‘Mr. Brexit’ makes his own exit — to stump for Trump

Nigel Farage is a recognizable figure in American politics because of Donald Trump. The Englishman, then the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, met the future president in 2016 at a Trump campaign rally in Mississippi, and they formed an immediate connection. Trump asked Farage to address the crowd, introducing him as “Mr. Brexit,” in honor of the critical role Farage played in that summer’s referendum in Britain on leaving the European Union.

Days later an article appeared in the New Yorker entitled “Trump Embraces Nigel Farage, His British Alter Ego.” That revealed something of their relationship, but Farage is intuitive and cunning, and grasped that Trump did not want an equal but a courtier. So he praised the way the presidential candidate had “dominated” Hillary Clinton in a debate and compared him to “a silverback gorilla.”

After Trump’s unexpected election victory, Farage was the first British politician to meet the president-elect, visiting him at Trump Tower in Manhattan and tweeting a photograph of himself and Trump grinning and laughing in front of a golden elevator.

Since then, Farage has steadily built up his profile in the U.S. He undertook a speaking tour in 2021 for the conservative activist group FreedomWorks, and has appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference for the last three years.

Last week, he made what appears to be a decisive choice: Announcing that he would not be a candidate in the forthcoming election for Reform UK, the populist party he helped create, he revealed that he would campaign with “grassroots” U.S. conservatives to ensure the success of Trump and “a strong America.” Farage’s future, it seems, lies in the U.S.

Explaining Nigel Farage to a non-British audience is challenging, because understanding him accurately involves nuances of uniquely British social class and outlook. He grew up in the suburbs of London, the son of an alcoholic stockbroker who threw away then recovered a career in finance, and attended the prestigious, fee-paying Dulwich College. The school has a good academic reputation, but is not quite in the first rank with grand establishments like Eton and Winchester.

It is important to note that, when he left school in 1982, Farage did not go to university, instead finding a job as a commodities trader at the London Metal Exchange. The raucous, open-outcry pit of the options and futures market is symbolic of Farage. It requires boundless self-confidence, quick thinking and an instinctive bravery, and in his day was dominated by a hypermasculine, hard-drinking culture that celebrated shameless eccentricity.

Farage was reasonably successful, working for American brokerage firm Drexel Burnham Lambert and derivatives firm Crédit Lyonnais Rouse before setting up his own company in 1994. A colleague acknowledged he was “a natural-born salesman,” though never one of the highest earners in his field. But he adored the lifestyle, drinking and smoking with fellow brokers in old-fashioned pubs clustered round the LME’s headquarters on Leadenhall Street.

A natural, unideological conservative, he came to despise the Brussels institutions of the European Economic Community. The tight-knit professional community in which he worked reflected his view that Europe was interfering, bureaucratic and wasteful.

In 1993, Farage was one of the founders of the UK Independence Party, which campaigned for withdrawal from the European Community. He was — and is — a natural campaigner: straight-talking, devoid of pomposity, quick-witted and highly attuned to a persuasive or memorable phrase. In 1999, he was elected to the European Parliament, where he would remain for 20 years.

He hated the institution but recognized its value as a platform and a source of legitimacy, and Farage grew in the public consciousness into the symbol of anti-European sentiment. The EU was his perfect foil, a complex, fussy, bureaucratic organization, while his persona was its antithesis, a man impatient with the compromises and elaborate formulations of politics who had a clear vision and simply wanted to get things done.

The Brexit referendum in 2016 was the apotheosis of Farage’s career. He had done more than anyone to bring about that inflection point, dragging a fringe position into the mainstream and making withdrawal from Europe an idea voters could imagine and even start to desire. When the UK ended its membership in the European Union in 2020, Farage could reasonably claim to have been one of the most influential figures in 21st-century British politics.

In Donald Trump, he has perhaps found his ultimate cause.

Trump and Farage are both broad-brush, simplistic populists. They have clearly forged a mutually beneficial bond, but they are not identical characters. While both treat politics as a matter of basic emotions, there is a levity and faint self-awareness about Farage that the former president lacks. Farage, though self-regarding, does not have the ravening ego of Trump, his need for absolute fealty and abasement, nor his dark, brittle anger.

Essentially Farage has portrayed himself as Everyman, an uncomplicated patriot who likes a few pints of beer and Rothmans cigarettes. He seems normal, distinct from the political class, despite being a front-rank politician for 25 years, and has the gift of treating almost everything with just enough humor to endear him to voters.

His admiration for Trump seems sincere. It is not uncritical: When the “Access Hollywood” tape emerged in 2016 of Trump talking about assaulting women, Farage conceded “I’m not pretending it’s good — it’s ugly, it is ugly.” But he sees the 45th president as a Great Man of History whose flaws can be excused.

The question now is exactly what service this profoundly English figure, pinstriped and wreathed in cigarette smoke, can perform in pursuit of the goal to Make America Great Again.

Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.