The Observer View: flags of convenience

Last week, Farage went to Washington and talked down the UK, likening the country to North Korea. The comparison shouldn’t be ignored just because it was puerile and condescending, nor because it shows how gleefully he exploits the free ride he’s given by so much of the press, nor because his sucking up to Donald Trump is so obvious and cringeworthy.

A man hoping to run the country grossly misrepresented it. He told Congress his country had sunk into “a really awful authoritarian situation” such as exists in Pyongyang. It’s nonsense, but it also damages the country: it plays into a version of Britain that invites more of Elon Musk’s divisive meddling in British politics, JD Vance’s encouragement of the State Department to criticise Britain’s record on human rights and a coalition of anti-abortion campaigners to funnel money into reversing human rights in the UK.

Farage is a showman who calls himself a patriot but betrays the good that Britain stands for. Never mind talking it down in Washington. He talks up mass deportations, a policy that gives succour to fascists and terrifies minorities. He fuels fury over asylum seekers, but ducks the real questions about a country – and an NHS – that depends on legal immigration. He stokes a climate of fear in a country that prides itself on tolerance. He uses patriotism to divide, when its role should be to unite, and his followers use the flags – the Union Jack and the St. George’s Cross – to exclude people, when they should bring people together; the use of the flag in anger, a not-so-coded expression of racism and nativism, rather than pride in the people, values and stories of the United Kingdom.

The Reform leader is right that Britain needs to pay attention to the quality of its public discourse, but wrong about why. The problem is a new politics of distraction and he is a big part of it. He lectures interviewers and the US House of Representatives about confected “free speech” emergencies, but he has nothing to say about the real challenges of cost of living and public services, technology and AI, global competitiveness and national security.

Patriotism is not logical. Pledging allegiance based on an accident of birth is an act of faith and faith is easily abused by cynics. Twenty years on from Farage’s dressing down, he’s in danger of doing something worse than simply sitting beside the flag, failing to represent the country’s interests; he is fomenting a politics in which the flag does not stand for the best of the country itself.

The member of parliament for Clacton said he had bought a house in his Essex constituency. Nigel Farage owns other property, but it turns out that he did not pay the higher rate of tax on a second home. Because, he now says, his girlfriend bought the house. When he was asked on television last year about the time he spent in Clacton, he said: “I’ve just exchanged contracts on the house that I’ll be living there in – is that good enough?... I’ve just bought a house in Clacton.”

That’s not an honest mistake. That’s tax avoidance. And it was also a lie.