PETER HITCHENS: Faragism is not the route back to Britain we have lost (2024)

Did Nigel Farage MP know what he was doing last Tuesday, when he insinuated, oh so subtly, that the police were withholding key information about the Southport killings? Did he have any basis for suggesting that the alleged killer was being monitored by the security services? Using Mr Farage's own precise words, I say: I don't know the answer to that, but I think it is a fair and legitimate question. Don't you think so too, Nigel?

For it is very true that, as Mr Farage continued, 'What I do know is something is going horribly wrong in our once-beautiful country.'

I'll say. By the end of this weekend, how many more windows will be smashed, how many more police officers in hospital, how many more streets torched and strewn with rocks and plundered bricks? And for what? I'll come to that, as far as the law allows me. Which is nothing like as much as I'd like.

Is it conceivable that the suggestion of a police cover-up, made by a man of such standing, played some part in the idiotic, shameful scenes that have erupted on our streets since then? The film of the Reform leader saying these things is strangely pathetic.

Mr Farage is a diminished man since he finally got into Parliament and found that, in there, he is suddenly nobody. The normally dapper showman looks shrunken. His jacket doesn't fit properly, his shoulders appear uneven, his teeth have started to look too big for his face and his hair's lost its va va voom.

He looks in need of a presentation team. The one-time lord of the public square seems to be broadcasting from a spare corner of a trendy furniture showroom.

Can Nigel Farage be having a bit of a dark night of the soul after all those years as the hero of the street and broker of Tory destiny?

He has finally pressed his red button, launched his ultimate deterrent and reduced the Tory party to a whimpering leftover.

But what good has this done him? He finds himself in a dingy, ignored corner of Westminster, watching a rather nasty Labour government wielding the giant majority he so kindly helped them to achieve. Even his most fervent and dimmest supporters must be wondering what they have done.

It must be frustrating, mustn't it, to descend from the brilliantly lit world of champagne, chauffeured cars, bodyguards and endless TV appearances, to a cramped office and complaints from the citizens of Clacton about streetlighting, dog fouling and drains?

His hero Donald Trump has escaped such boredom by ceaselessly blowing the biggest dog-whistle in the world, so why shouldn't he have a try? It must be better than dealing with incessant e-mails from Mrs Fanshawe of El Alamein Drive in Clacton, about her dropped kerb.

And it ends with louts attacking mosques. Wasn't that insinuation about security services meant to raise the spectre of terrorism? And where does that take you next? Mr Farage is by no means alone in this. There's an 'intellectual' or two who does well in the same market. Isn't that the sophisticated bigot's way of wooing the nearest mob, while appearing to stand aloof from it?

I say again: I don't know the answer to that, but I think it is a fair and legitimate question.

I have many criticisms of Islam. I think the invention of the term 'Islamophobia' is designed to prevent such criticisms, notably over its attitude to women, from being discussed. But we have many decent Muslim citizens in this country, as I know from personal experience, and if we are the Christians we claim to be, we have an unbreakable duty to treat them as neighbours, not stir up enmity against them.

Now, generally, it has been up to liberals and Leftists to point out that Mr Farage is perhaps a little unscrupulous in his methods and language. But they haven't a leg to stand on.

From the woman who once said September 11 was 'a good day to bury bad news', to the people who gave us the dodgy dossier on the Iraq war, the Left in this country can't convincingly condemn unscrupulous tactics. Labour in particular has repeatedly lied its way into government and lied while it was there. They've been doing it this week.

So I think it is time that responsible, conservative patriots stood up to Faragism. It is not, and never can be, the route to recovering the Britain we have lost.

Mr Farage might seem to be your friend this week, but what about next month? What are his real views? We don't really know. But there is an old law which says you cannot attain good ends by using nasty means or making nasty allies.

Mr Farage is not a conservative – the strongest sign of this was when, some years ago, he blurted out on BBC Radio (April 2, 2010): 'Let's find out through a Royal Commission whether perhaps we should decriminalise drugs, whether we should license them, license the users, and sell them at Boots.'

He shuffles a bit about this nowadays, but I think it is a flash of the real Nigel, the free-for-all man. You want proper policing, peaceful streets, good schools, the end of knife crime? Then the last thing you will wish to do is to allow the free sale of marijuana.

I cannot discuss any pending cases of appalling knife attacks, especially the ones Mr Farage referred to in his broadcast on Tuesday. But many crimes which have been portrayed as political in this country and elsewhere have in fact been committed by mentally ill persons quite possibly unhinged by long-term drug use.

Many will remember the awful murder of the beloved and talented MP Jo Cox, during the 2016 EU referendum campaign. Many on the Left pretty much decided that this crime was the result of Vote Leave propaganda, which they believed had encouraged violence. But in fact the killer (according to close relatives) had a history of mental illness for which he had sought help. I mention this tragic and miserable case to make the point that I think mental illness, possibly brought on by drug use, lies behind many crimes, here and abroad, wrongly given political motives by Left and Right.

My regular readers will know of my long campaign on this issue, which has so far done nothing but make me more enemies. Too bad. It is the truth and if we paid attention to it, we would live in a much safer country.

Meanwhile, I would draw Mr Farage's attention to these haunting words, written by the prophet Hosea, almost 30 centuries ago: 'For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.'