Farage, Johnson and a dead President

On May 3 this blog spelled out how Britain's right would recompose around Brexit. Courtesy of the May 15 British 'Mail on Sunday' UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage lets us all know his thoughts.

'Nigel Farage has backed Boris Johnson’s bid to succeed David Cameron if Britain votes to quit the EU – and held out the prospect of working for ‘Prime Minister’ Boris. The Ukip leader compared fellow anti-European Johnson to former US President Ronald Reagan – and said he would be a much better leader than ‘pro-Brussels fanatic’ Cameron.'

'Asked if he would like to work for Johnson if the Brexit camp wins and Johnson succeeds Cameron in No 10, Farage said: "I love Boris, respect him, admire him; I’m a Boris fan. Could I work for him? Yes. Could I see a scenario if he was PM and he asked me to do something? I wouldn’t rule it out".

The other western politician currently being compared to Reagan is of course Donald Trump.

On May 22 Austrians will elect a new president. Polls predict that Norbert Hofer will win. He is the candidate of the far-right Freedom Party. Hofer is one of a list of extreme rightist leaders that have taken root in Western societies over the last decade. Their emergence into international view started with the 2010 election victory of Viktor Orban,and his ultra nationalist party Fidesz. Last October the Law and Justice Party (PiS) swept to power in Poland under Jaroslaw Kaczynski .

'Both parties buttress their rule by subverting the independence of the judiciary, the media and other pillars of a free society'. (FT Comment, 14 May.)

The eastern part of Europe's new right is refueling itself from the refugee crisis. Slovakia seems to be the next in line. But Europe's western states, and across the Atlantic in the US, a new right wing is also gathering momentum with Trump in the US and then the French presidential election and the advances of the junior Le Pen.

Britain is shaping up for its own version of this trend through Brexit. The point about Farage is that he has built (a still fragile) social base for his politics and that will be used if possible as leverage in the current crisis of the Tory Party as it moves, after Brexit, into a leadership battle.

Powerful new radical left movements are also underway across Europe and the US but (with the tragic exception of the Syriza leadership) they have not yet engaged for the leadership of the whole of society. Those in the left who naturally see their own new strength cannot allow themselves to be reassured by either their growth or by the crisis of traditional politics, which does tell us all that the old system is cracking. There are other, deeply powerful forces that are also in movement who in some cases are able to contest for the leadership of whole nations.