative Party. The impetus for this, from what can be construed from public pronouncements from both figures, seems to be the latter’s refusal to endorse the imprisoned Tommy Robinson, let alone to potentially involve him in some capacity in the party.

Nigel Farage, who throughout much of his long career has been semi-frequently asked about his thoughts on Robinson, has always maintained a consistent line: his objections have been less political, and more focused on Robinson’s personal character. As discussed at some length in an article published in this very journal just yesterday, Farage is obviously correct in believing that Robinson’s character is highly suspect. This is not because he is ‘thuggish’ or an ‘uncut diamond’ — both character traits that, in the right context, might even be beneficial.

The problems with Robinson are much more simple. It’s not even necessary to seriously discuss anything to do with his self-presentation as a political actor, let alone for us to analyse how this may set off the snobbery of certain bien pensants. Robinson’s addiction to cocaine is physiologically manifest for anyone who has frequented a provincial Wetherspoons or Revs on a Saturday night (ironically, it is those who are more ‘posh’ who are less likely to notice it). He has allegedly misused donor funds to pay for his addiction, as well as spending heavily on prostitutes, alcohol, and gambling. He has offered to collaborate with the police to root out ‘criminal racists’ within his own organisation, and has knowingly led his followers, who do not have access to the same financial and legal support as he does, to prison. He is also known to have accepted funding from a variety of shady neoconservative organisations in the United States, and correspondingly has adopted an unconditionally pro-Israel line, to an extent that is completely unacceptable for any serious British nationalist for a myriad of both current and historic reasons. Ideologically, for Robinson, everything is viewed as a product of ‘Islamisation’, which is seemingly only opposed because Islam is incompatible with a number of novel propositional values, like tolerance for homosexuals and religious minorities.

This has become increasingly absurd in the wake of the Boriswave, which featured massive levels of immigration from West Africa and India, as well as the rapid growth of more novel ethnic communities, like Latin Americans. While ‘Islamisation’ is a threat, it is only one of many aspects of a multipronged demographic deluge. What does ‘counter-jihad’ have to say of classrooms filled with Timorese Catholic children on Portuguese visas? Or of gang violence primarily perpetrated by people of African heritage, mostly from Christian families, in inner London? Or of the fact, as per information revealed by Freedom of Information requests, that black Africans and Afro-Caribbeans are the perpetrators of the majority of gang rapes in the Greater London Area?

Tommy Robinson and his politics are the product of a bygone era, in which Geert Wilders was the most prominent right-wing populist politician in Europe, and the West was still seriously engaged in the War on Terror. Robinson’s sole merit has been his persistence in his attempts to expose the phenomenon of Pakistani rape gangs in Britain. But beyond this, Robinson — with his fanatical, but undoubtedly small coterie of followers at home — must be regarded as a net-negative to right-wing electoral politics in Britain, almost regardless of how politically moderate or extreme you are. At best, he sucks away energy from more productive causes. At worst, he turns people away from the Right entirely.

This leads us to our next focus: the role of Elon Musk and his increasing involvement in British politics. Engagement with increasingly erratic and impulsive Musk, as has already been revealed by the H1-B visa drama, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has been a great boon to the British right to have the patronage, broadly construed, of an ethnically British multi-billionaire who personally has the ear of the American president, and who seems committed to enabling a colour revolution against the rotten, increasingly openly oppressive, establishment here. We are at a genuinely radical moment in British political life: there is a pervasive and palpable malaise throughout the entire country. Both of the traditional parties are profoundly unpopular, and, speaking purely factually, only a few months ago the country was rocked by a series of quasi-insurrectionary race riots. While this was obviously not the correct response to the murders in Southport, all is not well in Britain.

However, it is has also become clear that Elon Musk is a man whose entire perception of European politics is refracted through the prism of ‘Europe has fallen’ slop accounts. For instance, in his X space with Keith Woods, it eventually became apparent that he still genuinely believes that illegal immigration is the primary driver of demographic change in Europe. This also partly explains his relative moderation when discussing politics (and especially legal immigration) at home, about which he is much better informed. Elon Musk’s politics are still very malleable: he does give the genuine impression of a lolbert who was only radicalised by the extremism and malice of the Left over the last ten years. He has, however, sadly succumbed to the influence of bad-faith actors who are leveraging his wealth and influence to pursue aims which would be extremely detrimental to the British Right.

It’s hopefully obvious to all regular Pimlico Journal readers what the problems are with the involvement of Tommy Robinson in Reform. He is, irrespective of whether you think this is the product of unfair characterisations by a hostile media, widely disliked, including by many existing and (more importantly) even more potential future Reform voters. He is the worst of both worlds: aesthetically extreme and ultra-polarising, while simultaneously offering nothing of substance ideologically beyond a putative ban on Muslim immigration. He is also obviously unintelligent, and most people correctly sense that he is merely someone else’s stooge, rather than his own man. Middle class voters, many of whom do not like either immigration or ‘Woke’, will simply not vote for a party with him involved. This is not just due to class snobbery, as some people will inevitably claim. Lee Anderson is working class, and has always heavily leaned on his no-nonsense, ‘lock ’em up and throw away the key’, common-sense aesthetics and rhetoric, which many people — including many middle class people — actually find very appealing. Robinson, on the other hand, is a lot less like Anderson, and a lot more like a regular, not-very-friendly cokehead you might encounter on a night out in Reading or Aylesbury.

