There was only one way for Steven Woolfe, the Ukip MEP, to mark Nigel Farage’s final campaign speech. With a poem what he had wrote: As the sun fell on scapa fell / I heard the news and final death knell / Of England’s beaten heart / Destroyed from within / By its own kith and kin / Who sort to break it apart.
Woolfe’s voice choked with emotion; the rest of us merely choked, wondering why it was that Kipling had never had the linguistic audacity to internally rhyme “fell” with “fell”, to insert a homophone for sought that suggested the power to exclude and to use the absence of punctuation as a metaphor for having no control over our borders.
While Woolfe wiped aside a tear, a short film of the Battle of Britain, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill and Ian Botham winning the 1981 Ashes series was played on a screen behind him. There was a short glitch as John Barnes’s wonder goal against Brazil in 1984 was removed after it was revealed that the former England striker wasn’t actually supporting a leave vote, but the message was still clear. Absolutely nothing good had happened in the UK for the best part of 40 years.
As the lights came on, Nigel Farage walked past about 50 Ukip supporters in a sweaty central London basement to take the stage. “This is the end of a very long road,” he began, sounding rather emotional. Having failed to get elected as an MP seven times, having stood down as Ukip leader, fallen out with his successor and re-elected himself, Nigel knows he might be approaching the end of his own very long road. Should Britain vote to remain, then Nigel might well become no more than a footnote in history.
But Nigel wasn’t going to go without a fight. Not so much for a vote to leave as for the protection of his own legacy. Nigel was the one who had changed the political landscape, not some Boris-come-lately. He was the one who had come up with the Australian points-style immigration system; he was the one who had noticed there were German cars on our roads; he was the first one to “believe in Britain”, he was the one who had directed Independence Day.
Me, me, me, me, me. Nigel moved on to other familiar tropes. He waved his EU passport. Could there be anything more symbolic of how the British people have been crushed by the EU superstate and its army that doesn’t exist but definitely will on Friday because Nigel has secret knowledge that it is already being assembled in Turkey. How dare the EU grant British citizens freedom of movement within 27 other countries! How very dare they!
Yes, he was a bit apologetic for the timing of his “beaking point” poster and he would rather Jo Cox hadn’t been killed, but he wasn’t going to apologise for the poster itself, because in time people would come to see his poster as one of the great truths of the 21st century and the whole world would be thanking him for it.
It was all same old, same old. Fear, conspiracy and nostalgia. Nigel has been saying stuff like this for years and in that time the island in which he lives has been getting smaller and smaller. No wonder he feels so threatened. He’d have been even more paranoid if he’d noticed someone from the leave campaign had tried to lock him in. It’s never that easy to present yourself as the inclusive option when you’ve got Nigel on your side.
“It’s getting very sweaty in here,” said Nigel, as he dabbed his brow during a TV interview. “Who booked this basement?” No one was brave enough to tell him it had been Boris.
