Donald Trump’s Mini-Me

| 9:00 pm EST December 20, 2024
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If you have never heard of Nigel Farage, I envy you. Farage is one of those rightwing bigots, a British asshole with a perpetually superior smirk on his face. He rose to national infamy in Britain as a champion for Brexit, the unbelievably stupid idea that Britain would somehow be much better off without all those pesky, highly advantageous trade agreements with other European nations.

Britain put Brexit to a vote in the summer of 2016 and Farage and his cabal of racists, er, “won.” Then, after years of delays and painful maneuvers, Britain duly exited the European Union. Just prior to that, I had the consolation of watching all those smug idiots who voted YES for Brexit turn a whiter shade of pale when the pandemic hit and made our Brexit-weakened vital supply chain with the continent turn to shit.

These days Farage and Donald Trump are, well, “thick as thieves” fails as a metaphor when you consider both men actually ARE thieves. But you get the idea. Farage and Trump recognised fellow con artists when they saw them, and they naturally gravitated to each other from the start.

These days Farage is trumpeting to anyone who will listen that he’s going to be the United Kingdom’s next prime minister. So now he’s gone to Mar-a-Fraudo to study at the feet of the Grift Mozart. I have some bad news for Farage. Unlike in the United States, where some presidents get elected by hoodwinking millions of morons into voting for them, British Prime Ministers must first get elected to head a party that can actually win. Ergo, since the only parties that ever get a sufficient majority in Parliament are Labour and the Tories, and since members of both parties despise Farage, there’s very little chance that Farage, as leader of Britain’s largely unpopular Reform Party, will ever be prime minister.

If he did become PM I guarantee you Farage would try to do to Britain what Trump is about to do to America. He’d abolish our freedoms and our free healthcare system and try to anoint himself a tinhorn dictator. Recently he got a photo op with the despicable Elon Musk. He’s clearly hoping that Musk will help fund his premiership and, as a quid pro quo, thereby help Musk realise his next goal of conquering the world. Farage wants Musk to bankroll him to the tune of $100 million dollars.

That part could work. Musk is aghast at what he perceives as Britain’s “woke” Labour government. He is actually considering giving Farage the money. However great the odds are against a low rent British politician like Farage succeeding, such things always make me a little nervous. The fanatical right keeps trying until they succeed, and failure never seems to discourage them. After all, they only need to succeed once.

We’ll have to wait and see. Farage is a thoroughly unattractive little man with a lot against him. But that sounds exactly like how many people, including me, thought of Trump nine years ago. In these dangerous times, you never really know.