This week brought us yet another example of Nigel Farage’s signature move: transforming a routine court ruling into a culture-war weapon soaked in lies. His response to the Epping court decision reveals something much darker than mere political opportunism. It reveals the systematic poisoning of public discourse by a man who treats truth as an optional extra in his quest for power.
I can’t be the only one here who sees a grotesque irony in Farage holding himself out as some kind of arch protector of British patriotism while systematically undermining the very values on which our nation stands. He’s like an arsonist who sets fire to a building before putting on a stolen fireman’s uniform to tell the media how dreadfully destructive the blaze is. His latest performance – falsely claiming Friday’s Court of Appeal ruling proves “the government has used ECHR against the people of Epping” – is textbook disinformation dressed up as patriotic outrage. (The X post spreading this lie has been viewed 1.5 million times at the time of writing.)
Anyone who cares to consult the formal record of the court decision will immediately see the plain and simple truth. Three senior judges corrected legal errors made by a lower court, applying domestic planning law principles that have existed for decades. The European Convention on Human Rights barely featured in their reasoning. When it WAS mentioned, the judges explicitly dismissed it as irrelevant. (But why let facts interfere with a good lie when there are votes to be harvested?)
The weaponisation of ignorance
If Farage has any genius at all, it is in his ruthless ability to exploit the gap between legal complexity and public understanding. Most ordinary people will never read a court judgement, but they’ll remember his soundbite: “Illegal migrants have more rights than the British people.” It’s punchy, memorable, and completely false. The asylum seekers in question have a legal right to have their claims considered – a right enshrined in British law passed by the British Parliament, not imposed by European courts.
Make no mistake, this isn’t accidental confusion. It’s deliberate and repeated manipulation that follows a now very familiar pattern: take a grain of legitimate concern, wrap it in false claims, and point the finger at whichever scapegoats benefit you most. Remember the £350 million for the NHS bus? The claims about EU army conscription? His misinformation about the Southport attacker that helped fuel nationwide riots – each lie follows the same play.
This Epping case shows us who Farage really is. Here, he transforms genuine local concerns about consultation and planning processes into ammunition for broader culture-war narratives about immigration. And questions about the terms of a hotel’s licence into claims about European law overriding British sovereignty. Truth becomes just another casualty in his routine dismissal of reality.
The performance of patriotism
What makes Farage’s lies particularly nauseating is how he cloaks them in patriotic language. He positions himself as defender of “the people of Epping” against faceless European bureaucrats, when the actual dispute was dealt with by British judges applying British law in British courts. It’s more of the poisonous pantomime patriotism I touched on in my recent Substack contrasting patriotic displays here and in Ukraine.
This performative brand of nationalism has become the far-right’s weapon of choice around the world. Farage is just one of many authoritarian populists honing their craft, repackaging complex policy questions as tribal loyalty tests. Insisting that being patriotic means believing Farage’s lies, while respecting facts and the rule of law becomes treasonous elite betrayal.
The irony is that, while Farage and his obsequious wing-man Matt Goodwin energetically fan the flames of their entirely manufactured ‘elite betrayal’ narrative, the REAL betrayal comes from them. When political leaders and their grifting outriders spread false information about court rulings, they attack the very foundations of democratic governance, and betray the people who rely on them. They teach ordinary people to distrust the very institutions that protect THEIR rights. They turn patriotism from love of country into hatred of neighbours, and open the door to a particularly ugly type of social unrest.
The democracy-destroying machine
Farage’s misinformation machine operates with industrial efficiency. If it wasn’t so utterly destructive, I might be tempted to tip my hat to its exquisite design. A court makes a routine procedural correction, and within hours it becomes evidence of European tyranny. Each lie builds on previous lies, creating alternative realities where European courts run Britain, where asylum seekers receive preferential treatment, where traditional British values are under assault from shadowy globalist forces.
Farage offers simple explanations for complex problems, identifies clear villains behind all the world’s woes, and the comforting illusion that everything would be better if only we could return to an imagined golden age when Britain was truly British. It’s a fantasy, but it’s seductive – especially for people who feel left behind by economic and social change.
The stakes for democratic culture
But the fact it’s understandable doesn’t mean we should accept it. We should be pushing back vigorously against it. What Farage represents isn’t just another shade of conservative politics – it’s something qualitatively different and much more dangerous. Traditional political disagreements in our country took place within shared frameworks of truth and institutional legitimacy. Farage’s approach torches those frameworks entirely leaving those who wish to engage in good faith with no solid points of reference.
When he lies about court rulings, he’s not just being dishonest about one case – he’s teaching his supporters to view the entire legal system as corrupted by foreign influence. When he misidentifies asylum seekers as “illegal migrants,” he’s encouraging people to see desperate human beings as criminal invaders. This matters because democracy depends on people with opposing views sharing enough common ground to have meaningful debates. Once that is destroyed, democratic politics becomes impossible…and authoritarians have free reign.
The choice before us
I know I bang on about this all the time (sorry!) but Britain faces a stark choice about the kind of political culture we want. We can demand that political leaders engage honestly with facts, even when inconvenient. We can insist that patriotism means respecting institutions that protect our freedoms, and not mindlessly waving flags while attacking judges and spreading lies about courts. Or we can continue down Farage’s path, where truth becomes negotiable, where lies wrapped in patriotic rhetoric count as legitimate discourse, where governing a modern democracy gets reduced to reality-TV performance art designed to generate clicks and votes.
The Epping ruling was a narrow procedural correction by judges applying established legal principles. Nothing more, nothing less. That Farage could transform it into evidence of European conspiracy tells us everything about his relationship with truth – and everything about the threat he represents to the democratic culture that makes Britain worth defending.
His lies might continue to spread. But we don’t have to listen to them. And we should not let them define us.