The Brexit mastermind is the star of this year’s British edition of The Island of the Famous, which involves – among his tests – immersion in a tank of manure and eating disgusting food. A necessary step to return to politics?
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
LONDON — Mr Brexit, that is Nigel Faragethe star of this year’s UK edition ofIsland of the Famous: the former Ukip leader, the man who imposed theLondon’s exit from the EU on the political agenda, he was taken together with the other competitors to the Australian desert where he will face a series of trials, each more disgusting than the next. It won’t be easy, commented Farage, to which one of his fellow adventurers sarcastically commented: It won’t be worse than Brexit…
Farage was paid one and a half million pounds (around 1 million and 700 thousand euros) to participate in the show, much more than the 320 thousand pounds received last year by Matt Hancock, the former Health Minister: For some I am a hero, for others the villain – he said – now you will see the real me.
Mr Brexit showed up in the first episode sporting a shocking pink shirt and remained calm and impassive while the other contestants shouted in horror: he immersed himself in a tub of manure and he slipped in head in a snake boxperformances that earned him the transition to the second episode, when I will go to the jungle pizzeria to taste camel anus and other similar delicacies. The only exemption he got was that from excessive physical effortdue to the permanent damage to his back he suffered in 2010, when he miraculously escaped a plane crash.
But why is Farage doing all this? After Brexit, he abandoned active politics and became one of the presenters of GB News, the right-wing TV channel that aims to be the British version of Fox News, the American megaphone of Trumpism. But in reality Farage never left the scene: it was he who started hammering on the issue of the landings of illegal immigrants across the Channel, to the point of forcing the government to make it the number one priority. And also for this reason that a few months ago the left-wing weekly New Statesman crowned him most influential figure on the British right, before Prime Minister Rishi Sunak himself.
It is therefore no coincidence that Farage made a surprise appearance at the Conservative Congress in October, where he was welcomed as a hero by grassroots militants: his plan, many suspect, would be to take over the Tories after Sunak’s certain electoral defeat and transform them definitively in a hard right-wing national-populist formation, bringing to completion a metamorphosis that has already begun some time ago. A project that would completely change the face of British politics: but on the other hand, Farage is no stranger to such undertakings, having already forced the conservatives to adopt Brexit.
Therefore the passage to the Island of the Famous could beand the launching pad for this strategy, a way to enter English homes and be appreciated by a wider audience than its traditional supporters. And it is a sign of the times that today political resurrection takes place through a reality show.
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November 20, 2023 (modified November 20, 2023 | 12:53)
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