Nigel Farage went to Brentwood, and not a word of truth came out

The last time I was in the Sugar Hut, I watched a man arguing he shouldn’t be thrown out for throwing chewing gum in a barmaid’s hair. It was far more convincing than this

See it up close and British politics always looks the same: small rooms, small crowds, small people, small faces.

Read the breathless dispatches from the Faragist front line, of which there have been plenty, and they’ll tell you this is a revolution. This, 50 strange men and women, shoved into half a corner of a nightclub at 11 o’clock in the morning, outnumbered, as ever, by journalists, is Britain’s Arab Spring – minus the Arabs, obviously, as if you needed to be told that.

The revolution was in a supermarket car park in Merthyr Tydfil the night before. Tomorrow it’ll be in some sort of civic centre in Wolverhampton.

If you’ve got nothing else to be doing before noon – being retired helps – there’s a fair chance you too can find your way to a small rented room somewhere near you, to wile away 20 minutes or so being lied to by Nigel Farage.

It was lies, from start to finish, obviously. All of it. Every word. Not a syllable emitted even the faintest blip on the radar of truth.

The last time I entered the Sugar Hut in Brentwood was 13 years ago, where I instantly saw a young man forcefully arguing against his ejection for having accidentally thrown chewing gum into a barmaid’s hair. He’d been aiming high over her head and into the bin by the fridge, but drink had been taken, and the parabolic trajectory the spent Wrigley’s would ultimately describe was not as intended.

Trapped somewhere between denial and bargaining, he had by this point accepted he had a) been chewing gum and b) thrown chewing gum in the barmaid’s direction. But the chewing gum in the barmaid’s hair was still, somehow, absolutely nothing to do with him.

If you’d told me then, that the next time I’d be back would be to listen to an even less convincing argument, it’s fair to say I’d have expressed surprise. But, it was only 2006 then. It’s 2019 now, and we are so far post-truth that whatever truth there was sunk below the horizon in the rear view mirror long ago.

“What we have seen is the most extraordinary political stitch-up,” Farage bellowed. “Our parliament are determined not to give us a clean-break Brexit.” They all cheered, obviously. That three years ago, no one was more determined than Farage not to give us a clean-break Brexit is ancient history now. Back then, come the negotiations with the EU, “we can do a lot better than Norway” is the line he would use. The BBC had the temerity to play this clip to him on Sunday morning, so now he’s branded it “the enemy”.

There’s precious little new about this. Farage has been going round the country telling lies for getting on for three decades. He has merely expanded to fill the space available.

“I haven’t fought for 25 years to be turned over by dishonest politicians,” he shouted, to cheers. And in a way, who can blame him, or his fans? He, at least, is selling a simple lie. That a vote for him is a vote for no-deal Brexit, and anything but no-deal Brexit now counts as a betrayal. It’s drivel, course it is. But drivel is all that’s on offer.

The Labour Party is or isn’t in favour of a second referendum depending on which member of its front bench you speak to at what time of day. It is all things to all people and nothing to anyone. Should anyone be surprised that the simplest, most brazen lie is the one that is heard above all else?

And this little revolution is about “more than Brexit” now, we learned for the hundredth time. “It’s about democracy, it’s about whether we are a democratic nation.” We are, very obviously, a democratic nation. What we are, more specifically, is one of those democratic nations that’s got a right-wing individual marching around it, shouting the word “democracy” as a pretext through which to try and smash up its carefully honed nuances and complexities.

“This is about how the rest of the world looks at us,” he went on. “We used to be a respected nation. Now we’re a laughing stock.”

Later on, as he signed placards for adoring fans, a Canadian TV journalist would ask him whether he was in any way responsible for turning Britain into a laughing stock.

“No,” he said. “Because my name’s not Theresa May. I don’t want Britain to be a laughing stock. I want it to be a proper, independent country.” Canada, he would explain, would never do what Britain has done, never give up sovereignty in the way Britain has. Canada would never turn itself into a laughing stock.

So that’s clear then. In the EU: laughing stock. Leave the EU: proper, respected country. It’s just, well, no one’s laughing at the French are they? Or the Germans? Or indeed anyone. They’re just laughing at us, laughing at us for ever having been taken in by the grandest phony of them all.