I read the Substack essay that Nigel Farage supposedly wrote yesterday.
I use the word supposedly deliberately because I do not think that Nigel Farage could have written this in the form in which it is published, with the referencing and data that it includes. That is not his style. I doubt that he could have maintained interest for that long. So, we should see this piece for what it is, as a piece of propaganda placed into the world to serve a purpose, and then we need to ask what that purpose is.
To understand that purpose, it is necessary to understand what the essay claims.
It says that Britain is now a country deliberately run in the interests of those who are not white.
It says that the institutions of this country are deliberately biased against those who are white.
And it says that the law is deliberately constructed to achieve these outcomes.
It then suggests that the Equality Act, passed in 2010, was a new creation designed to achieve these outcomes, which the Conservatives embraced and endorsed, leaving the future of anyone who is white in this country in peril because the odds are now stacked against them.
The politics of denial
None of this is true, of course. The whole essay is a perfect example of the form of argument much beloved of the far right, commonly described by the acronym DARVO, which stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.
Throughout his argument, Farage denies the reality of the last 45 years, during which a privileged, almost entirely white, and very largely male elite has constructed a political narrative in the form of neoliberalism with the very deliberate aim of restoring the power of financial wealth in the UK, at the cost of those who benefited from the creation of the welfare state in the period after 1945.
He makes no mention of the deliberate oppression of rights, common to everyone, that have been lost as a consequence.
He makes no mention of the deliberate and ongoing destruction of public services, which his party is dedicated to perpetuating.
There is no mention of the impact of buy-to-let on housing policy, and the stress that so many people now face as a consequence.
Farage is in complete denial of the fact that the poverty, inequality, oppression and suffering that many now endure have been deliberately created, most especially over the last 15 years, with many of those who now lead his party being responsible for the policies in question when they were Tories. Instead, he turns the consequences into evidence of victimhood, suggesting that it is these policies that have created the apparent distress he now wishes to exploit whilst continuing with his plan to make everything very much worse.
Rewriting history
Denial does, however, go further. He claims that the Equality Act of 2010 was new legislation. It was not. This was a consolidation Act, bringing together a whole range of legislation on issues such as race, gender, wages and other matters to create a common point of reference, in a style commonly used by competent governments seeking to provide a consistent pattern for the operation of the law.
Ignoring that, though, Farage claims that the legislation was unnecessary and should be repealed. After all, he asks, what discrimination was there in 2010? His question seeks to imply that there was none.
And yet we know that then, as now, inequality was rife in many ways. And this was not just measured by wealth alone. It was regional and nation-specific within the supposed United Kingdom. It was also much more than that.
Deep prejudice amongst many contributed to discrimination against women, those with disabilities, those of faiths considered not to be mainstream, those from ethnic minorities, those who were not heterosexual, and, let us be blunt about this, those without the means to resort to the law to protect themselves, all of which are protections that Farage now wishes to remove.
To pretend that these issues did not exist then, or do not exist now, is an affront to the facts and a denial of prejudice.
That denial is persistent throughout the essay. His references to the law are almost invariably wrong. For example, when the law requires that matters be considered, he claims that this means that something must be done, and that is not true.
When he claims that doctors from outside the UK receive more complaints than those who are white, he also ignores the fact that women doctors receive more complaints than male ones. There is a hierarchy of prejudice within the system, but he chooses to ignore it.
He does the same with criminal justice statistics and with housing data where, apparently, anything that indicates population mobility is evidence of discrimination, and not a sign of the change that many communities have witnessed over decades and even centuries as populations, particularly in parts of cities, have evolved.
There is no point trying to address every one of his claims. As Simon Perason at Anti-Capitalist Musings has noted, what this piece does is persistently take data or evidence, deny what the findings actually are, and then use the inverted truth as the basis for a claim that has no relationship with reality as a result. He is worth reading on this, and I will not repeat his analysis.
Who are the real victims?
