Jürgen Habermas, the titanic German intellectual who died earlier this year, extolled the “public sphere” and lamented its decline. Today, we are a long way from his idealized paradigm, the Georgian coffee house, where citizens come together to discuss public matters through reasoned debate. The public sphere was finished, Habermas thought when he died, reduced to ashes, above all, by social media. Had he lived a few more months, however, he might have seen some of its embers flicker still. With the publication of Nigel Farage’s Substack on Sunday, it’s becoming increasingly clear that politicians want to revive a sense that Britain can have in-depth discussions once again.

We may have Tony Blair to thank in the first place. With his 5,700-word missive last month on the state of the Labour Party, he revived that venerable tradition of British public life: the pamphlet war. Blair received several responses, the best one from the pen of the Prime Minister — demonstrating the case, however limply, for him carrying on. Ed Davey, for his part, made a cheap gag about “drone warfare”. Well, nobody was asking for his essay, anyway.

Which brings us to its latest participant, Nigel Farage. His contribution, like the two prime ministers’, is not to be found in the broadsheets. Blair stuck his essay on the Tony Blair Institute website, and X, while Starmer and Farage opted for their personal Substacks. The new media allows them to reach a mass audience. Farage makes this selling point explicit. His essays — he plans to publish one a month — will “not be edited by anyone else, and they will not be misconstrued by parts of the mainstream media”. We will get the message straight from the horse’s mouth.

Farage’s first essay, written in the aftermath of the Henry Nowak case, is devoted to two-tier policing and the anti-white discrimination enshrined in EDI policies. Among its virtues is that it is human-written. It’s unfortunate that these things now need saying, but they do. Al Carns, apparently angling for his own leadership bid, has busily been publishing, if not essays, lengthy tweets. Many of them are AI-written, according to AI detection software — including, ironically, his post about AI. “This isn’t an AI story. It’s the story of every industry we used to lead.” It hardly inspires confidence in his capacity for serious thought.

Meanwhile, Farage’s essay is a good piece of work. It supports its case with well-founded evidence. It cuts against his image as a populist demagogue. One is reminded of his interview with Bloomberg’s Mishal Husain a few months ago, where she seemed baffled that he was reading about the People’s Budget of 1909. If he is a populist demagogue, then he is not an unthinking one.

The essay by Farage deals in pure, cold facts. Its most powerful segment simply narrates the Nowak case. The facts are damning enough. By dealing in such facts, he is apparently guilty of something called “weaponization”; but it is hardly his fault that the unvarnished story so thoroughly supports his argument.

There is an appetite in Britain, chronically underestimated by the BBC, for sustained, rational discussion. People want an energetic public sphere. Compare Farage with Streeting, Burnham, or Carns, and it becomes clear which side has a substantive vision to offer. Labour’s next prime minister would be wise to take a leaf from Blair’s book.

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Samuel Rubinstein is a writer and historian.

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