Some advice for politicians who would counter the rise of the right - at least in the UK: If you want to stop the rise of Farage, recognise and respond to the fake hope of power he dangles to a disenfranchised people, fix the infrastructure issues - and that starts with a return to more equitable approaches to the distribution of wealth - last seen more than 50 years ago.
The secret sauce for Farage is a heady mix of power and fear. Power: The electorate feels disempowered because Governments of all hues have got closer and closer to capital. They no longer fear labor, and have little control over capital. What Governments are actually able to achieve has reduced (with Blair handing the last lever to the Bank of England durinig his term). As Edwina Currie put it "We used to fight dragons, now we just clear up the shit". If Governments can do little for their people, the power the electorate feels it may have to solve its own problems, also collapses.
Into this power vacuum: made-up solutions that feel within grasp - giving the electorate the illusion of power.
In the UK this is currently manifesting as a fear of immigration. The 'other' is always an easy target. Remember all the taking-back-control rhetoric of Brexit? Primarily this related to borders - with precious little sign of success.
Nigel Farage and his Reform company/party identifies that people feel they have little control. He identifies the usual issues - strain on infrastructure (housing, health, jobs), security fears (policing, armed forces). These are huge issues that a nation of 69 million people fears are getting worse (though the evidence for this decline is patchy, at best).
Farage gives people the illusion of control - of power over their lives - by offering a simple, visible fix they believe is in their grasp: stop the boats - aka (when you listen to his supporters) stop immigration.
Vote Farage, stop the boats = all my problems go away.
Patent nonsense, of course from a rational point of view (how would removing 100,000 people from a population of 69,000,000 suddenly fix our infrastructure challenges)? Farage will never fix your problems with that magic wand. But big emotion-laden lies stick. How are those sunlit uplands of Brexit his supporters promised?
It's all a great distraction from the real issue - the insidious transfer of wealth from the vast majority to an increasingly super rich minority. Politicians must take back control of more capital to fix this - exactly what the right - Farage and his rich buddies included - is terrified of. Tough. There is no other fix.
