Nigel Farage is seriously uncool

We need to talk about Nigel Farage being seriously uncool. No, this isn’t the most pressing issue in British politics, but it is important. The man is a political fixture, we’ve ended up in a bizarre world where he’s on TV constantly and somehow supposedly respectable outlets publish fawning articles about how great he is. Yet he’s less cool than my gran. This situation is unacceptable. 

Now, you might think this is just my left-wing bias speaking. Of course I think Farage is uncool, he’s a right-wing nationalist, a flag-waving Brexit-obsessed conservative outrage generator that is impossible to shut up. However, his uncoolness is deeper than politics. This is about the fact that, at a fundamental level, Nigel Farage is the human embodiment of a wet Monday afternoon at a service station Wetherspoons.

Entitled rudeness

First, let’s talk about his aesthetic. He wears suits and ties, but not in a suave, Bond villain kinda way. Not even in a nostalgic, well-tailored, Peaky Blinders kind of way. No, Nigel Farage wears a suit like a man who also wears that same suit to eat a fry-up in the morning. You just know he drinks tea by slurping it and aggressively clears his throat before speaking. 

Then there’s his general demeanour. Farage has the energy of a man who gets impatient at a bar when the staff are dealing with another customer. The kind of bloke who taps his watch while muttering about how things used to be better. The sort of person you’re embarrassed to stand next to because you know his entitled rudeness will mean you all get served last.

Being impatient with bar staff

Despite all this, certain media circles remain infatuated with him. The Knowledge, The Spectator, and other bastions of tweed-clad “sensibles” breathlessly report on him as though he’s some kind of rakish anti-hero. We’re constantly told he’s an outsider kicking against the establishment, this despite the fact that he went to Dulwich College - an expensive private school - has more access to the media than most sitting MPs and has spent years playing footsie with powerful press barons. He couldn’t be more inside the establishment club if he crawled up their collective bum-holes.

He tries so hard to project the boring, snobby, conventional, tasteless type of wealth that is endearing to people who have (or aspire to have) a “country pile” but who haven’t encountered popular culture since the late 70s.

Man of the people, my arse

He swannes around in tweed like a rejected character from a PG Wodehouse novel, whilst giving off the air that he was pleased that he got a waitress fired for getting his wine order wrong. He has the grumpy, entitled, “call the manager” vibe, and by “manager” he means his mates in the right-wing press; such as when he started a political forumpf when it was revealed that he wasn’t actually wealthy enough to have an account at the elite bank where his oligarch pals park their ill gotten gains. Man of the people, my arse.

Then there’s his attitude towards young people. If something is popular with anyone under 40, you can bet your life savings that Farage hates it. He’s against immigration, against climate action, against progressive social change. Essentially, if young people support something, he wants it gone.

This is a man who looks like he calls the police on teenagers for playing music too loudly, and yet we’re supposed to believe he’s a maverick. What makes him a maverick is that he flies in the face of the soft liberal consensus that we should at least pretend to be nice to people. If wanting to be openly cruel to people less fortunate, less British and less white then himself makes Farage a man of the people, then “the people” should be offended by association.

What Boomers think is cool

Brexit was, among other things, a generational wedge issue, and Farage led the charge in telling young people that their future was less important than pensioners’ getting their empire nostalgia fix. Boomers may think Farage is cool, but that’s because their sense of cool as well as their sense of social responsibility died at whatever point after 1979 that they started voting Tory.

Farage’s politics appeal to the kind of people who think pop culture peaked in the 70s, worry incessantly about house prices, and have a visceral hatred of wind farms. The sort of people who get irrationally angry at the mere concept of an electric car (that isn’t a Tessler). These are people who live in a state of perpetual grievance, furiously opposed to progress in any form, and their bitterness needs an outlet, Farage is more than happy to provide one. In a word: Boomers.

His cultural taste must be diabolical. If Keir Starmer, perhaps the second least cool man in Britain, likes Coldplay, then what does Farage listen to? You just know it’s some dreary, middle-of-the-road, blues-rock nonsense, the kind of music that plays over the PA in a garden centre. Either that or he listens to the Zulu soundtrack on repeat while wanking over a picture of himself.

Smelling faintly of cigars and damp upholstery

Somehow, none of this stops certain publications from fawning over him. Take, for instance, the from The Guardian, where they actually tried to paint Farage as in touch with the common man on foreign policy. Never mind that when Jeremy Corbyn said similar things, he was branded a traitorous Vladmir Putin sympathiser. When Farage does it, it’s merely a robust debate.

Let’s not forget the absolutely deranged attempt to paint him as some sort of roguish sex symbol. The Spectator ran a piece on his supposed “rip-roaring romantic success,” [### link] breathlessly detailing his various affairs as though he were a protagonist in a 1950s spy novel, rather than a bloke who looks like he smells faintly of cigars and damp upholstery.

Our more tolerant reality

The right-wing - and a good proportion of the centrist - media still fawns over Farage like he is the Sex Pistols freaking out the establishment with swearing and nihilism. Worshipping Farage shows how uncool and out of touch the mainstream media is. I have tattered underwear that is more appealing than he is, yet he’s still found in newspapers and on panel shows. This shows how we’ve lost our collective minds.

How have we gotten to the point where people who like The Last Dinner Party or Fontains DC are in an out-of-touch bubble, but people spitting blood about small boats are in touch with reality? Mainlining right-wing bullshit all day on Facebook, instead of going to a gig or the theatre is apparently how to stay in touch with the national zeitgeist. At least, according to the people who generate the Facebook bullshit everyone is mainlining. Well, loving Farage and the rubbish he’s selling doesn’t put you in touch with reality. It puts you in a bubble being left behind by our more tolerant reality.

A figurehead for the people who enjoy yelling at cyclists

There’s a desperate nostalgia at play here. A longing for the days when men could down a pint, say something vaguely racist, and still be considered charming rather than insufferable. The media’s treatment of Farage is the political equivalent of people who think #MeToo has gone too far because they miss the days when being a lecherous old man was seen as an endearing quirk rather than a social liability.

So no, Nigel Farage is not cool. He is, at best, a pub bore who lucked into political relevance by stoking the worst instincts of the electorate. Yet, against all logic and reason, sections of the British press continue to treat him like he’s some kind of folk hero.

It’s time we put an end to this nonsense. Farage is not a rockstar, he's a figurehead for the people who enjoy yelling at cyclists and complaining about vegans. By picking on what young people like, he may think he’s kicking against the liberal establishment, but he’s just a stool of the conservative hegemony and really quite pathetic.