What is clear, though, is that this is precisely what Farage intended to do. He did intend to deny the truth. He did intend to attack what is and replace it with a narrative of falsehood. In the process, it was his intention to reverse the ordering of the victim and the oppressor.
The victims in the UK are those who have been deliberately left behind by neoliberalism, and they comprise the majority of the population of this country, irrespective of their colour, ethnicity, creed, orientation, gender, or any other characteristic.
Their oppressors have been those with wealth who have bought, captured and controlled a political hierarchy of power with the deliberate intention of excluding all but those of whom they approve, and who are members of their caste, so that their power might be entrenched.
As I have noted here of late, it is easy to find the origins of this process in the work of the Rockefeller Foundation in the early twentieth century, which now resonates horribly with the current situation in this country, the USA, and throughout much of the neoliberal world, where the power of finance has been captured by a few and has been used to buy and control the power that shapes the lives of many, to the detriment of all those without that financial power and influence.
White working-class families are not worse off in this situation than an immigrant family, whether they be first, second, third or later generations present in this country, and the same comparisons can be made for all groups that are prejudiced against by this deliberately constructed pattern of abuse. All have suffered, and are suffering.
So, let us acknowledge where Farage is right. There is oppression in the UK, but it does not take the form that he describes.
The oppressor looks remarkably like Nigel Farage, and maybe Rupert Lowe, and very definitely like Tony Blair or George Osborne, and maybe even Keir Starmer. These politicians, who share a very great deal more than they differ about, are the cause of the problems in the UK, but Farage chooses to deny that. In the process, he seeks to do so because, by denying it, he can continue the oppression which, by exaggerating division, he seeks to perpetuate.
This is the work of a far-right politician.
It is the work of a politician who can fairly be described as having a neo-fascist modus operandi.
And by his abuse, we should know him, because this is not a man with the interests of the people of this country at heart; this is a man who wishes to manipulate people for his own purposes, and that is what we are witnessing in this essay and in what Reform and, in turn, Restore are doing.
Farage has put together a package of lies to support a hypothesis that was always blatantly untrue, with the sole purpose of perpetuating misunderstanding and abuse. The sad fact is that he may succeed in making 40 per cent or so of the population in Makerfield believe him, despite the very clear evidence that he is personally a part of this hierarchy of oppressive wealth that has helped create the misfortune they suffer.
In the circumstances, we might be relieved that Andy Burnham appears to have sufficient support to prevent Reform winning this election, but let us be equally clear that Andy Burnham has no more intention of overthrowing this oppression than Farage has. He simply sugar-coats his pill in a different way.
It is the whole edifice of neoliberalism that we are up against, and Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, Reform, and Restore all embrace it, although each does so by applying a different form of spin.
What we need, then, is a politics of care.
Care seeks to create the conditions in which everyone can flourish. Its opposite is indifference; indifference as to whether others flourish at all.
The politics of care is based on solidarity. Its opposite is division; division based on exclusion, deliberately manufactured.
Reform and Restore are blatant in their exposition of a politics based upon division and exclusion. In the case of Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, we need only look at what they have done to understand their approach to this issue. They have delivered division and exclusion, and no one can deny it, as it is apparent all around us. That is why we are here now.
What can we do?
The question, as so many commentators have said here of late, is what we can do to change this.
My answer is that we must start by telling the truth. Nothing matters more now.
Truth about our society, its richness, its diversity and its potential.
Truth about our economy, and what, how and who it is for.
Truth about money, tax, and how these can be organised for the common good.
Truth about the policy choices available to us, many of which are currently denied.
And the truth that it is possible to build a society for the benefit of everyone, and not just a few, when exclusion has been the persistent myth upon which elites have built their thinking throughout almost all of our history since forms of government first existed.
These are what we need to talk about.
These are the things that a Courageous State would do.
It is just that the need to talk about them now is much more pressing than it was when I wrote about that state for the first time, 15 years ago.
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‘Farage’ and ‘essay’ are two mutually exclusive terms as far as I am concerned.
It is appalling that the media give Farage’s mephitic worldview a platform at all. It is obvious that he is supported within the media outlets who share that view.
