Former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weismüller was Tarzan of the Apes in twelve film adaptations (the first dating back to 1932) of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ iconic novel. In one of the episodes of the franchise, a young British aristocrat (Lord Greystoke) goes to Africa with his pregnant wife on a mission of the British crown to investigate how another European colonial power (referring to Belgium) is enslaving the black population The English, as you might expect, are the good guys in the film.
In the jungle of British politics, the persona of Tarzan corresponds to Nigel Farage, the historic leader of Euroscepticism and the far right in the country, who was instrumental in Cameron calling the Brexit referendum almost eight years ago, and for both of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. That he has failed in seven attempts to win a seat as deputy rai. He has arguments to be seen as the most influential British politician of the last decade.
Farage has just become something of a modern-day Tarzan in the English version of the celebrity jungle, which he has used as a platform for his return to the political and media spotlight after a period of relative obscurity , since he backed Boris Johnson to win the 2019 election and make a hard Brexit a reality. During this time, he has presented a program on the GB News channel (the British Fox), and has been the honorary chairman of the far-right party Reform UK.
But the change in the electoral cycle that is approaching, with the likely arrival of Labor in power, is too juicy an opportunity to waste. Immigration is not the main concern of the majority of voters (it comes third after the cost of living and healthcare), but it is of a sizeable, working-class and socially conservative bloc, mainly from the north of England ( the so-called red wall), which gave a decisive push to Brexit and which he knows how to manipulate.
If Farage was put in charge of Reform UK as a real executive leader rather than just an honorary chairman, dedicated to exploiting xenophobic sentiments among his countrymen as he already did in the Brexit campaign, the far-right formation (polls now give him between 8% and 11% of the vote) could do a lot of damage to the Tories. It probably wouldn’t win any seats because of the electoral system, or at least a couple, but it would steal votes from the Conservatives to the extent that it would lead to a Labor thrashing, with a majority of more than two hundred seats.
Is this what Farage, who is an ultra Tory at heart, wants? Perhaps yes, if he has become bored with life as a television presenter and contestant on reality shows, and if his great ambition – as is speculated – is to eventually seize the leadership of the Conservative Party by, from the opposition and taking advantage of the racist trends in vogue, turn it into the British version of Vox, the Brothers of Italy, the German AfD or Marine Le Pen’s National Group.
His current bloc of supporters, like the supporters of leaving Europe, are people of a certain age, which limits his range of electoral action. Apart from making money (a million and a half euros), the aim of going to the Australian jungle to eat camel hooves, sheep vagina, kangaroo anus and fish eyes was to approach the much younger audience of these kinds of programs and make a first move.
At the moment, Reform UK lacks enough infrastructure for a full-blown campaign, but backers who gave money to the Brexit referendum could give Farage money to field candidates in most constituencies and pop up, much pupa, to the Tories. In the recent Tamworth by-election, the votes he stole from the Conservatives gave the seat to Labour, a pattern that could be repeated in many places in the north of the country.
Farage’s popularity among right-wing voters is much higher than that of Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister, with 70% saying they would like him to return to active politics. One in nine people who supported Johnson in 2019 say that next year they would support the far-right leader, close to Donald Trump. 37% of Tories would be willing to vote for Reform UK if he is the leader.
Without Farage there would have been no Brexit consultation, nor would the UK have left the EU and experienced the chaos of the last seven years. He believes that the next election will be another referendum, this time on immigration. And in this movie, he wants to be a kind of xenophobic Tarzan.
