Sick of Farage?-

well the con He’s pushed For years just exploded! An article by Damien Willey from Damo’s Rants.

My name is Damien Willey and I am a left wing blogger, vlogger and political commentator both in my own right and as an interviewer and presenter on Socialist Telly, a brand new, left wing alternative media outlet. You can find my work across a variety of social media these days such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & YouTube. Just search for @KernowDamo!

Right, so we are all sick and tired of Nigel Farage, the mainstream media over platform him, his narrative is divisive and racist, but where his ideas and his plans get broadcast to your face whether you like it or not, the real story here is the one that nobody is talking about and we on the left really have to, because otherwise we’re just letting the inevitable seemingly unfold.

For decades he has been everywhere: pint in one hand, cigarette in the other, performing his carefully staged role as the ordinary bloke in the pub who speaks truth to power. From UKIP to Brexit Party to Reform UK, he has been given more airtime than any other politician of his generation, until sensible people are heartily sick of the sight of him. And yet, however much we might wish to tune him out, we cannot. Because beneath the noise about “small boats” and “illegals,” beneath the endless interviews and contrived pub-stool banter, lies a far darker project going ignored and you only need to cast an eye back through the decades to find the link that has told you what he’s all about from day one.

Farage’s real agenda has never been simply about immigration. That was the convenient banner when it suited him, that was the scapegoat, the target he painted for people to hate, because if they have something to blame for their own woes, they’ll ignore the real causes, being the wealthy and people like Farage himself with his Coutts bank account. It was never just about immigration, just as “Europe” was once the banner before that when it came to Brexit. His true target is and always has been, the European Convention on Human Rights: the treaty Britain itself helped design in 1950 to stop fascism from ever returning. Farage is now reducing that entire framework — seventy years of protection for fair trials, protest, free speech, family life and dignity — to the sight of a rubber dinghy bobbing in the Channel. It is a grotesque sleight of hand, but one he has sold with terrifying effectiveness, so whilst mainstream news channels laud him for singling out people in dinghies, we really need to talk about the consequences for all of us, as for too many, they get blinded by hatred and the snake oil salesman will end up winning again.

Right, so it can be argued that Brexit was step one. Strasbourg therefore is step two. And the question Britain has never seriously confronted when it comes to Nigel Farage is the one that matters most: why has Farage always needed the ECHR gone, and what follows if he gets his way, should he slither into power at the next General Election?

Farage likes to tell the story as if his political career began with Brexit. He casts himself as the scrappy outsider who toppled Britain’s EU membership, as though history began in 2016. But the trajectory started much earlier, and with a far more ambitious goal. Educated at Dulwich College, a fee-paying school in south London, Farage was marked out by his teachers for his extreme politics. During a 1981 meeting about potential prefects at Dulwich College, one teacher allegedly remarked that "Farage was ‘a fascist, but that was no reason why he would not make a good prefect’,” which prompted strong reaction from colleagues — as revealed in a letter from teacher Chloe Deakin to the headmaster, David Emms. Already, before the EU question had become mainstream, before Farage became a commodities trader and before even entering politics, Farage’s instinct was authoritarian and exclusionary, a Tory member at that time idolising Margaret Thatcher.

After school he went into the City as a commodities trader. His background was one of wealth and privilege, you don’t get sent to a private boarding school without coming from means and his father, Guy Justus Oscar Farage, wonderful working class name there, was himself a stockbroker. So Farage has never been the “ordinary bloke” in the pub, never experienced the hardship he has always performed. The flat cap, the pint, the pub stool, the cigarette — all of it was theatre. It was a disguise designed to make him look like the voice of the disaffected working class while remaining firmly anchored in the financial elite.

When UKIP was founded in the early 1990s, its central mission was not immigration but withdrawal from the European Union. The manifestos raged against Brussels, against federalism, against the “loss of sovereignty.” Yet from the beginning Farage blurred institutions: Brussels, Strasbourg, the EU, the ECHR — all collapsed into “Europe” as the enemy. Immigration would later become the weapon, but the target was always broader: every framework that bound Britain to a post-war European order.

The turning point came in 2004 when the EU expanded to include ten new states, many from Eastern Europe. Under free movement rules, their citizens could work in the UK. Farage seized the opportunity. Immigration became the visible, emotive issue he needed to expand his reach. With images of Polish plumbers and Romanian fruit-pickers, he could present the EU as a direct threat to British jobs and culture. They’re taking your jobs, your houses and all of that.

By 2016, immigration was the wedge issue that carried Brexit. Farage’s “Breaking Point” poster, depicting a line of brown-skinned refugees crossing Europe. It was a crude and racist, but effective symbol. It made the referendum about borders, not bureaucrats. The Leave campaign was won, but it was won by scapegoating — by redirecting anger over austerity, housing shortages, and NHS collapse onto migrants. Even though austerity came from those in power, the housing crisis was triggered by Farage’s idol Thatcher and Right to Buy and the NHS without migrant workers cannot function and never has been able to, we’ve never trained enough workers for our health service ourselves, the investment has never been there.

