SMOKERS’ CORNER: POPULISM BY DESIGN

Nigel Farage represents the latest populist spectre to haunt an established democracy: the United Kingdom (UK). He serves as a primary case study in how a populist can be manufactured to disrupt the status quo. Originally a member of the centre-right Conservative Party, Farage broke away in 1992 to co-found the UK Independence Party (UKIP). He steered the movement toward a staunchly Eurosceptic and anti-immigration platform. By 2014, he had successfully pressured the government into holding a referendum on UK’s membership of the European Union (EU). UKIP campaigned for the ‘Leave’ option. To the shock of the country’s establishment parties, 51.89 percent of the electorate voted for the UK to exit the EU (referred to as “Brexit”), catapulting Farage from the far-right fringes into the national mainstream. His political evolution continued with the formation of Reform UK. In the 2024 general election, Farage finally entered the British Parliament, despite Reform UK securing just 14.3 percent of the total vote. However, in the recent 2026 local elections, the party won a large number of council seats, sending shockwaves through Westminster. Some analysts now suggest that Reform UK could challenge for a majority in the 2029 general elections. Others argue that a coalition of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens could keep Reform UK from power, even if the party secures a plurality of seats. This tactic was famously used to sideline Geert Wilders in the Netherlands after his far-right populist party won a majority in 2023. The rise of Nigel Farage and Reform UK demonstrates how modern populists are constructed through strategic narratives of decline, grievance and cultural anxiety The making of a populist is rarely an organic occurrence. After closely studying the dynamics of populism for years, I posit that populists are largely manufactured. They are forged during crises, some genuine, others strategically engineered. The architects of populists utilise mainstr