Alex Jones is a dangerous conspiracy theorist. Does Nigel Farage really share his views?

On the cusp of regaining his political influence, why would Farage publicly consort with a self-confessed ‘almost like a psychotic’? To ingratiate himself with Donald Trump

Does Nigel Farage believe that US government black ops have caused a majority of male American frogs to become gay?

Fascinating though it is, the question won’t resonate on doorsteps during the European election campaign his Brexit Party is strongly fancied to win. But it wants addressing, all the same, after revelations about Farage’s connections to a colourfully idiosyncratic broadcaster.

Farage has joined Alex Jones of InfoWars on his radio programme, it emerges, more often than previously known. In one seminal appearance in April last year with the man now banned by most social media for his trenchant opinions, Farage identified the European Union’s potential to usher in a planet-wide government. The EU is “the prototype for the new world order”, he said, adding that “globalists have wanted some form of conflict with Russia as an argument for us all to surrender our national sovereignty… to a higher global level.”

If students of conspiracy theorising are waiting for the shoutouts to the Rothschilds and George Soros, I must disappoint them. There is no suggestion that Farage is antisemitic.

It is true that “globalist” and “new world order” can constitute a code that wouldn’t require Bletchley Park’s finest to decrypt it; and it is true that, 18 months ago, Farage told an LBC caller that American Jews are “in terms of money and influence a very powerful lobby”. Had Jeremy Corbyn used that formulation, it might have been interpreted as antisemitic. But there is no reason to imagine that Farage is anything other than a loyal friend to the Jews, let alone regards them as behind the plan to inflict a unitary central government on an unwilling world.

There is reason to wonder about his judgement in associating with Jones. In a few weeks, Farage could be a clear and present danger to the existing political settlement. A new domestic order may be imminent. A storming victory in the European elections would promote him from a marginal figure – albeit one who has startlingly influenced the course of British history – into a mainstream politician with his eyes on replacing the Conservatives as the dominant party of the right.

It isn’t hard to picture the sequence of events that would lead there. If the traumatised Tories replaced Theresa May with bookies’ favourite Boris Johnson, enough Conservative MPs have sworn to resign the whip to allow Corbyn to win a vote of no confidence. If Boris took his usual chaotic form in an ensuing general election, it is easy to imagine the Brexit Party picking up a number of seats. Factor in Labour’s vulnerability to Farage’s treachery rhetoric in the Brexity north of England, and it becomes easier.

Having cherry-picked the right seat to send him to Westminster at the 197th time of asking, he’d be in prime position to foment that sense of betrayal from the backbenches. If the Tories imploded, sucked into a black hole of their own creation, Farage would be the primary beneficiary.

None of the above is likely, but in such a volatile microclimate all is possible. It is plausible, at least, that Farage will soon be listed among the most powerful politicians in the land.

With this in mind, we must ask if he shares Jones’s beliefs about US government forays into population control. “The reason there’s so many gay people is because it’s a chemical warfare operation,” he declared in 2010, “and I have the government documents where they said they’re going to encourage homosexuality with chemicals so that people don’t have children.” Jones subsequently nuanced that theory, replacing the gay bomb with “chemicals in the water that turn the friggin’ frogs gay … The majority of frogs in most areas of the United States are now gay.” As if the threat to biodiversity wasn’t grave enough.

Jones, with whom Farage dined during the US election campaign (though he refused to let the meal be filmed), even more famously theorised that the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax. Later, when sued by parents of a victim, he deflected the suspicion of malevolent lunacy on novel grounds. What led him to make the assertion, he explained, was “a psychosis”. Or to quote him in full, “almost like a form of psychosis”.

So why would Nigel Farage publicly consort with a self-confessed almost like a psychotic? The most obvious answer is to ingratiate himself even further with Donald Trump.

In late 2015, presidential candidate Trump went on Jones’s show to tell him, “Your reputation is amazing.” Which it is. He added, “I won’t let you down.” Which he hasn’t.

But there is also the tantalising chance that Farage shares some of Jones’s more outre opinions. In one of his InfoWars turns, he identified climate change as a scam hatched by the new world order (the Bilderberg Group astonishingly being a central plank in that edifice) to facilitate pan-global government. To which same end, he suggested, “globalists” plan to cause a third world war.

In his defence, never once did he allude to the Illuminati. Whether that’s because he doesn’t believe in it, or because those homosexualising chemicals spread from the amphibian community to the reptile world and wiped out the giant lizards, isn’t clear.

But the next time he is interviewed by a conventional element of our media, the line of questioning might focus on establishing the extent of his conspiracy theorising – and how he reckons it compliments his visibly burgeoning ambition to bestride the mainstream like a slightly froggish, if impeccably straight, colossus.