Will Voters Never Learn?

British people went to the polls yesterday and appear to have learned nothing from the catastrophe of Brexit.

History is about to repeat itself, as the architect of Brexit, far-right nationalist Nigel Farage, has seen huge gains for his rebranded Reform party. Reform uses similar cognitive language in its branding and slogans to that used by the UK Independence Party when Farage was leading the Brexit campaign.

Since Brexit (Britain exiting EU membership), the UK has struggled to recover economically despite Farage’s false promises about “taking back control” from Europe.

Brexit was such a disaster for the UK that nobody really talks about it now. It’s a moot point — a period in history when half the country was brainwashed by casual racism, resulting in a major own goal.

And here we are, just over six years later, and Britain is voting for even more segregation. Like Trump, Farage presents as a casual racist showman. He lies about his past, his pedigree, and plays into white British stereotypes, ultimately appearing terrified of being outnumbered and outsmarted by people of color.

So Reform was born to offer a soft place to land for “racism lite” — less obvious than UKIP, but arguably more dangerous as it soaks up the center ground. Former Conservative MPs defect to Reform’s ugly embrace like unloved middle children craving attention on the wrong side of the tracks.

And because of Brexit and Covid — the timing could hardly have been worse for Britain — the UK has failed to see meaningful GDP growth or a sustained rise in job numbers in the aftermath of these major events.

And after 14 years of Conservative Party “austerity,” during which underinvestment in people and infrastructure left the country crumbling, the timing of the energy crisis caused by Trump’s war on Iran could not have come at a worse time for the Labour Party and its leader, Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Despite a landmark election win last summer, Starmer simply cannot balance the books fast enough to maintain public support, and after last night’s pummeling at the polls, he may be forced to hang up his premiership as early as midsummer. The joys of a functioning social democracy.

The saddest part of this story is how short the memories are of those supporting Reform, who have found renewed trust in Mr. Showbiz, Nigel Farage — a man so transparently corrupt, hate-filled, and potentially dangerous that you have to be pretty desperate to side with him on anything.

But of course Farage is saying all the right things for his increasingly gullible fanbase. His charisma is palpable, his charm hard to resist. His old-school English anti-establishment, white working-class shtick appears to be fooling enough people that he could one day become Prime Minister: a man who adores Trump, calls him a friend, and subscribes to his particular brand of populist, faux patriotic fascism.

Democracies the world over need to learn from history — and not just from the infamous fascists of the early 20th century, but from their own recent lived experience, where a vote for Farage in previous years failed to bring the promised prosperity. If anything, he, like Trump, just makes things much, much worse.