This article is primarily addressed to those who are more radical, maybe even much more radical, than Farage is realistically willing to be. The sort of people who, at the very least, feel Reform are rather weak compared to some of their European counterparts, especially the AfD. Many of these right-wing critics of Farage are now opportunistically joining Musk’s bandwagon, in the hope of somehow shifting the party to the Right. Presumably, this will be through replacing Farage with Rupert Lowe, in spite of the fact that Lowe is ten years older than Farage, has never expressed even the slightest of interest in taking over and so far as I can tell does not even seem to entertain the possibility, and, on top of all this, that there is no real mechanism (due to Reform’s restrictive constitution) to remove Farage in the first place. In reality, all that such a move will achieve is to stoke internal division without any real purpose. But let us assume that Farage somehow does get removed, or at least that another party, such as one led by Ben Habib, replaces Reform as the main voice of the anti-Tory Right: what then?

Unfortunately, the truth is that lending your support to Musk’s interventions at this time will still not achieve your desired ends. Reform (or any other electorally viable party) without Nigel Farage will, like UKIP beforehand, quickly descend into ‘counter-jihad’ nonsense, because this is (unfortunately) the default position of those with actual political influence who are further to the Right than Farage. There is no coterie of Young Turks yet ready to seize control and steer the party in the correct direction. It will be a deeply ‘boomer’ configuration, primarily intended to satisfy the preferences of Ian Miles Cheong and other such morons in foreign countries, with no real relationship to the current political situation at home. This will be even more the case given the precise circumstances of Farage’s defenestration (i.e., his dispute with Musk over Tommy Robinson).

This is not to say that I have not also found the leadership of Farage disappointing. He is too old, and has been unable to fully accommodate a shift to a more hard-line, anti-immigration politics, as found elsewhere in Europe. He was easily outflanked by Robert Jenrick, and he and Reform were very lucky that the foolish Tory membership put Kemi Badenoch in instead. While he is very effective at mobilising his loyal fanbase, he most likely has an as-yet-unknown ceiling in vote share. This is because many voters dislike his camp, ‘carry-on’, populist aesthetic. But to somehow remove Nigel Farage at this stage would trigger a civil war in Reform and alienate half its voter base, and would scupper any possibility of a right-wing government in 2029 — something that can only realistically be achieved by Kemi Badenoch resigning and Jenrick taking control, and then entering into some kind of agreement with Reform.

If you instead support this move because you want Reform to collapse entirely, as you believe this will lead to right-wing energies being channeled into some insuperable right-wing insurgency which will somehow break out spontaneously, then I would caution you against such optimism. While it is true that Britain has pre-revolutionary conditions, some form of parallel institutional dissidence is still always necessary. The Republic of Ireland, which is increasingly in the same position as Britain demographically, with a similarly restive working class, who are even more prone to outbreaks of quasi-insurrectionary violence than our own, is in a far worse position for not having a serious electoral Right in opposition to mass migration.

Much of the ‘Farage Must Go’ crowd also overlook the fact that Farage is relatively old in years, and even older physically. He has drank and smoked heavily for the entirety of his highly stressful life, and has experienced both a plane crash and prostate cancer. While I wish him well, it seems likely that he will have serious health problems in the near-future (if he doesn’t already). He is probably not interested in pursuing politics much beyond the end of this decade; indeed, he himself has publicly signalled this on a number of occasions. Farage will eventually leave politics, and what takes place will depend on the new generation on the Right. Those dissatisfied with Farage’s leadership because they believe him still to be too weak on immigration would do better to look at the many people working to mainstream these issues through their work in media, think tanks, and politics. People are becoming increasingly bold in how they discuss what is taking place in this country. While it would be foolish to christen anyone in particular as the ‘future of the movement’ at this time, there are obviously some figures who already stand out if you’re paying attention.

A British Right that remains electorally focused while also taking a much more harsh line on immigration won’t come about by pandering to transatlantic ‘counter-jihad’, or by recklessly jettisoning Farage with no plan B. It will come through a gradual — i.e., five to ten years — institutional takeover of the major right-wing parties — whether Reform, the Conservatives, or both — which already have an older membership and dearth of professional and presentable young activists. There’s no good reason why Nicholas Lissack or similar types should be allowed to take this position (if they are even capable of doing so). If people are willing to organise and gradually pursue a policy of takeover, in a political climate which is visibly becoming more sympathetic to our politics, then this could potentially deliver a Right that is willing to do what is necessary as early as the beginning of the next decade; one which might already have a strong legislative base. Petulantly, and indeed spitefully, attacking Farage at the behest of a well-intentioned, but misguided and easily-misled multi-billionaire with only a passing knowledge of our country’s politics will achieve nothing.

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Image credits: Laurie Noble, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

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