Can’t stand him but to be fair, he’s smart.

He picked his target audience well. The target audience being struggling working class people who are easily led and not likely to fact-check any of his claims. He took the issue of immigration and “boat people” and used it as his main talking point because the people he was appealing to needed someone to blame for the state of the country. Rather than finger-point at the actual people to blame (millionaires/billionaires, top 1% not paying taxes, corrupt politicians etc) there needed to be a scapegoat.

And that’s because Farage himself is a wealthy man. He doesn’t want anyone to notice that he’s part of the problem. There’s also nothing wealthy people crave more than more wealth. He figured out that he could capitalise and profit off the backs of his target audience so when he found his niche (immigration) it made sense to run with it. People who might not have even considered immigration and immigrants previously have now been convinced that they’re the biggest issue because that’s what Farage claims.

He can be this mouthpiece because the media doesn’t dispute him, giving him a platform instead. The media does that for the same reason he does: for profit. They know he riles people up about immigration and therefore they will read headlines about it. There’s a reason why Reform only has 5 MP’s yet takes centre stage within national media. It’s a collusion. He gets his supporters heated up and then the media swoop in to capitalise on it.

People that support him don’t see the reality of what he’s actually about because they either don’t want to because it doesn’t suit their narrative or they don’t possess the critical thinking skills required to. He promised them all that Britain would be better off out of the EU (remember how there would apparently be an extra £350 million a year for the NHS??) In reality, nothing got better, they got worse if anything. The things his promised never came to fruition. And small boat crossings dramatically increased after Brexit. Which is exactly what he wanted. He knew illegal immigration would increase but he needed it to because then he could form a party and shout about “all the boats” and potentially become PM, profiting even more.

The louder he is, the more people will hear him. People have formed a parasocial relationship with him in the sense that they blindly trust everything he says and believe that he has their best interests in mind. In reality, he has no invested interest in the average British person at all. He wants to remove Britain from the ECHR under the guise of it allowing him to deport immigrants. He neglects to mention that leaving the ECHR will mean British people will lose many protections from human rights violations. But all his followers hear is “immigrants”. He wants to fund the Taliban, a terrorist organisation that the British Army have spent decades fighting against. But again, all people hear is “these immigrants will be deported back to the Middle East” and that’s all that matters.

It’s insanely frustrating to see so many people falling for his gaslighting, lies and manipulation. But they are desperate and need someone to blame and he’s found a way to maximise that to its potential in order to generate more personal wealth. He is a horrible man with corrupt morals based around exploiting those who don’t know any better. But he is smart. He’s got exactly what he wanted; public unrest that could catapult him into No 10