Watching the Scottish reactions to the World Cup the other day and seeing Asians and Afro-Caribbeans joining in with strong Scottish accents tells you the truth about this country. All Farage wants to do is take us back to some mythical era where only white people roamed the land? Yeah right. And then even after that it will be only be the right sort of white people (the rich).
And again it is Hobbes who saw this and especially the human propensity to court death. Behind that jovial, gurning exterior, Farage is death personified , a real Trojan horse of a ‘supposed’ politician.
You are right
Rockerfeller became the first billionaire in 1916. 110 years later Musk became the first trillionaire.
Rockerfeller is considered part of the”gilded age” of extreme wealth and inequality. But, whilst inflation is a factor of 30 and median wages have increased by a factor of 80 since Rockerfeller, Musk has 1000 times more money. Clearly inequality has increased by more than an order of magnitude over the past century. To that extent the neoliberals are winning. 🙁
Thanks, Tim
So, Fa***e has offered us his(?) “Mein Kampf”.
In Germany, the response to Hitler was to laugh at him. He ended up as Führer of the Third Reich without breaking a single German law. The German left refused to take him seriously, so they got total war and gas chambers.
Reform voters won’t read Fa***e’s 35,000 words, but they will be given very effective poisonous summaries by the crooked algorithms of Meta, X, YouTube and GB News, egged on by the tabloids, & financed, like Reform “UK” Ltd., by foreign cash.
Telling the truth is vital, both refuting Fa***e’s lies and, more important, offering practical alternatives such as the politics of care and the econnomy of hope.
But only the incumbent fiat-currency-issuing government can cut Fa***e’s feet from under him, by addressing the GENUINE grievances he exploits in the left-behind communities, and doing it NOW. But before they open an ethical pork barrel, they have to care enough, to listen to ordinary low income constituents – and the 2024 Labour intake were not co-opted into parliament for their warm hearts and open minds, and they weren’t selected by local people but imposed by Labour Together. Sadly, the intellectual left aren’t very good at listening to my neighbours either. If they were, YourParty wouldn’t have made such a pathetic mess of things.
Am I depressed? YES.
Am I despairing? NO.
KUTGW!
Thanks
I have spent a morning thinking in this issue
And drinking coffee
What is Restore about? I saw a link to this Youtube video and had a look. Rupert Lowe is quite explicit about what sort of Britain he wants. Deport millions, slash benefits and regulation and tax, ( aren’t we supposed to have done that for decades ? ) ban halal and kosher practice, ‘resist the relentless creep of radical Islam’ and ‘celebrate our Christian heritage’; bring back the death penalty and so on. More extreme than Reform who are worried about the competition,
16,000 Youtube comments, almost all in favour. A number from overseas. This is part of an international movement and well funded, both in declared income and I think dark money as well.
It promises to ‘keep you safe’ , more prosperous and bring back a sense of community while punishing those who won’t integrate or ‘hate our way of life’. What he would do with non-white people who are employed and integrated I am not sure. Possibly the Suelle Braverman or Zia Yusuf exception -they rich and support them.
IMO it is more than neo-liberalism. It is an explicitly Fascist program.
If friends here haven’t seen it there is the link below. It is not an angry rant. -I found it more chilling, particularly the cold, deliberate tone. It is only seven minutes. We can’t say we have not been warned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZTH6j_lK_o
It is fascist.
But let’s be clear: neoliberalism has provided a pathway to fascism and maybe that was always the intention.
Richard says we must tell the truth – but the means by which truth might be disseminated seems more and more to be owned and controlled by the deep state Farage sympathisers<p>
Maybe I’m becoming paranoid – susceptible to conspiracy theories, but the more one learns about the anti Corbyn coup, and the various times there have been more or less overt rumours of coups in this country, and the more we understand about how the international security nexus works – CIA /Mossad /MI6 /MI5/ undercover policing etc the more plausible it seems that we are a ‘managed’ democracy at best. We seem to already have at least 200 political prisoners.<p>
I did hear the Farage essay mentioned on the Beeb – but no in depth questioning of its ‘two tier’ theory that the system is rigged against whites. It does sound so bizarre that it will probably only resonate with those who are already Faragists.<p>
Sorry to post again, but I go back to a key book of our age that I would recommend everyone reads, and that is John Gray’s ‘The New Leviathans : Thoughts After Liberalism’ (2023). This book basically can be said to be advocating the politics of care.
