Thread by @Usherwood

In the grand arc of Farage's political career, today marks an important moment

1/

Until now, a key part of his rhetoric has been based on the argument that none of the other parties offer an acceptable EU policy, tapping into wider discontents with politics and disconnection with elites

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Sure, that meant a long time standing on the edge of the debate, chipping away at CON internal tensions, but ultimately it brought him to a much more consequential level of importance in the 2010s

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By exposing the failings of both LAB and CON over the past decades, he was able to mobilise a mix of personal truth-speaking and organisational networking to secure very strong results in #EP2010 and #EP2014

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Even #GE2015 - despite FPTP's barriers - showed he had a (non-territorial) constituency for his message, which was always as much about the failings of the system as it was about the perils of the EU

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#EURef changed that, by compromising his core message: for many, voting to Leave went leave was happening, so what's the point of Farage?

Even casting a new message of elite failings to deliver that Leave didn't connect as well

6/

The vertiginous decline of UKIP highlights the importance of the man to this

My recent piece discusses this further: academia.edu/38967833/Shoot…

7/

Yes, Farage has pushed for electoral pacts before, but never successfully.

However, until now, that failure has never resulted in an unwinding of positions/candidates

8/

Yes, there's much inconsistency in Farage's position today (why divide the CON vote in any constituency?), but it marks an explicit acceptance that someone else might have the answers

9/

That this explicitness is framed by a discussion of whether Johnson keeps his promises shows how sub-optimal this all is for Farage

10/

If we want explanations, then it has to be partly about the fading momentum of BXP of late, but also about Farage's own future

11/

For Farage, if his future as a pundit looks brighter than as a politician, then stepping away from an election where his party might open the door to #PeoplesVote (which makes no-deal v.much less likely) looks quite sensible

12/

In sum, Farage might have just given up on making the political weather

/end