Farage, Rees-Mogg, Claire Fox... Britain is seduced by politicians who are ‘characters’

Then there’s the undeniable fact that privileged journalists, like their political counterparts, subconsciously know they don’t have skin in the game and will not suffer the fate of farmers, car workers and aviation engineers. Standing above all these, however, has been a refusal to reveal the menace behind the masks of the right’s character actors. Nigel Farage plays the old English hearty full of cakes and ale. Boris Johnson is Billy Bunter with a smattering of Latin. Jacob Rees-Mogg poses as an Edwardian lawyer calmly laying out the facts. In short, Brexit is being pushed towards its miserable conclusion by men who raided the fancy-dress box for traditional robes. What else should you call him? Farage is not a patriotic conservative who opposes Britain’s enemies, as his support for Vladimir Putin shows. Johnson in turn is not a traditional conservative who promotes enterprise, as his cry of “fuck business” proves. Indeed, Johnson and Michael Gove’s Vote Leave campaign began with a pre-emptive attack on the CBI, to discredit its warnings about dangers of Brexit to the economy. They aren’t conservatives, they are far-rightists. Why is it so hard to admit that we are no different from any other country caught in nationalist backlash?