This tactic revealed something crucial. Farage never cared about immigration as a policy problem in itself. He cared about it as a weapon — the easiest way to smash apart institutions, a convenient target to get people to get angry at so he could do what he really wants to. First the EU. Now, the ECHR and he’s confident enough to now say it as part of his Operation Restoring Justice, a name which is anything but the sort, but again, its all about smoke and mirrors when it comes to this absolute charlatan. What he’s attempting now is this: if he was able to make Europe’s single market toxic by focusing on migration, can he now make seventy years of human rights toxic in exactly the same way?

The European Convention on Human Rights was not imposed on Britain by foreigners. It was drafted largely by British lawyers in 1950. It was Britain’s post-war gift to Europe, designed to ensure that fascism could never again rise unchecked, yet here is Farage in his old teachers words. It guarantees the right to life, the prohibition of torture, liberty and security, a fair trial, privacy, free expression, protest, and family life. Article 1 makes it binding: governments must secure these rights for everyone within their jurisdiction.

For an authoritarian nationalist, all these rights we take for granted, this is intolerable. Farage has despised it from the start. He railed against the Human Rights Act of 1998, which enshrined the Convention into UK law, branding it a criminals’ charter. He mocked the idea of “foreign judges in Strasbourg.” He turned every blocked deportation case into a symbol of betrayal. What outraged him most was precisely what the Convention exists to do: stop governments from deporting people to torture, stop them from locking people up without trial, stop them from silencing dissent.

Now, with Reform UK’s “Operation Restoring Justice,” the mask has slipped. The plan he has unveiled is explicit: withdraw from the ECHR, repeal the Human Rights Act, and deport hundreds of thousands of migrants in a mass purge, but it won’t just be the migrants such an act affects. Analysts have pointed out how impractical the deportation fantasy is, but that is beside the point. The real goal is clear. Immigration is the excuse. Dismantling human rights is the aim.

Small boat crossings have become the totem of this campaign. Every night, the public sees pictures of overcrowded dinghies crossing the Channel. Keir Starmer the idiot talks of nothing else making Farage’s points for him and godawful channels from GBeebies to the BBC to LBC constantly chatter about it. Anyone would think Farage was really in charge of the country already, well he’s certainly dominating the narrative, despite his party having just 4 MPs. The emotional impact is huge. But the numbers tell another story. In 2023, net migration exceeded 1.2 million. Small boat crossings were between 30,000 and 40,000 — barely three to four per cent of the total. Most fly in to study or work, the small boats are barely a thing, but they’re a massive opportunity for a grifter like Farage.

Even in asylum statistics, small boats are not the whole picture. The Migration Observatory at Oxford shows that since 2018, they have accounted for about 30 to 40 per cent of asylum seekers, therefore most are fleeing something, war, famine, to claim asylum, which they can do legally no matter how they get here. The Commons Library calculated the cumulative figure at around 29 per cent up to 2024. These are important humanitarian numbers, but they are nowhere near the “invasion” described in headlines.

So why do they dominate? Because they are visible. Because government after government has closed legal asylum routes, forcing people into the Channel. And because they are the perfect scapegoat. Austerity has gutted housing, the NHS, and social care. But instead of admitting policy failure, politicians point to a dinghy. Farage has made the dinghy his political weapon. And by collapsing the ECHR into the question of whether a rubber boat can land, he convinces the public that human rights themselves are the problem. That is the grotesque trick: to make seventy years of rights, that have clearly worked for seventy years, look like nothing more than a “small boats charter.”

But what happens if this smokescreen works, as polling implies it is? What if the public really does come to believe that their right to protest, to fair trial, to dignity in care, is just about migrants in the Channel? That is the danger staring Britain in the face.

Leaving the ECHR would not be a tweak to asylum law. It would be a constitutional earthquake. The Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland explicitly requires ECHR incorporation, no matter what fools like Richard Tice might be saying to the contrary in interviews. It was the promise of equal rights that made that peace possible. Without it, the Agreement would collapse, trust would shatter, and conflict could well reignite.

The Scotland Act and the Government of Wales Act both require devolved governments to act compatibly with the ECHR. Tear that away and the devolution settlements themselves fall apart. Scotland would see independence demands surge. Wales would face its own constitutional crisis. The Union itself could unravel.

Internationally, Britain’s policing and justice cooperation with the EU is conditional on ECHR membership. Extradition agreements, data sharing, and cross-border security rely on it. Without Strasbourg, Britain is cut out. The country becomes less safe, less trusted, more isolated. Diplomatically, it joins Russia and Belarus as one of the only European states outside the system — therefore a pariah.

