What Farage sees in Donald Trump Both men are masters of identity politics

As the recent election made clear, we live in an age of deep political mistrust, where old loyalties and political allegiances based on the class system are breaking apart, where a large percentage of the electorate veers between anger and apathy, and where new forms of media have transformed the political terrain. But there has been another dramatic shift: the Americanisation of our political system, which has brought about a new political and cultural milieu in which identity has replaced class. As we can see from Reform’s success, the performative politics of emotion now reigns supreme.

Before this visit, watching Farage weighing up whether to run in Britain’s most recent election or help Trump secure a second term was not incidental. It takes us to the heart of the politics in which he thrives. Of course, characters such as Farage are not entirely new to our political scene: just as a wealthy Oswald Mosley presented himself as a man of the people, Enoch Powell, whose family had roots in the mining communities of South Wales, made a career by demonising immigrants and prophesying “rivers of blood”. Farage, however, is a different breed of politician, who speaks of British values and sovereignty, yet who takes his political and strategic ideas from beyond these shores.

Despite his “anti-woke” rhetoric, Farage speaks more about identity politics than anyone else in British politics. In this, he takes after his bloodied friend, whose 2016 election victory inspired many of Reform’s campaigning methods. Identity politics thrives on mobilising negative emotions, from general anxieties of an insecure world to amplifying each and every sense of injustice or verbal wounding to keep politics operating at skin level. That is the appeal, and it is also the reason why our elections have become so volatile. And as the past days have shown, it has bred a new species of violence that can’t be ignored.

We have a new category of floating voters today who, unmoored from traditional ideology and allegiances, no longer neatly sit in what we once thought of as the centre ground. Again, the United States is instructive here. Take the case of McDowell County in West Virginia: a former mining region and one of the poorest areas of post-industrial America, topping many of the league tables for social deprivation. In 2008, 53% of the community voted for Barack Obama and his message of hope and change. Yet in 2020, 79% voted Trump. The warning for Labour should be clear: when disappointment prevails, any change is welcomed, and it is those who feel that their lives are stuck in a deep-seated statis whose choices are the most volatile.

All this would suggest that immigration is only really a problem when an economy is doing badly. And let’s be honest, for many who live in traditional working-class areas in Britain, things have been grim for quite some time. But immigration is also a highly emotive smokescreen: Trump was the first to realise that, by provoking the culture war on social media, he could distract from his actual policies.

The Left should ignore Reform’s distracting rhetoric and instead focus on the substance of their policy agenda. I am at a loss as to why a single journalist didn’t asked Farage during the campaign what he thought of the banking crisis of 2008, which due to fraud, negligence and greed was the catalyst for the following age of austerity that decimated the living standards of the poor. A former city-trader who worked on the commodities exchanges, we can surely guess his loyalties?

Behind all the bluster, there is a clear set of policies Reform stands for. It is clear it wants less taxes for the wealthy, greater powers for multi-national corporations, less worker rights for those in gainful employment, lower social security benefits, and a doing away with all those unfair inherence taxes on two-million-pound properties. No wonder they would rather seek to evoke the negative emotions of the electorate, for these are hardly policies that will liberate the forgotten on Tyneside.

To his credit, Keir Starmer has just appointed what is arguably the most working-class cabinet in history. But the party will need to go much farther to regain the trust of those communities that birthed the Labour Party more than a century ago. That means delivering upon policy promises to help the underprivileged, and most importantly shifting away from the identity politics sewer in which Farage continues to swim. This can be swiftly done by showing an absolute commitment to freedom of speech, thereby leaving concerns about cancel culture to the hyper moralists.

This would require a willingness to defend the right of others to stand for what they believe in. I engaged in a conversation earlier this week with David Bull on Talk television not because I agree with anything Reform stands for, but because perhaps the most radical thing we can do in today’s climate is to listen to those we fundamentally disagree with and show we can move beyond a divisive and dismissive stance.

Challenging Reform therefore means changing the terms of the debate so that poor, white communities feel they can exercise political agency. One unfortunate recent development has been the imposition of the term “privilege” upon broken communities that clearly have none in any meaningful sense. I was first properly sensitised to the common usage of the word in a university setting during the pandemic. By coincidence, I also happened to be reading a biography of the American singer, actor and black activist Paul Robeson. I couldn’t imagine for a second that he would have used that term as he marched in solidarity with hungry miners from South Wales on London’s wintery streets in 1928, in a spontaneous scene that would become the start of a beautiful friendship.

Of course, campaigns for racial and gender equality have been hugely important and the ongoing fight for justice in the face of racial violence remains necessary. But if the introduction of race and gender were important correctives in recognising the plight of marginalised groups, something has been lost along the way. What concerns me is how conceptual saviours have used race to castigate poor white Brits — often heterosexual men — who vote for Reform. Rather than labelling all Reform voters as intolerant racists, the Labour Party must speak to voters about why the Reform narrative is so appealing.

Beyond this, the Labour Party must have a more honest conversation on the question of racial politics that is open to its complexities. The realisation that among the most vocal supporters of the Rwanda Bill were second- and third-generation immigrant politicians such as Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman and Priti Patel should be enough to temper enthusiasm for the uncritical deployment of intersectional analysis. Racial politics has never been straight-forward. And the relegation of class background in the intersectional schematic only supports the idea that identity politics is just a bourgeoise version of victim Top Trumps, where on every occasion the white heterosexual male comes bottom regardless of social status. One strategy to disarm the allure of Reform could therefore be to positively rethink what diversity means so the working classes feel their presence is recognised and their voices are heard.

In his first speech as Prime Minister, Starmer called for “a bigger reset”. Part of that reset should be to take a step back from believing social media in any way represents the views of what we might dare to call “the people”. Social media has become so toxic that it is leading us all into a dangerous abyss. Besides, if recent events in France have taught us anything, it’s that the countryside is bigger than Twitter.