It’s happening: On Friday, the United Kingdom officially leaves the European Union.
Celebrations aside, this outcome makes Nigel Farage the most single influential British politician of his generation. At the very least, he’s now up there with the greats, such as Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.
I will admit to being partial on this point. I worked for Farage over an election cycle (2008-09 for the European Parliament elections) and ran as a parliamentary candidate for his former party, the U.K. Independence Party. And Farage has achieved Brexit, the very thing I’ve argued for over the course of several decades. I was also able to smuggle my own favored policy idea (tripling the tax-free amount that can be earned before income tax is due) into the body politic through the U.K. Independence Party, to the point that my proposal is now the law of the land. I am clearly not unbiased here.
Yet, it is still true: Farage is now the most influential U.K. politician of this generation.
Decades ago, Britain’s membership in the EU was considered so done and dusted that in 2006, David Cameron could dismiss those who opposed the idea as “a bunch of fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists.” The institutional and establishment opposition to even thinking of reopening the question of Britain’s EU membership was fierce.
In 2008, the Times of London declared that the U.K. Independence Party wouldn’t be competitive in the next euro-election. A fairly damaging claim only nine months out — but we came in second, beating the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats into third and fourth respectively.
I recall the actual election night broadcast on BBC Radio, I was banished to talk with the Green Party public relations guy. That’s right: Despite us finishing second, we still weren’t regarded as being worthy of a proper interview with the big boys. The next European elections we won, and the one after that, the new, Farage-led Brexit Party won.
And the pressure we put on the Conservative Party is what led to Cameron calling the Brexit referendum in the first place. Which we then, again, won. Whatever else we might say about Farage, this is all thanks to him. He took a ragbag of malcontents by the scruff of the neck and built a party which not only won elections but changed the entire political conversation.
We’d never even have had the chance to express our pro-Brexit view in an election, let alone a referendum, without Farage’s leadership. After all, the Brexit movement started out as the Anti-Federalist League in 1991, a grouping of a few hundred who would gain 1% or so of the votes in various elections. Just three decades later, we’ve won it all.
I’m convinced it wouldn’t have happened without Farage. In fact, because I know many of those who might have been in charge in his absence, I am almost certain that it wouldn’t have happened without him.
Regardless of where you land on the Brexit question, there’s simply no disputing the fact that no politician has changed Britain as much as Farage over the past two decades.
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at The Continental Telegraph.
