Nigel Farage’s class war

I initially thought Nigel Farage had made a mistake in unveiling Mark Reckless on the final day of his party conference. Wouldn’t it have been more disruptive to announce the news during the Conservative party conference?

But after spending the first half of the week with the Tories in Birmingham, I now think it was the right decision. It put the fear of God into the party faithful. The dominant topic of conversation at the bar of the Hyatt Regency was who would be next? My colleague Dan Hodges compared the atmosphere to the Antarctic research station in The Thing, the horror film in which an alien takes on human form before transforming into a giant insect. You could never be certain the Tory MP you were talking to wouldn’t suddenly tear off his mask to reveal a purple monster.

I’ve met Nigel Farage several times and enjoy his company a good deal, but it’s hard to dismiss the suspicion that this is what he got into politics for. Forget about securing Britain’s exit from the EU. After all, our best hope of doing that is to vote Conservative and get a referendum in 2017. What really excites him is messing with David Cameron’s head. Not because he hates him, but because it’s a way of forcing the Prime Minister to pay attention to him. He wants Cameron to regret not showing people like him more respect. To borrow another film metaphor, he’s like the villain in The Incredibles who devotes his life to destroying his hero after being rejected by him as a boy. Somewhere deep in Farage’s psyche is what Freud called a ‘narcissistic scar’ — an irreparable blow to his self-esteem that has left him with an unquenchable rage.