How the Tories created Nigel Farage

Conventional Conservative wisdom once warned about the dangers of appeasement. Rudyard Kipling, the great poet of imperialism, may be the most cancelled figure in British literature, but I imagine even leftists can see how his lines in Danegeld apply to the Tory party’s appeasement of Nigel Farage:

‘And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

But we’ve proved it again and again,

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

You never get rid of the Dane.‘

I guess, too, that before the rise of Ukip, all Conservative politicians knew Winston Churchill’s line that ‘an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last’.

The eyes in Farage’s leathery face are twinkling with a hungry gleam as he contemplates feasting on the corpse of the Sunak administration. His triumph is a Tory disaster.

For almost two decades now, successive Conservative leaders have appeased Farage. The consequences have been disastrous for the party and the country.