Right-Wing Populist or Neo-Fascist?
The notion of political danger is a slippery one. It is not simply a matter of power; indeed, some of the most dangerous political figures operate without ever holding high office. Danger, in this sense, is something subtler, something harder to quantify. It is the ability to shift public discourse, to make the once unthinkable not only permissible but inevitable. The true measure of political influence is not found in the titles a person holds, but in the way they reshape the boundaries of possibility.
In contemporary Britain, no one has exercised this talent with greater effect than Nigel Farage. For two decades, he hovered on the fringes of the political system, his personal electoral record a monument to futility, seven failed attempts at Westminster before, at last, his victory in Clacton in 2024. Farage had long operated on the assumption that he didn’t need to win in order to win. It was enough to be there, to be loud, to keep pushing at the margins of the possible. His reward came in the form of a political landscape entirely warped by his obsessions. The Conservative Party, in particular, spent much of the 2010s and 2020s chasing the spectre of Faragism, shedding its last pretences towards centrist governance in favour of permanent insurrectionism. Brexit was won. The country was reshaped in his image. And yet Farage, ever the malcontent, refused to claim victory. His politics have never been about governance, but about permanent insurgency.
To consider Farage solely as the architect of Brexit is, in this sense, a profound underestimation. His true legacy is not the severing of Britain from the European Union, but the intellectual and emotional rewiring of the British right. His political project, if it can be called that, has always been less about institutional power than about fostering a permanent state of grievance. This is the key to understanding his appeal. A man who has never wielded real power, who has spent his career casting himself as an outsider, has somehow convinced millions that he alone articulates their sense of loss, their sense of betrayal, their sense that something, somewhere, has gone irretrievably wrong.
A Long Defeat
To say that Farage’s politics are populist is accurate, but insufficient. The standard populist formulation, the people against the elites, is a simplification that fails to capture the peculiar emotional register of the Faragean grievance. If classical populism presents a struggle between two forces, Farage’s worldview presents something closer to a permanent, cyclical defeat. His politics are not defined by a vision of victory, but by the intoxicating pleasures of opposition. For all his success, Farage thrives on the sensation that he is losing. His genius has been in offering his followers a way of making their own defeats feel righteous, inevitable, even desirable.
This is one reason why, despite his profound influence, he has never truly sought to govern. It is also why his entry into Parliament, far from marking the culmination of his career, has already begun to look like an anti-climax. The position of MP was, for Farage, never the goal. A politician who is forced to govern is a politician who is forced to make compromises. A politician who governs must, at some point, take responsibility. But Farage has always functioned best as a voice from the sidelines, an agent of sabotage, a man who ensures that no settlement can ever last too long.
The TikTok Populist
What is most striking, given Farage’s long-standing appeal to an older, nostalgically inclined electorate, is the extent to which he has managed to capture elements of youth support. British politics has, for the most part, failed to adapt to the new digital realities of influence. Labour and the Conservatives remain woefully behind in understanding how political engagement functions for younger audiences. Even among the left, only figures like Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana have meaningfully cultivated a following on social media.
Farage, however, has gone further. His adept use of TikTok, where he has amassed a significant following, has turned him into an unlikely digital celebrity. Unlike traditional politicians, who approach social media with the hesitancy of an interloper, Farage has embraced it with the instinct of an entertainer. His ability to generate viral moments, selfies with young fans, reaction videos, even paid-for personalised messages, has made him one of the most recognisable political figures among Gen Z. Where mainstream parties lecture, he interacts. Where they broadcast, he performs.
For younger voters alienated by establishment politics, Farage’s appeal is not necessarily ideological but aesthetic. He exudes confidence, irreverence, and an unfiltered directness that contrasts sharply with the managerialism of contemporary political discourse. The mechanics of his engagement, more meme than manifesto, align him less with traditional British politicians than with figures like Donald Trump, who grasped before anyone else that modern politics is, in part, a question of viral spectacle.
Right-Wing Populist or Neo-Fascist?
There is a tendency in contemporary political analysis to treat populism and fascism as two entirely separate categories. It is a distinction that has become, over time, increasingly difficult to sustain. If we take Umberto Eco’s formulation of “Ur-Fascism” a flexible system of authoritarian tendencies rather than a fixed ideological programme, then Farage undoubtedly exhibits many of the key characteristics. His entire political project has been built on the myth of a betrayed nation, the assertion that Britain has been stabbed in the back by a shadowy alliance of cosmopolitan elites, foreign bureaucrats, and liberal technocrats. His rhetoric, like all fascistic rhetoric, relies on the production of enemies, on the idea that Britain is forever under siege, whether from immigration, globalism, or supposed cultural decline.
The differences, however, are instructive. Farage does not advocate for an authoritarian state in the classical sense; his anti-state instincts, in many respects, remain intact. His nationalism is not about a strong central government but about a dismantling of existing institutions, replacing them with a loosely defined notion of “the people’s will.” Unlike the interwar fascists, he does not promise a totalising political order, but rather a perpetual insurgency against the establishment. In this sense, Farage bears closer resemblance to the modern national populist movements described by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, where the goal is not dictatorship but a continuous reshaping of political norms through crisis and confrontation.
A Party with One Leader
Farage’s return to Parliament in 2024 was meant to herald a new phase for Reform UK, but instead, it has exposed the party’s fundamental contradictions. In recent months, internal strife has escalated, most notably, the feud between Farage and Rupert Lowe, a former Tory donor turned Reform MP. Lowe, who made headlines for his ultra-hardline stance on immigration, including proposals for mass deportations, was suspended in March 2025 amid allegations of bullying and intimidation towards party chairman Zia Yusuf. The scandal was revealing, not least because it demonstrated what has always been true of Farage’s movements: there can only ever be one leader.
The Lowe affair exposed the fragility of Reform UK’s internal structure. Farage, despite his public persona, is not a man who tolerates rivals. His politics may thrive on dissent, but only when it is directed outwards. Within his own camp, there is no room for competing centres of power. Elon Musk’s endorsement of Rupert Lowe as an alternative leader notwithstanding. Reform UK, much like the Brexit Party and UKIP before it, remains a vehicle for Farage, not a movement in its own right.
The Permanent Insurgent
Even now, as the material consequences of Brexit unfold, economic stagnation, labour shortages, rising food prices, Farage’s appeal endures. He is no longer the leader of a party with real electoral traction, yet the entire right-wing political ecosystem has been shaped by his rhetoric and priorities.
Farage’s genius is not in gaining power, but in making power ungovernable. His politics thrive on rupture, not resolution. This is what makes him more dangerous than conventional reactionaries: there is no endpoint, no final objective, only the continued manufacture of crisis. In this, he bears comparison not only to Trump but to Steve Bannon, the ideological wrecking ball of the American right. Just as Bannon shaped the trajectory of Trumpism, Farage has served as the intellectual engine of the British right.
Figures like JD Vance in the US, once an anti-Trump conservative, now an eager lieutenant in the project of American illiberalism and neo-fascism, demonstrate how quickly reactionary forces consolidate. Farage occupies a similar role, though more ideologue than foot soldier, ensuring that Britain remains permanently susceptible to the same currents reshaping the American right. With polls surging, Farage may appear to be the future, God help us, but rather than representing the future of British politics, he embodies its defining disruption.
Until Britain finds a way to reckon with the grievances he has mobilised, he will remain what he has always been: not just a disruptor, but a permanent insurgent. And that is a danger Britain can ill afford.
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