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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

It's remarkable how much both Trump and Farage are cults of personality. I don't think they could easily be replaced. I wonder if Brexit would have happened if Farage hadn't survived his plane crash? Or would the media elect another figurehead to put on all the talk shows?

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> I wonder if Brexit would have happened if Farage hadn't survived his plane crash? Or would the media elect another figurehead to put on all the talk shows?

Seeing as the difference was 1.89%, even marginally less effective campaigning would've doubtless resulted in a vote to remain in the EU.

Almost certainly not, given how close the vote was.

Is there are cult of personality around Farage? He is an effective campaigner as previous comments said, but its not personal charisma or adulation.

On the other hand Trump supporters so seem to think he is absolutely wonderful - some sort of messiah.

Farage is a great speaker, and is extremely good at making what he's saying seem the truth, even if it's not so.

But it's far from the support people have for Trump.

Farage is quite reasonable on many policy positions also and reflects the views of quite a lot of the British public who would prefer traditional values, less immigration and the like. While I don't think I'd vote for him personally he has a good chance of being the next PM.

I think its also that people greatly dislike the big parties, and have turned away from the Blair/Cameron "centrist" consensus.

AT the last election the parties that got the biggest increases in their share of the vote were Reform and Green. Two very different parties and they have little in common other than not being Labour or the Conservatives. I suspect they would have done even better without a FPTP system.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/results (scroll down to see a graph of changes in vote percentage of votes cast).

Reform support is too broad geographically and demographically that Farage has very little chance of being the next PM, unless the UK changes from FPTP. They take votes away from the Conservatives much more than they do Labour. This is why Cameron and Boris both buckled to UKIP/BrexitParty/Reform, but Starmer doesn't need to.

FPTP also benefits parties with strong regional hotspots, such as Labour in cities.

The evidence is the chain of parties that Farage has been through. The support follows him, leaving the previous party as an empty shell.

Yeah, they're quite _different_. I'd call Farage very good at what he does (lying, largely), but he doesn't have the same sort of cult of personality as Trump (or for that matter Musk).

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