Not everyone that votes for Reform are racist; but all racists vote for Reform.
In a normal nation Nigel Farage’s career would have been over years ago – but this is not a normal nation.
In spring 1994, in one of his first acts as a politician, Nigel Farage wrote to Enoch Powell and asked him to help his campaign. In that moment, if we had chosen to pay attention, we could have learned everything we needed to know about the man who would come to define British politics.
Farage had just become a founding member of the UK Independence Party (Ukip) before he contested Eastleigh in a 1994 byelection. He didn’t make much of a stir at the time, winning just 952 votes. But in the heat of the campaign he sent a letter to Powell asking for his support. Powell declined. Undeterred, Farage invited him to stand as a Ukip candidate in the European parliamentary elections the following year and then in the 1997 general election.
