Much has been said in recent days about Nigel Farage’s colourful (read: racist) past, but honestly, I’m not convinced it matters much to his impulsive voter base. If anything, it probably just adds to the charm for some of them. A limited-edition Farage, now available with extra xenophobia.

The Trouble With Outsmarting a Man With No Empathy

It’s painful to admit, but Nigel Farage is undeniably high on intellect. Unfortunately, he’s spiritually allergic to empathy. He’s the political equivalent of a shark: sleek, cunning, and able to sleep soundly after tearing through a shoal of unsuspecting voters. This psychopathic cocktail gives him a huge advantage. He can exploit people without losing so much as a wink of sleep.

Farage’s victims are often perfectly decent humans – your neighbours who’ll dig out jump leads on a frosty morning. But get them onto politics and they suddenly transform into part-time maritime border experts. Not because they’re malicious, but because they’re under-informed, misinformed, or simply too busy trying to live a normal life to read a 40-page report on why food prices aren’t actually being driven up by dinghies.

Of course, there’s also the less charitable cohort: the ones who are both ill-informed and lacking empathy. These are the people shouting at hotels, climbing lampposts, and waving Union flags made in Chinese factories, heroically unaware of the irony.

The Group Farage Actually Fears

The people Farage truly fears are the empathetic, well-informed ones. They understand that the so-called immigration crisis is a tangled mess of austerity, Brexit self-sabotage, and diplomatic door-slamming. They can see how life has worsened for most while the wealthiest quietly doubled their fortunes.

Naturally, this group must be discredited as woke, lefty, Marxist, tofu-devouring snowflakes. Once that label sticks, anyone who feels under-informed quickly decides, “Well, I don’t want to be that,” and stops reading anything more complex than a meme. Ignorance becomes a lifestyle choice, like owning a hot tub or watching GB News.

The Rivals’ Impossible Task

This leaves Farage’s political rivals with an impossible challenge: how do you tell someone they’re badly informed without sending them deeper into Camp Nigel? The Dunning–Kruger effect has become Farage’s most loyal campaign volunteer. Try explaining trade deals or asylum systems and their eyes glaze over faster than Boris Johnson evading a straight question.

I don’t pretend to have the magic solution. But I do know this: if decent people were better informed, Farage would be toast. Politically composted. And that’s why his attack dogs are swarming all over people like Zack Polanski who is one of the few attempting to lift the national conversation above “boats bad, blame foreigners.”

The Faragists know that once people realise how they’re being played, the game is up.

Until then, we’ll just have to keep dodging the lamppost climbers.