It is not just external factors (illness, old age, war etc.,) that stops human beings from living. There is also an ever present ‘nothingness’ within human beings which is a reaction to the fact that we know we are mortal – that we will die. So, we seek immortality through procreation, ideas, art, music, business, politics, war etc., but also through bringing death/defeat to others as well, as a means of bringing meaning into our lives. Gray argues that this nothingness can be/is better for the world if put to good use in the service of life and quotes Samuel Beckett’s risky joining the resistance because a friend of his had been murdered by the SS. So really Gray is advocating that caring about others as a means by which to exist is much better for us rather than extinguishing others. If we are to die anyway, why not pass on the gift of life whilst we are here onto others? It seems simple and elegant to me and worthwhile. A basis for Care.
As for Liberalism, his concern is that it has been obsessed with unlimited freedom, but now has to change because it is more about what we cannot do any longer and what we should be doing, because in actual fact, our choices under unlimited freedom are narrowing right now. In other words, we must be less free to be free at all. Especially to have the freedom of Life itself.
I have to disagree with you PSR.
I argue that human beings are fundamentally social, caring, creative and interdependent, and that institutions can be designed to help people flourish.
Gray is much more Hobbesian. As I read him, he doubts that human beings can be significantly improved through politics. He thinks the best we can hope for is a tolerable modus vivendi in which conflict is contained rather than solved.
In that sense, Gray’s critique is of almost every modern political project based on hope, and suggests that we should abandon dreams and learn instead how to live with permanent imperfection.
Hobbesian, most definitely, but not an idea I can share.
I find your reaction is very interesting because that is not what I read. Gray’s labeling of today’s liberalism as ‘extreme’ for example and how that has undermined the positive sociability you talk of is a key thing for me which also means that people CAN be improved by a politics that creates stability – and by that I read as the sort stability that was being created by people like Attlee and others with an interventionist state. Gray is someone who was at first attracted to Thatcher but then repelled.
Hobbes is honest about man. We may not like this, the Church didn’t in Hobbe’s time ,vilifying him, but those who survived the Nazis have often told us that it can happen again at any time (‘the thin veneer of civilization etc ‘). This ‘sociability’ you talk of Richard, can be put to use for good or ill. I’m sure you realise that. I think Gray realises this – along with others like Abbey Innes that modern liberalism has brought some sort of Soviet/Nazi style authoritarianism into being. As you know, my big criticism of modern liberalism is that it seems unable to balance the individual with the collective. I have called many times for a more honest and knowing appraisal of human nature and to mitigate it with kindness and rules. My take is that humans are what you say they are, but also what Hobbes says they are as well I’m afraid. Complex.
Ultimately you and I are not that different. We both want a world that brings out the best in people. We may differ on the causes as to why this is not always so, but that is all.
I will have to revisit it.
Had forgotten about John Gray – I’m sure at the time I didn’t like what he was saying. <p>
One review of The New Leviathans – suggests Gray is disguising what is essentially a polemic , s clear eyed objective analysis. His ‘we are all selfish beasts’ is highly convenient for our overlords wielding wealth and power. Its essentially a right wing message.
I cetainly disagree with it.
Andrew
My take on Gray’s thesis is that is the individuals own agency, own actions that are critical as to what sort of society we have. It may all start there, but also it starts in the wider context created by politics and governance that determines individual thinking. The two are linked, individual agency as a product of culture, culture as a product of individual agency. This can be a virtuous circle – as the politics of Care promises or a destructive one – as we saw with the Nazis.