And domestically, the loss would be brutal for all of us. Without the ECHR, there is no binding right to a fair trial, no guaranteed right to protest, no safeguard against torture or degrading treatment, no right to family life, no baseline of equality. A government with a parliamentary majority could strip them away at will. Protests could be banned overnight completely. Surveillance could be expanded without limit. Miscarriages of justice would be harder to overturn. Abuse in hospitals, prisons, and care homes could be brushed aside. Ordinary people, not just migrants, would pay the price.

The answer is simple: elites like Farage. Wealthy nationalists insulated by privilege benefit when rights are stripped away, because rights are the one thing that hold them accountable. Without the ECHR, they gain unchecked power. They can scapegoat minorities to consolidate support, but why stop there? Then it will be the disabled, the low paid, those on benefits next. What’s to stop them? If you think locking up Palestine Action is bad now, watch them  do the same for workers going on strike over poor wages. They will silence critics with repressive laws, and protect themselves from legal challenge.

Ordinary citizens lose the safety net. Families lose protections in hospitals and care homes. Workers lose the right to organise and protest. Victims of injustice lose recourse. But elites like Farage lose nothing. They have private healthcare, offshore wealth, media platforms. For them, dismantling the ECHR means power without restraint. For everyone else, it means exposure to abuse. Fascism will reign.

The scandal is that this agenda is almost never confronted though. Journalists may fact-check Farage’s deportation figures, but people in his thrall will just say these establishment journos would say that and it changes nothing.. Politicians may argue over the feasibility of flights to Afghanistan and doing a deal to deport people back into the hands of the Taliban. Yeah, Farage wants to do a deal with them doesn’t he? But almost nobody presses him on the deeper issue: why dismantle the ECHR, and what would it mean for everyone else?

The media is complicit. Farage drives ratings, so broadcasters keep putting him on, they love him, but they’re playing with fire. Rarely is he grilled on the constitutional wreckage his plan would unleash. Politicians are cowardly. Conservatives mimic his lines to hold their base and keep losing it to him. Labour under Keir Starmer parrots his framing to avoid being painted as soft and yet nothing shows him up as craven and cowardly more. Instead of exposing his agenda, they legitimise it. And so a project that should be recognised as extreme and dangerous has been laundered into the mainstream of British politics.

If Farage succeeds, Britain will not face a policy change. It will face collapse. The Good Friday Agreement will be torn apart. Devolution will be blown open. The Union itself could disintegrate. Internationally, Britain will stand disgraced and isolated. Domestically, the rights that protect ordinary people from arbitrary power will vanish. Every bit of legislation passed in the UK since 1950 pretty much, could be nullified, so in the attempt Farage could screw this country up in a manner that would have people begging for the return of Liz Truss by comparison.

can a democracy still call itself democratic if it strips away the right to protest, to fair trial, to dignity, to free expression? Would Farage even care if it couldn’t? If sovereignty is defined as the freedom to oppress without limit, then democracy collapses into authoritarianism. This is the precipice Britain is edging towards. And the grotesque trick is that it is being sold not as an attack on rights, but as a way of “stopping the boats.”

We are tired of Nigel Farage. But we cannot look away and ignore him either. For thirty years, beneath the costumes and slogans, his real project has been clear: dismantle the European Convention on Human Rights. Brexit was step one. Strasbourg is step two. The boats are a smokescreen.

If Britain allows him to succeed — if the media keeps platforming him without challenge, if politicians keep copying his slogans — the consequences will be devastating. We need opposition to this. Zack Polanski the Green Party leadership contender has been warning about Farage more than anyone else, but he hasn’t had anything like the media coverage, perhaps that’ll change if he becomes Green Party leader next week. There is the Corbyn and Sultana project as well that will oppose him too. We need more voices like theirs getting more attention paid to them.

This is not just about boats, or borders, or immigration. It is about whether Britain keeps the rights that protect us all, or collapses into a future where scapegoating replaces justice, and where men like Farage rule unchecked. The grotesque trick is to make us believe this is only about dinghies. The truth is that it is about the collapse of the constitutional foundation of modern Britain itself. And the choice is whether we sleepwalk into that collapse, or finally confront the real agenda hiding in plain sight.

Just as Starmer and Farage are on the same page over small boats, though for very different reasons, Farage is really after the ECHR, whilst Starmer is just copying Farage because he’s an empty suit, what both are very much on the same page over is their support for Israel, so Farage I don’t doubt will be delighted by the potential £2bn defence deal Starmer is lining up with Elbit Systems, Palestine Actions target of choice, all whilst they’ve been proscribed. Put Farage in power though and what PA have had done to them will be just the tip of the iceberg though. Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.