What Happened to Shame in Politics?
In the Age of Farage, Trump and Johnson, Deception Became Currency and Scandal Marketing Strategy
Nigel Farage is a raging hypocrite. This is not news to anyone - he’s always been one, he always will be one. He’s spent his entire career treating politics and political life as though it was a particularly grubby branch of show-business, except with fewer jokes and far, far more flags.
This week we’ve found ourselves back in Clacton1, where the man of pint-and-fag shtick owns a house. Or he doesn’t. Well, his girlfriend does - somehow. It’s a messy situation that’s slowly being unravelled around questions about the SDLT that was paid and whether it was the right amount - and quite appropriate ones at that.
But, none of that actually matters.
Because, I’m afraid to say, regardless of what the truth of the matter is, I can tell you the ending already:
It. Won’t. Matter.
Old Nige will huff and puff, he’ll look at journalists with a wounded expression and loudly say “How dare you!” in a way that feels like it’s been honed over decades, and within 24 hours, he’ll be back in front of a camera, telling us he, and only he, can be trusted in politics. And his supporters will instantly lap it up.
This is the true story, and one of the great issues of our time - not whether Farage is guilty of doing anything dodgy, but that it simply doesn’t matter anymore. Accountability, as a concept, is for other people. For him, scandal is a business model, not a weakness.
He’s not alone either - this has become a whole damned genre in public life. A global franchise of sorts.
Boris Johnson, as an example - a man who lied so many times he turned it into nothing short of a performance art. He lied about Partygate, he lied about proroguing parliament, he lied about Brexit, he lied about Northern Ireland, he lied about… well, everything he possibly could really. That man lied so often you half-expected him to deny his own damned existence while on the despatch box.
He was caught. Every. Single. Damned. Time.
And each time he would bluster in broken Latin, guffaw a little bit, and shrug it off. It took his own MPs to finally prise his fingernails off the doorframe of Number 10, and even then he managed to leave with a column, a book deal a speaking tour and a book full of very handy contacts that he’s clearly been making use of - while still having his supporters and defenders tell you with a straight face that he had been “ambushed by cake.”
On the other side of the Atlantic, we have the Geriatric Orange Game Show Host who, it must be said, is the undisputed champion of this particular game. Now 8 months into his second presidency he has continued his favourite game of gaslighting a nation with the gusto most people reserve for breathing.
He has claimed he has ended six wars in the first six months of his presidency (he hasn’t). He has deeply, repeatedly and ever more fervently denied that he ever drew the spine-chillingly gross Epstein card. He is still trying to sell the idea that his tariffs imposed on most countries in the world will ultimately be paid by the people who the tariffs have been placed on. He insists that he, and he alone, is the man to save democracy while actively taking a blowtorch to it. And he does it on a daily basis - fabrications, exaggerations, fairy tales. Fact checkers can’t keep up, and all their work is for nought, because his supporters just do not care and seem far more likely to cheer him on than to raise an eyebrow. To them, every new lie is proof of persecution, every indictment proof of martyrdom.
In Brazil, just to prove that satire is truly redundant, Jair Bolsonaro, caught pretty much red-handed planning a coup was sentenced by the Supreme Court to 27 years in prison, which should, for all intents and purposes, be a political death knell. But no. There are still supporters, both abroad and in Brazil, calling him their leader, flying his flags, still muttering darkly about conspiracies - if anything, he’s gained a new status: Not Criminal, but Saint of Grievance.
What passes for right-wing leadership today is the ability to treat consequences like they’re optional extras. Johnson the clown. Trump the carnival baker. Bolsonaro the coup-plotting zealot. Farage the pub-bore turned politician.
I would laugh if it weren’t so incredibly dangerous.
Because on the other side of politics, accountability still occasionally shines through. Angela Rayner resigned within a week of reporting about her underpayment of SDLT - a week! The Labour Deputy PM was gone faster than a tray of sausage rolls at a constituency social because she had made a tax error and she accepted that it was the right thing to do to step aside.
She didn’t scream “witch hunt”. She didn’t wave around a pint on GB News. She just… went. Compare that to Farage, who could be caught red handed inflating receipts in crayon2 and would still be noisily wheeled out by his supporters as the sheer embodiment of honest Britain.