Think about Theresa ‘The Vicars Daughter’ May’s creation of a culture of a ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants. That essentially began to give permission for increasingly hostile opinions to make themselves known – Boris Johnson’s disgusting jibe at the burka is an example of that in 2018 (although he’s done the same in 2002). These people in office, ruling us, setting bad examples.
Gray’s singling out of Samuel Beckett signifies to me that he thinks people do have responsibility for the choice to make when confronted with something bad – give in or stand? But he also makes plain that it is the role of government to create the conditions that hold society together especially if Beckett and others might be the exception, not the rule (Hobbesian honesty about the nature of man). Gray does not think that Neo-liberalism (‘extreme liberalism’ as he calls it) does that. He is consistent with that in his writing. Gray advocates government by peace through a fair allocation of resources since he rails at the uncaring inequality he sees today. Gray is trying to reclaim classic Liberalism in my view, suffused with the new insights about human weakness from the Age of Greed we live in.
Staffordshire County Council (massive Reform majority) have ordered all Pride information, books and events to be cancelled or removed from ALL libraries. This has been done this week, on pain of librarians being suspended etc. Reform councillors have posted homophobic content on social media, and even responded in the local press with the ‘protect our children’ bollocks. Onward and morally downwards, alas.
Farage has also, apparently, claimed that positive discrimination is encouraged by the law. I have read the 2010 Equality Act and I cannot see anywhere that this is stated. He is using this to support his anti-white claims, and he is, nor for the first time, lying through his teeth.
He claims it is this from s149:
(1)A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to—
(a)eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act;
(b)advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it;
(c)foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.
His interpretation is entirely wrong. “Due regard” is notr “bias towards”. He not know that. A legisaltor muist eb able to spot the difference, so he is dissembling.
Farage’s claim that the UK has an “anti-white” or “two-tier” system that disadvantages white people, especially through DEI, the Equality Act, public institutions, and housing or social policy, simply mirrors Trump’s repeated “anti-white racism” framing in the US. There, civil rights protections, DEI, immigration, and welfare are presented as systems that supposedly exploit or marginalise white Americans. This rhetoric is well-coordinated and drawn from the same political playbook that benefits from redirecting public anger away from system failures.
Richard,
I agree with the central argument of Funding the Future: the real issue is not whether money exists, but how we organise money, tax, investment and public purpose so that society can create the future it needs.
I would like to suggest one additional remedy, which I call Cellular Economics.
The core idea is to establish numerous small, local, purpose-driven economic social enterprises—called “cells”—that receive funding based on the public value they generate. For instance, if walking produces measurable health improvements, less congestion, environmental gains, and stronger communities, a walking cell could be funded for each verified kilometre walked. Instead of distributing money as personal income, funds would be pooled in a local cell account and spent collectively on enhancements like paths, shade, benches, accessibility, safety, schools, research, and other initiatives that encourage walking.
This approach could extend to housing, energy, water, care, and infrastructure. Rather than only funding large central programmes, governments could authorise banks to create money for approved public-purpose cells, with rules to retire funds as assets or services are used. Banks would provide accounting and verification for a fee, not long-term interest.
This approach makes public funding adaptive. Each cell has clear goals, feedback, and local governance. Success leads to growth; failure is limited. Rather than one-size-fits-all solutions, many local experiments reveal what works.
Funding comes from governments creating new money for organisations through banks. Instead of loans, funds are sold and repaid from the value generated, such as affordable housing repayments and lower bank fees.
I see this as complementary to your work. Funding the Future explains why the state can fund what society needs. Cellular Economics offers one way to organise funding so that communities have control, outcomes are measured, and money is tied directly to public value.
I get your desire.
I think this would be quite extraordinarily cumbersome and onerous to engineer and account for. Sorry.
Hi Richard Murphy,
Thank you for this piece. I wanted to post it onto Facebook but the symbols were missing! On my iPad I can’t get the copy paste buttons to work well enough to upload the article without going onto my laptop.
please remember the symbols so I can spread your work.
Thanks Ann
I am not sure what symbols you mean….sorry