Nigel Farage is playing the media - and winning
Strongman leaders are in the ascendancy around the globe. Trump… Putin… Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro…. these figures all delight in flexing their political muscles. They do this by attacking the media as much as their opponents.
Nigel Farage is trying to see if the trick works here in the UK. He was in full Trump mode last Sunday morning when interviewed by Andrew Marr. When Marr tried to hold the Brexit Party leader to account for things he said in the not all that distant past, Farage began to rant that the “the BBC…isn’t interested in democracy” and barked about 17.4 million people, as if only their opinions count now. As Caroline Ffiske noted on this site, the Brexit Party has suddenly become about more than Brexit. It has kitted itself up for the culture war.
Farage didn’t want to have to explain why he had not openly campaigned for a ‘no-deal’ Brexit during the 2016 referendum, something he is now advocating. He didn’t want to have to justify his views on the NHS or gun control either. No, the full-time MEP who recently claimed to be coming out of semi-retirement wasn’t there to be held to account. He was there to whip up tensions and regurgitate his stock phrases. It was the Nigel Farage Show.
When Marr tried, quite legitimately, to get Farage to square the circle of things he had said in the past and what he was saying now, he dismissed the questions as irrelevant. Farage seemed to think it was for him to set the terms of the interview, not the interviewer. When Marr didn’t ask him the questions that he wanted, Farage responded contemptuously, acting like the questions were illegitimate and that the BBC was part of an elitist conspiracy, while he was on the side of ‘the people’.
The message was clear – Farage is ‘one of us’ while the BBC, MPs, the government, are not. They are out of touch, elitists. Only leaving the EU in a way that Farage deems acceptable fulfils the ‘will of the people’.
It is a classic post-truth approach. Tell your supporters that you are the victim. Turn the tables on the interviewer. Because, like Trump, Farage was not all that bothered about convincing new people to join his cause. Instead, he was playing to his existing audience. Farage even deployed the very Trumpian trick of bragging about the size of the crowds at his rallies. I have no doubt he would consider the comparison with the US President a compliment.
A lot of emphasis is put on Trump’s social media prowess. Whether or not he knows what he is doing, it is certainly effective. However, we should not dismiss the way Trump exploited older forms of media, especially television. He was such a ratings boost in the run up to the presidential election that some outlets would allow him to phone into programs instead of forcing him to turn up to the studio.
I do not see that Farage has grasped social media in quite the same way Trump has. He does undoubtedly make a significant impact online – the Brexit party turned around the video of his clash with Marr very quickly, for example, and we know that social media was an essential tool of all parts of the leave side during the 2016 referendum campaign. However, it is not as central to Farage himself, as a public figure, as it is to Trump.
Farage is actually somewhat old-school in his approach to campaigning on the media. He is not lazy like Trump is. He hosts rallies, walks around towns, holds a pint wherever he can. Crucially, he has made himself nearly omnipresent across television panels shows and the radio over the years. He even has his own program on LBC (which he is not presenting over the EU Parliament election campaign period).
Social media might fan the flames, but it is too easy to dismiss these strongman, bullying leaders simply as digital products. Yes, they can bypass the media when they want – Trump is particularly effective at this, getting his line out via Twitter, directly to his supporters, but they also know how to manipulate and control more traditional outlets. That is what Farage did to Andrew Marr on Sunday when he decided the questions he was asked were not worthy of him. That is what he will continue in the run up to next week’s election.
The difficulty is that in this fake news infested era, interviewers pushing back on these post-truth strongman politicians only helps them. Previously no political leader would want to have dismissed Marr’s questions in the way Farage did. Now, he can say that the whole incident just proves him right. It is time for the media to bulk up.
