Britain's Nigel Farage and the Age of the Political Idiot

Call them Europe’s Angry White Men: a cast of populist politicians propelled onstage by the Continent’s economic catastrophe. Sometimes jingoistic, usually furious, almost always unfit for office, these would-be demagogues are both symptoms of the crisis and megaphones for its social distress. But where Italians swoon over a paunchy comedian, Beppe Grillo, and Greece has been terrorized by the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, the British have recently taken a shine to a pinstriped former investment banker. As if to confirm the suspicion that this is some giant act of national self-parody, his name is Nigel.

Nigel Farage is head of the U.K. Independence Party, and over the past couple of months he has become possibly the most talked-about politician in Britain. That’s partly because he is one of the few British politicians capable of provoking an opinion. Almost everything about Farage and his followers is faintly cartoonish. Their core demands are simple: Britain should swagger out of the European Union and slam its door to immigrants. Where other parties’ symbols are inoffensively universal—here a red rose, there an oak tree—UKIP goes for gaudy purple and yellow and a big, bold pound sign.