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At last Nigel Farage has emerged to defend the ordinary billionaires of the world, such as Donald Trump

Farage ended his speech with a cry to defeat the establishment. This was the most heartfelt moment of all, because no one has had to fight harder against the establishment than Trump

Mark Steel
Thursday 25 August 2016 17:49 BST
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Nigel Farage urges Donald Trump voters to 'stand up to the establishment'

If Nigel Farage and Donald Trump continue this new alliance, it could be a thrilling contest as they fight to outdo each other. Trump will open a rally with “Let me tell you, Muslims frighten potatoes, their beards make them go mouldy – and that’s a fact. So if you want to stop a famine, you better vote for Donald Trump.” Then Farage will respond: “That’s right Donald, and they go every year to Mecca to squirt Domestos at pandas. That’s what they’re doing out there and it has to stop.”

Trump will storm into the lead with “Hey, you know it’s interesting, there are some scientists, and they’ve found that Mexicans are a species of greenfly,” and Nigel will retort, “Yes, and foreigners are up to 80 per cent more combustible than people who live in the country they were born in.” The crowd will be screaming, as Trump booms, “hijabs set volcanoes off”, and Farage yells, “when Barack Obama came to England he made all the fish die. But THEY don’t want you to know, so they replaced them all from the Queen’s aquarium and hid the truth as usual.”

Then the two of them will collapse, exhausted, like athletes at the end of the 10,000 metres. We’ll have witnessed one of the great political battles of history.

Trump claims to be a champion of Brexit, but a few weeks ago he made it clear he had no idea what the Brexit vote was about. But that doesn’t matter. He can tell his supporters: “The great news is Britain voted to no longer be in France, as it wasn’t allowed to have its own sunlight and had to buy warmness off of Mexico – which runs the European Union.”

Because one rule they’ve both discovered is not only do you not have to bother checking if something is true before you say it, you don’t even have to pretend it’s true when you do. The pair make a virtue out of things not being true.

So Trump can declare: “Americans are sick of things having to be proved. All the things that set out to destroy this great country have been ‘proved’. Americans are sick of proof. Let’s give some space for things that haven’t been proved.” Then hundreds of people will faint and try to touch him, and scream “no more proof, no more proof”.

Farage ended his speech with a cry to defeat the establishment. This was the most heartfelt moment of all; no-one has had to fight harder against the establishment than Trump. His father was a common salt-of-the-earth property developer, much like Nigel Farage whose humble background at Dulwich College private school led to long hours on the stockbroking shop floor.

But now the establishment tries to mock the little man Trump, just because he’s only got one tower named after him. The establishment may be used to having a second tower in the countryside, but there’s none of that for Mr Keeping It Real Trump. At someone has finally emerged who can speak up for the ordinary billionaire.

The most unsettling part may be that there is one smidgen of truth in what this pair says – one arm of the establishment does despise them and their supporters. The old political parties are outraged that someone can break the normal rules of behaviour during an election and still secure millions of supporters.

There’s a similar process going on within the Labour Party. Commentators and politicians have spent years complaining the public won’t join political parties, then when they do, they insist the new members must be humiliated, banned from voting, and declared to be lunatic anti-Semitic, misogynist, uber-feminist, Trotskyist, Stalinist, naïve teenage idiots, behaving exactly as they did 40 years ago, a disorganised rabble that has carefully organised a takeover of the party.

Because surely people should understand the correct motivation for joining a political party, is to dedicate yourself to the service of keeping everything exactly the same. That’s exactly why mainstream politicians don’t seem too bothered about Trump, reassured by the likelihood that Trump seems so unlikely to win.

And that would be fine – as long as the millions of angry Americans who have been inspired by the rallies and feel Trump is the first public figure to speak for them, calmly say to themselves: “oh well, we had a go, but we lost. Now let’s go home and be quietly unemployed without causing any bother”.

In Britain, Owen Smith’s recognition of the millions that feel “left behind” extends to insisting MPs should vote against leaving the EU, despite the result of referendum.

If we did as he suggests, and ignored the result of the referendum – and this may be over-dramatic but it’s always best to ask – I wonder if that may perhaps annoy some of the people that voted to leave in some way?

I’m sure it would be fine, and the modest 52 per cent of the country that voted to leave the EU would accept that Owen Smith knew best after all.

At least he’s consistent: whenever there’s a vote, he feels the best thing to do is to take no notice of it. Soon he’ll announce the Labour leadership vote is only “advisory”, and it’s probably for the best if he takes over anyway – especially as he’s promised to grow a beard and call himself Jeremy on alternate Wednesdays.

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