UK Politics

‘Nigel Farage was born in Kent in 1964, not into the aristocracy exactly, but into something far more modern and effective: the comfortably padded world of the upper middle classes. His father, Guy Farage, made his living as a City stockbroker. His grandfather practised accountancy. His mother came from a respectable middle-class line. It is the sort of background that does not announce itself with titles or heraldry, but with the quiet assurance that the bills will always be paid and the future will always be manageable. From there, Farage passed into the gates of Dulwich College, one of Britain’s most rarefied private schools. Today, the fees exceed GBP twenty thousand a year, but even in the 1970s it was an institution designed for families who never needed to wonder what something costs before buying it. It is a world that trains its pupils to think of themselves as effortlessly entitled to their place, untouched by the gravitational pull of ordinary economic life. Farage did not bother with university because he did not need to. The doors of the City were already open. He walked straight into commodities trading, a career that demands the right contacts rather than the right degrees. It is the kind of move available only to those whose lives are already cushioned by the networks that privilege quietly builds. And so, his life unfolded: finance, then politics. No low wage jobs. No shift work. No precarious contracts. No risk of choosing between heating and eating. The man who now performs the part of the chain-smoking pub regular has never lived like one. The persona is an act, a costume donned for the cameras, designed to make privilege pass as authenticity. His reality is different. A wealthy upbringing. An elite education. A career built first in high finance and then in the political marketplace of grievance, where he sells the idea that he is somehow one of the people he has never been required to live among. Has Farage ever not had the money to pay a gas bill? No. Has he ever had to worry about the electricity running too long? No. Has he ever watched health care costs balloon and wondered how to pay them? No. Has he ever walked round a supermarket calculating what must be put back? No. Has he ever felt the bottomless anxiety of childcare fees, university loans, retirement savings, or a car that suddenly needs a part he cannot afford? No. Has he ever clocked in, clocked out, begged for overtime, or taken a second job to survive? No. Has he ever cut his own grass after a ten-hour shift in the cold? No. His funders are among the richest people on the planet. They invest in him because he protects their world, not yours. So, the real question is this. How can anyone believe that a man so entirely shaped by a system of privilege, a man who has never felt the weight of the pressures that define ordinary life, intends to reform a system built precisely to benefit people like him?’

Letter to UK newspaper. Writer name and address withheld. I wonder why?

Agree.

He doesn't want to stop them being a bunch of racist cunts and sex offenders - that's exactly who he's aiming for.

What he wants is to stop them being caught and recorded publicly being a bunch of racist cunts and sex offenders.

If Stephen Yaxley-Lennon were a real Brit he'd holiday in Blackpool in the rain, like a man, and not Cyprus on a deckchair.

The little prince Fauntleroy who got himself one of those gender-affirming identities, yes.