Nigel Farage has been on the radio this morning, almost plaintively offering to be part of a Government team renegotiating the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. Maybe it’s a genuine offer in good faith. Maybe it’s a political wheeze, meant to make him and his Brexit Party sound like a proper, grownup organisation.
And maybe it’s revealing something about Farage and what he really wants.
I don’t claim to know Farage well, or even at all. I’ve interviewed him several times and spoken to him many times less formally. I’ve also spoken to many people who have worked with him over the years. And one abiding impression I’ve taken from all that is that Nigel Farage, the ultimate outsider, wants to be accepted and embraced by the insiders. A common theme to Farage’s politics is that he isn’t listened to or taken seriously by important people. He sometimes sounds aggrieved about that, and with reason too.
This isn’t the moment for a psychoanalysis of Farage, but it’s hard not to ponder on this former Dulwich College boy and City metals trader (not a banker: the distinction matters for all sorts of reasons) and his relationship with the party that was the natural home of people of his class.
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