And this feels like it’s at the centre of the issue - on the nominal left, shame still sometimes functions, while on the right it appears to have been surgically removed. Left-wing politicians resign for errors that would hardly make the right blink. Louis Haigh left within days of the phone dodginess being found out. Rushanara Ali was gone as homelessness minister in an eye-blink when it turned out that she had acted far too much like a Victorian landlord than what would have been expected of a politician with any sort of morals. Angela Rayner bows out over an underpayment.
Accountability, by and large, still bites. On the right? Lying, cheating, grifting, plotting coups - nothing. At the very best, it’s denied - at worst, it’s actively celebrated.
There’s a psychology behind this as well - the political right has spent years teaching its supporters that institutions, above all, are the enemy. Courts, regulators, parliament, the media - every single one of them painted somehow as illegitimate. The moment that this particular message stuck, it was game over. Why would you ever accept the authority of institutions again? If you are convinced the ref is bent, you never need to acknowledge the foul. Which is why when Farage, Trump, Bolsonaro or Johnson get caught, they don’t apologise - they just cry foul harder. They accuse their enemies of conspiracy, spin the scandal itself into yet more proof that they alone are pure and trustworthy and their supporters swallow it up.
Nom, nom, nom.
Their grievance politics have made a complete pantomime of public life - and we, as the viewers, are stuck watching it. Farage grumbling like Widow Twankey dressed in a Union Jack suit. Johnson gurning like he’s in an Ealing comedy remake. Trump stomping3 through the laws of gravity like they don’t apply to him. They’re caricatures, and yet the all still wield incredible power.
And all the while the lies continue unabated. The Brexit lies that built this mess. The lies about the NHS bus, about easy trade deals and enough sovereignty for us all to instantly be plopped into the age of Victoriana. These lies that now sit rotting in plain sight while their architects sip wine on TV panels and may occasionally mutter “but this is not the Brexit we voted for”. Not one of them has been in any meaningful form been held to account - not Farage, not Johnson, not Rees-Mogg, not Gove. None of them. The entire Brexit project was a sham that would have (and should have) ended most political careers anywhere else in the world, but instead, launched half a dozen very fruitful speaking careers.
Accountability will only ever work if people demand it - that’s the truth of this, however frustrating that feels. The right has inoculated it’s base against shame. Everything becomes a witch hunt. Every scandal proof of persecution, every conviction, resignation, prison sentence a badge of honour. And so the grift, as ever, continues.
Nigel Farage will be fine, whatever the outcome is of the Clacton House saga. He’ll sneer, he’ll bloviate, he’ll dodge and he’ll pretend to be the victim. He’ll carry on as he always has, because like Trump and Johnson, he knows he can. Johnson got away with his lies until he physically couldn’t anymore. Trump will lie his way through the white house for a second time. Bolsonaro is now practically a folk-hero for his base.
As I’m sitting here writing this, I can’t help but wonder, and not for the first time, what will political scientists of the future make of this period we’re living through? Will they officially label it the post-truth era, a time when accountability was made optional, politics was reduced to shallow performance and the truth was cast as a mere inconvenience?
Will they see it as the point at which our institutions faltered, not for a lack of evidence, but because the people they were meant to hold to account simply stopped giving a shit?
They’ll puzzle, I suspect, over how a whole generation could accept leaders who treated lies as currency and scandal as marketing. They’ll ask all of us who lived through this time why it was possible for Farage to keep sneering, for Johnson to keep guffawing, Trump to keep on lying and Bolsonaro to keep on plotting - and ask why their supporters cheered louder with every new revelation of moral shortfalling.
Maybe the textbooks will soften it up - rewrite it in academic language. I hope they don’t. I hope they’re honest and say what really happened.
They got away with it because we let them.
Somewhere Nigel himself seems rather loathe to go.
This is hyperbole, I’m obviously not making a claim here that he did.
Somewhat lopsidedly - someone should look into that.
This piece is important to me. Why don't I like Farage, Trump, Johnson?
They lie. Continuously. Shamelessly. Because what is important to them isn't debate or policy, it's obtaining power by any means.
Angela Rayner makes a mistake on her tax declaration, and resigns.
Farage actively arranges his finances to avoid the very same tax, and tells the press it's none of their business, how dare they ask such questions, nothing to see here, etc.
This, I think, is why I don't like or trust these people. They are demonstrably liars, so anything they say should be treated with a large dose of scepticism.
Don't trust them. They lie because the truth means actually having make policy in the real world, with all the compromises and complexities that entails. And they can't do either.
Bang on dear Bear 🐻 👏👏👏👏👏👏!!!