\n<\/p>\n
The crowd of 800 cheered as pyrotechnics lit up the theater stage in Clacton-on-Sea, a faded English seaside town, and the lyrics of an Eminem song boomed out: \u201cGuess who\u2019s back, back again?\u201d<\/p>\n
The answer is Nigel Farage, supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, Brexit campaigner and Britain\u2019s best known political disrupter, who leads a new insurgent party that rails against immigration and promises to upend Britain\u2019s impending general election. Never before elected to the British Parliament, Mr. Farage is running to represent the Clacton area, and opinion surveys suggest he has a strong chance of winning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe establishment are terrified, the Conservatives are terrified,\u201d Mr. Farage declared gleefully, referring to the governing party, which trails badly in opinion polls ahead of the July 4 election. Britain was \u201ca broken nation,\u201d he added, in a speech attacking targets ranging from asylum seekers to the BBC.<\/p>\n
A polarizing, pugilistic figure and a highly skilled communicator, Mr. Farage, 60, helped the Conservatives to a landslide victory in the last general election by not running candidates from his Brexit Party in certain key areas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This time his plan is rather different. He wants to destroy the Tories by poaching much of their vote, then replace \u2014 or take over \u2014 the party\u2019s remnants. Early in the campaign, after a journalist asked if he wanted to merge Reform with the Conservatives, he replied: \u201cMore like a takeover, dear boy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Farage has tried and failed seven times to be elected to Britain\u2019s Parliament, and his party, Reform U.K., is unlikely to win more than a handful of seats under an electoral system that punishes small parties.<\/p>\n But for two decades he has shaped Britain\u2019s political conversation, driving the Brexit cause, outflanking the Tories and pushing them further right. A win<\/a> in Clacton could anoint him as a power broker in the battle for the soul of the Conservative Party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In an interview last week in his Clacton campaign office above an arcade, Mr. Farage was relaxed and confident, joking and clearly enjoying his return to frontline politics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe thing we look to is Canada in \u201993 where Reform in effect reverse took over the existing conservative party,\u201d said Mr. Farage, referring to 1993 elections when another insurgent party, after which Reform U.K. is named, helped crush the established Progressive Conservatives. \u201cThat\u2019s a possible model,\u201d he said, adding that, alternatively, Reform might grow organically over the next five years.<\/p>\n Clacton is the last stop on a rail line northeast of London. Its history has been intertwined with Mr. Farage\u2019s since 2014, when a Conservative lawmaker, Douglas Carswell, defected<\/a> to the populist U.K. Independence Party, which Mr. Farage then led. Mr. Carswell won re-election, becoming one of two lawmakers ever to represent UKIP in Britain\u2019s Parliament.<\/p>\n The town, which had high levels of unemployment and poverty, became a focus for policymakers and columnists trying to understand the surge of populist politics. In 2016, Clacton voted by almost 70 percent to leave the European Union.<\/p>\n Mr. Farage told me Clacton was \u201cthe end of the line\u201d but also a place where folk \u201cfeel very, very, English, really identify with being English \u2014 and there is obviously some mourning for the glory days of the seaside.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 2019 Giles Watling, a Conservative, was elected with 72 percent of the vote. In normal times, his 25,000 majority would be almost unassailable. But these are not normal times for the Conservatives. And in the 2019 election, Mr. Farage\u2019s Brexit Party did not run here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Watling did not respond to requests for an interview but Chris Griffiths, a Conservative activist, conceded that Mr. Farage \u201chad lit up what was probably going to be a very drab campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n Maurice Alexander, another Conservative activist, whose parents came to Britain from Belgium around the time of the Second World War, was less positive about Mr. Farage. \u201cHe frightens me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Immigration featured prominently in Mr. Farage\u2019s speech in Clacton, as in most of his speeches. \u201cOur quality of life has diminished for every single one of us as a result of this population explosion,\u201d he thundered, adding, \u201cThe time has come to stand up and say \u2018enough is enough.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Earlier that day, the Labour Party candidate, Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, was knocking on doors.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a lot of anti-Farage, there is a lot of pro-Farage,\u201d said Mr. Owusu-Nepaul, 27, who was born in Birmingham and has Ghanaian and Jamaican heritage. He said the reception from voters had been largely positive, but that he was also sometimes a victim of the \u201cdog whistle stuff that Farage has been quite effective at using.\u201d Just that day, he had been told, \u201cGo home, we don\u2019t want you here, immigrants out,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI think Farage coming here has inflamed a level of tension,\u201d he added. \u201cThe consequences of what he says have outcomes \u2014 and they have outcomes for people like me, they have outcomes for people like my friends, they have outcomes for people I don\u2019t even know exist in this country, but will be kind of tormented by the type of rhetoric he espouses.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Farage has criticized a 2019 social media conversation<\/a> in which an American student posted: \u201cGoing into 2020 I\u2019m going to continue to be vocal about how to tackle racism and the fact I drink white man tears on a regular basis.\u201d Mr. Owusu-Nepaul replied to the comment with: \u201cMy favourite drink.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Owusu-Nepaul said his comment was a joke, taken out of context.<\/p>\n On the morning of his rally, Mr. Farage visited a breakfast club for veterans in Clacton where he enjoyed a fry-up of bacon, fried bread, black pudding and baked beans. \u201cHe is listening to veterans, he knows what we want,\u201d said David Bye, who served in the navy and organizes the club.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Other fans include Lynn Tuckwell, a retired beautician who attended a later meeting. A Brexit voter, she said she felt disappointed with the results but did not blame Mr. Farage. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t Nigel\u2019s fault, the Conservatives didn\u2019t deliver Brexit. Nigel got us Brexit, and he\u2019s come out of retirement to get us out of this mess.\u201d<\/p>\n Nationally, Mr. Farage prompts distaste as well as admiration. After saying that the expansion of the European Union and NATO had provoked the war in Ukraine<\/a>, he was fiercely criticized across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n Reform\u2019s candidates have crossed other lines, with one saying that Britain should have remained neutral in the fight against the Nazis<\/a>, and another using antisemitic tropes<\/a> and claiming that Jewish groups were \u201cagitating for the mass import into England of Muslims.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u2018The end of the line’<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018The consequences of what he says have outcomes\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n