Nigel Farage battles the hard right’s fatal flaw

LONDON — For Nigel Farage, it’s a bleakly familiar tale.

Activists campaigning for his insurgent political party Reform UK were filmed last week making racist and homophobic comments in the very seat Farage hopes to seize in Thursday’s U.K. election. Sensing danger, Farage swiftly “disowned” the views of canvasser Andrew Parker and others.

But it was just the tip of the iceberg. Amid a flurry of stories about Reform candidates expressing offensive views, the party has so far withdrawn support for three who were accused of racism. Indeed, The Spectator lists 18 Reform MP-hopefuls who have attracted controversy for public statements ranging from criticizing Britain’s decision to fight Hitler in World War II, to sharing conspiracy theories about Covid-19 and the 9/11 terror attacks.

But Farage is not the only nationalist leader seeking to disassociate themselves from overt racism among their ranks. France’s far-right National Rally has been undertaking a process of “de-demonization” to boost its electoral palatability; Alternative for Germany (AfD) ejected its lead candidate from the party after Nazi-apologist comments; Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has spent her premiership distancing himself from Mussolini nostalgia amongst her party’s members.

Activists campaigning for Nigel Farage insurgent political party Reform UK were filmed last week making racist and homophobic comments. | Justin Tallis/ AFP via Getty Images

Farage, for his part, has been here before.

UKIP —Reform’s predecessor party — routinely faced scrutiny over racist remarks or extremist ideas shared by members of its rank and file. In 2015, the Times reported UKIP had knowingly allowed dozens of racists, homophobes and violent criminals to stand as prospective MPs and councilors.

Farage himself has acknowledged that some activists who might previously have voted for the far-right British National Party “will gravitate in our direction.” He has blamed a private vetting firm for his party’s failure to screen out oddball candidates.

But the negative stories have sucked precious oxygen out of Reform’s election campaign and do not chime well with the millions of ordinary voters Farage hopes to attract.

Maria Sobolewska, professor of politics at Manchester University, warned that even for British voters who hold anti-immigrant views, “there is a strong social norm” against overt racial prejudice.

“The vast majority of [Reform’s] supporters will not want to be associated with this,” she added.

Indeed one of Reform’s own election candidates felt so strongly they defected to the Conservatives on Saturday, complaining of  “a significant moral issue” within the party ranks.

A very European problem

Farage is hardly the only right-wing leader in Europe to find themselves derailed by party members as he tries to keep his operation in check.

France’s National Rally, which scored a stunning success in the first round of the legislative election on Sunday, has faced similar issues for years.

Despite the party’s best efforts to present a respectable face, supporters and candidates of the National Rally have regularly been exposed for racist comments — as opponents have been quick to remind French voters. During a televised debate last week, French PM Gabriel Attal named some of the most controversial candidates and claimed 100 people standing for the National Rally have made racist or antisemitic statements. 

Among them were candidate Gilles Bourdouleix who, during a dispute with nomads, complained that “Hitler didn’t kill enough of them.” France’s top court did not convict him as the remarks were not made publicly. 

In another case, the National Rally withdrew the candidacy of Joseph Martin after it was discovered that in 2018 he’d tweeted that “gas did justice to the victims of the Holocaust.” The party later decided to keep him on its books, claiming his tweet had been misunderstood. 

In Germany, the far-right AfD party has not undertaken anything like French leader Marine Le Pen’s “de-demonization” — the attempt to make her National Rally appear less extreme. If anything, the AfD has grown more openly radical in recent years.

This helps explain why it’s not just rank-and-file AfD members who have said or done some of the most controversial things, but the party leadership.

Maximilian Krah told Italy’s La Repubblica he would “never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal.” | Jens Schlueter/AFP via Getty Images

The prime example is Maximilian Krah, who was the party’s top candidate in the European election last month. Krah told Italy’s La Repubblica he would “never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal,” sparking a firestorm which eventually led to Krah’s ejection from the AfD delegation in the European Parliament.

In May, Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD in the eastern German state of Thuringia, where the party is leading in the polls, was fined €13,000 for ending a rally with a banned Nazi slogan: “Everything for Germany!” 

This was a slogan for Hitler’s SA stormtroopers, etched on the blades of their daggers. Höcke claimed he did not know this, but critics pointed to the fact that he was a history teacher before entering politics. Höcke was fined again this week for using the banned SA slogan on a subsequent occasion.

In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has tried to present herself as a modern, moderate conservative since her election in 2022.

But her right-wing Brothers of Italy has its roots in the party founded by former fascists after World War II — and members of her party have been repeatedly caught expressing nostalgia for Mussolini’s era, causing embarrassment and irritation among her moderate supporters.

Leaders in the party’s youth wing, National Youth, resigned last week after being filmed making antisemitic comments and boasting of being fascist, Nazi and racist. Meloni eventually condemned the comments — though also attacked the investigative journalists behind the story.

In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has tried to present herself as a modern, moderate conservative since her election in 2022. | Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images

Her party has faced criticism for its links to the world of football hooliganism too. Earlier last month a ministerial spokesman resigned after antisemitic messages he exchanged with a notorious member of the Rome underworld — and leader of the Lazio Ultras — were published.

Cordon sanitaire

What’s less clear is the extent to which these parties’ struggles with elements of their membership are impacting their electoral fortunes. 

Meloni was elected to power in 2022 and has only grown in popularity since. In France, Sunday’s election result confirms millions of French voters are undeterred by extremism among the National Rally’s representatives.

Back in the U.K., the electoral cost for Farage — or otherwise — remains to be seen.

Many believe UKIP’s past association with fringe candidates ultimately placed a ceiling on his wider support. Sobolewska argues the problem may prove even worse for Reform UK, given that while UKIP focused most of its ire on the EU, “Reform is standing on an anti-immigration platform, going straight to anti-immigrant sentiment.”

And even if Farage does make significant electoral inroads on July 4, the controversy around his party could yet affect his chances of a post-election accommodation with the Conservatives, which many see as a possibility given grassroots pressure to “unite the right.”

As Henry Hill, editor of the Tory-supporting website ConservativeHome wrote this week, Reform’s campaign “has so toxified it and its leader that the cordon sanitaire between it and the Tories is now much stronger than it was a few weeks ago.” In short — many mainstream Tories may be put off.

On the ground, Reform candidates insist that their more unsavory bedfellows are not doing them any harm. 

“Nobody really mentions it on the doorstep,” claimed Trevor Lloyd-Jones, their candidate in Aldershot. “The voters I talk to are just worried about the cost of living, the NHS and immigration.”

Even so, Farage himself admits these issues may continue to appear, given the speed at which his party has recruited candidates around the U.K.

It means there’s still one job nobody really wants in Reform — vetting all the candidates standing for election. As one party official, granted anonymity to speak frankly, told POLITICO with a grimace: “Thank God I’m nowhere near that.”