Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

Across Britain, #NigelFarage is being hailed as a hero of the working class, sticking it to the elite. Let's take a look at the reality:
1. Farage's definition of being "skint" is receiving E100K a year as an MEP + the 6th-highest outside earnings of any member of the parliament

2. And that's before you count the undeclared donations from Arron Banks, exposed by Channel 4 News, that include:
- renting Farage a posh flat in Chelsea
- a fancy car with a driver
- luxury trips to the US

3. Farage's principal funder, Arron Banks, is (or claims to be) a multimillionaire. So is the chair of the Brexit Party, Richard Tice. It goes without saying that all three working-class heroes were privately educated.

4. Before his political career, Farage, the horny-handed son of toil, worked as a commodities trader for a number of powerful City firms.
The point is that Farage, Banks and Tice ARE the elite. They are beneficiaries of the low-regulation, low-tax environment they favour

The Brexit they want is highly beneficial to people of their kind, while highly damaging to almost everyone else. Yet, in common with fakers the world over, they have persuaded large numbers of much poorer people that they're on their side.

It seems blindingly obvious, when you know the facts. But there is no pool so shallow that millions won't drown in it.

People are drawn to these false friends partly because politics as usual hasn't spoken to them. To confront this dirty elite, we need a dynamic, radical politics, that decisively turns its back on big money and elite power, and is everything they claim to be but aren't.

Labour in its current incarnation looked as if it was moving into this space, but it has faltered badly on Brexit. Just when clarity was most needed, it has been deliberately obscure. Fence-sitting is exactly what Corbyn was not meant to do.