Could Brexit Lead to Britain’s First Pro-Smoking Prime Minister?

Nigel Farage speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland.

Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY 2.0

All eyes are on Nigel Farage and his pro-smoking Brexit stance in the UK. By Bob Crew, TI London Correspondent

Few politicians anywhere in Britain or Europe, or even in the World, have been more closely identified with the party they lead than Britain’s Brexit Party leader and founder, Nigel Farage.

Much, if not most, of that party’s astonishing success thus far has been a product of the Farage brand, which is a straight-talking, Everyman image, grinning with a pint of beer or a cigarette (sometimes both) in hand. He is the first and only politician in modern times to identify himself as a cheerful pro-smoker and happy boozer also.

His ‘man in the pub’ image and disdain for political correctness has left him free as a bird in flight to attack his rivals for being a bunch of mechanical and complacent stooges, clones and creeps who are all overly on-message.

True to his image and his message as an outspoken saloon bar philosopher, smoking his head off much of the time, he has also got into plenty of political fights. But these are all scraps that he has won and not lost, emerging more than any other as the one who has got Britain out of the EU (go watch his videos on YouTube, brilliantly ridiculing and satirizing European MEPs in Brussels and walking rings round them).

Also: Standing up to “World Health Organization bullies,” without, as yet, losing any votes on that account; opposing smoking bans in his beloved English pubs and beer gardens and reminding the British public that smokers are also voters who have their rights.

Brexiteers Rights

Also having rights are, of course, the 17 million voters who gave him and Britain’s Leave Campaign the victory that it needed to get out of the European Union in the first place. Farage showed the way and lead the charge. As a result, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May resigned, seen off by Farage and others similarly persuaded. seen off also by her own massive incompetence.

Her predecessor Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron resigned before her when he lost his not so clever referendum to keep Britain in the EU, describing Farage back then as “a madeyed loon,” albeit not one who has not had his eye much more on the political ball than David Cameron.

It is Farage who set the Brexit ball rolling in the UK with his Ukip fringe party more than two decades ago.

It is Farage who set the Brexit ball rolling in the UK with his Ukip fringe party more than two decades ago. He has now turned into a mainstream Brexit Party that is chiefly all about him and his political style, and it is Farage who is now a powerful political force to be reckoned with in Britain and Europe.

He is the pacesetter who has made it all happen. And do you know what? King-size smoker Farage and his Brexit Party are now in position in the UK to quite possibly win the next election.

That might make Farage Britain’s first pro-smoking Prime Minister, now that the polls currently suggest that the mainstream parties—and the reigning Conservative Party in particular—are losing popularity and may be dead in the water and in danger of losing votes in the millions, while Farage and his Brexiteers are winning them hands down. His party is now possibly on track to become the second largest in the UK soon, if not the largest.

While Boris Johnson is the Conservative Party Brexiteer and favorite to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May, the real question is whether there will be any party left for him to lead after millions of Conservative voters have defected to other parties—including the Brexit Party, of course, and also the Lib-Dems—now that Theresa May has screwed up so badly. Farage has called her “the worst Prime Minister Britain has ever had,” and there are plenty of Conservatives who agree with him.

While Boris Johnson and other Conservative Brexiteers have seen which way the Farage/Ukip/Brexit wind has been blowing—and joined it arguably for opportunistic reasons—Farage is the one solid man who has remained absolutely true to that cause and is regarded therefore as the most sincere Brexiteer of all.

Line Forms to the Right

For these reasons, all eyes are on Farage in the weeks and months ahead and his pro-smoking Brexit stance in the UK. If Farage comes out on top, Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party may be going cap in hand to him for a job, and who knows what others may have to get in line!

But they will have to smoke a very big pipe of peace with him if they do: He is not looking for old-guard fellow travelers who have been snubbing and deriding him for a couple of decades already! [TI]