Nigel Farage is on the wrong side of public opinion over the riots

The Reform leader is a most unpopular populist, writes John Rentoul

The truth about Farage is that he is not a very good demagogue (PA)

Nigel Farage’s first reaction to the riots was to tell Keir Starmer he was wrong to blame them on the “far right”. It was striking that the leader of Reform seemed to be more concerned with a political label than with condemning the violence.

We know what he meant: that people are so upset about immigration that he can understand why they might riot, even though he personally wouldn’t go that far. And of course, he has a point – it is not “far right” to think that immigration has been too high. It is, however, racist to respond to the killings of three girls at a dance class in Southport by throwing bricks at a mosque.

That is how demagoguery works: it starts with a reasonable point and twists it. But the truth about Farage is that he is not a very good demagogue. For a “populist” he is surprisingly unpopular.

A YouGov opinion poll on Tuesday found that most people think that the rioters are “thugs”, “racist” and “far right”. Those are the words chosen by 67 per cent, 58 per cent and 52 per cent. It would seem that the British people, even though they do tend to think that immigration has been too high, can separate that view from the use of violence as an expression of it.

Only 16 per cent of people think that the rioters are “people with legitimate concerns”.

We should give Farage credit, therefore, for being more explicit than before in a new video on Tuesday that he is opposed to violence: “Thugs setting fire to hotels, migrant hotels, with people in them is just wrong. We do not support – I do not support street protest, violence or thuggery in any way, and that’s why for 30 years I’ve fought elections, because I believe that democracy is the peaceful way to solve problems.”

And yet he cannot just leave it there. He has to go on with the narrative of grievance that helps sustain precisely what he condemns. He said that Starmer and Priti Patel are “wrong” to deny that the police are racially biased: “Most of us think that ethnic minority groups are policed entirely differently from white British people. That is what the country thinks, that is what the country feels, and there is evidence to back it up.”

In fact, he is the one who is wrong. He is wrong about the facts: Black people were four times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than white people last year. And he is wrong about the perception: by 52 per cent to 34 per cent the British public say the police have handled the recent riots “well”.

Starmer and Patel, on the other hand, are right. Patel, who was home secretary at the time of the Black Lives Matter protests, pointed out: “There’s a clear difference between blocking streets or roads being closed [and] burning down libraries, hotels or food banks and attacking places of worship.”

Farage is a classic demagogue, dealing in emotive half-truths and conspiracy theories, stirring up grievances but failing to offer solutions. In the latest video, he asks: “Do we want to deal with the symptom or solve the problem?” But when he was asked to explain how his “one in, one out” policy to “end mass immigration” would work in a TV debate in the election campaign, he became incoherent. And on the specific problem of “undocumented young men crossing the English Channel”, he has no better ideas than either this government or the last one.

The crowning irony of Farage’s video is that he suggests that Starmer has a weak democratic mandate because the government was supported by only 34 per cent of those who voted, which is 20 per cent of the whole electorate. On that basis, only 8.5 per cent of the whole electorate voted for Reform. As I say, for a populist, he is remarkably unpopular.