Republished with permission from Florida Phoenix, by Diane Roberts

Immigrants are to blame for potholes.

Not a lot of people know that.

But Nigel Farage, Britain’s top Trump fanboy and OG Brexiteer, knows.

He likes to accuse those pesky foreigners of causing traffic jams, medical waiting lists, and probably dandruff, too.

This guy used to be a member of the Conservative Party, but decided it was too soft on Johnny Foreigner. Better to make up his own parties.

Several of them.

Farage is running for Parliament as head of the U.K.’s xenophobic (and frankly unhinged) Reform Party, a political outfit that began as the U.K. Independence Party, morphed into the Brexit Party, and has now been revivified, like a bug you just can’t stomp hard enough, into Reform.

Farage swore he wasn’t going to stand for election this year, saying he planned to be in America “helping” Donald Trump. He even claimed Trump was giving him a campaign job.

(Wonder if he thought he was going to get paid?)

These two are soulmates: racist, misogynist, proudly ignorant, and epically obnoxious—no wonder they get along so well.

Then Farage had second thoughts: Was it the 34 felonies?

In any case, he decided he’d quite like to be a Member of Parliament after all.

He’s tried and failed to get elected no fewer than seven times, but hey, maybe this is his year!

A substantial chunk of the population had hoped Farage would bugger off to the U.S. and leave poor Blighty alone, but no: He’s sticking around to rally white folks who, like him, blame foreigners for hangnails, rain on Saturdays, and the army of slugs eating the summer roses.

‘Cult of Churchill’

Farage and his crew are an electoral threat—not to Labour, which is almost certain to win the election on July 4, but his former Tory colleagues.

Polls show Reform is more popular with Conservative voters over 55 than their own party.

This despite one of Reform’s candidates recently mouthing off about how the British should have accepted Hitler’s offer that they be neutral in World War II.

Refusing to put down the shovel, this idiot kept digging, declaring the country really needed to “exorcise the cult of Churchill.”

Churchill was a loser: Not a lot of people know that, either.

Dissing Winston Churchill doesn’t sound like a great vote-getter: Britain, the U.S., Canada, France, and Germany recently commemorated the 80th anniversary of D-Day with solemn ceremonies honoring the few remaining veterans.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak found out the hard way that D-Day, Churchill, and the memory of the war dead are not to be trifled with.

Instead of standing alongside the king, Joe Biden, and all the other leaders, he ducked out of the ceremonies early, scuttling back to London from Normandy to do a television interview.

He’s been apologizing ever since.

In the now-notorious interview, he waxed wistful about how his family “sacrificed” so he could attend one of England’s poshest private schools.

They had to “go without all sorts of things that I would’ve wanted as a kid.”

Like the cable channel Sky TV.

Nobody can figure out if Sunak has a death wish or if he’s just that clueless.

Not Funny

In any case, right-wing British politics have become farcical.

Here’s what’s not funny: right-wing politics on the Continent.

Even as European leaders stood together in Normandy to express thanks to those who fought against fascism, too many European voters are once again flirting with it.

In the early June European parliamentary elections, centrist and progressive candidates lost in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy to the likes of Alternative für Deutschland and National Rally, the party headed by Marine le Pen.

The whipping was so bad in France that President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the assembly and called a snap election.

Right now, the smart money’s on Le Pen and her MAGA-esque army of nationalists winning enough seats to control the government—if they can get the more traditional conservatives to form a coalition with them, at least.

Center-left chancellor Olaf Scholz watched his electoral share collapse in favor of ultra-rightists, including AfD, now the second largest in Germany’s E.U. delegation.

AfD attracts people inclined to declare that Germans whose parents or grandparents came from Turkey will never be “real” Germans, and a former candidate (now expelled from the party) who insists SS officers weren’t such bad guys.

It’s not as if these right-wingers are going to immediately break up the European Union or make common cause with Vladimir Putin or ban immigration altogether—not yet.

But they will be able to push some of the ugly culture war issues we’re all too familiar with here in the U.S.: attacks on “woke,” fossilized views of gender and race, homophobia, science denial—all the fun stuff that comes from cultivated ignorance and irrational fear.

They might also complicate Europe’s support for Ukraine. The governments of Hungary and Romania have edged toward Russia. Other E.U. nations might not agree to more military aid.

Strongman Envy

That’s seriously scary. So is the European Right’s reluctance to do anything about climate change.

The E.U. has an ambitious plan to reduce emissions and slow the catastrophic rise in global temperatures. Tens of thousands across Europe die as a result of excessive heat every summer.

Despite the obvious results of the developed world’s addiction to oil, Green parties in key nations such as France and Germany lost significant support in the elections.

This will give aid and comfort to the likes of Donald Trump, who, when he’s not casting himself as a victim, fancies himself a Man of Destiny, leading the world to some kind of bright orange future of more plastics, bigger cars, two gas stoves (and a tradwife) in every kitchen, no gays, no abortion, no diversity, and—increasingly—no democracy.

Authoritarianism has become weirdly attractive to a lot of voters in America and across the Atlantic.

Maybe they think it’s the best way to stop the world from changing.

Newsflash: That’s not rational.

In the U.K., both the Reform Party and the Conservatives—who have pretty much adopted Reform’s anti-immigrant craziness—promise a return to a white, culturally Christian, never-never nation.

The (qualified) good news is that the lunatics aren’t inevitable or invincible.

Our important NATO ally across the pond is likely to elect an imperfect, not-as-progressive-as-they-ought-to-be party led by an uninspiring lawyer.

Brexit Regret

A majority of British voters regret leaving the E.U. , a rational (if belated) response to the madness of 2015.

They regret letting the Conservative Party do its damnedest to destroy the environment, the social safety net, the National Health Service, and other cherished institutions.

A majority look at the European Union and wonder why the Germans and the French think autocracy and hatred might make a good foundation on which to run a country.

They might wonder at us, too.

Most are also embarrassed by Reform’s blatant racism: Farage said Sunak’s D-Day cock-up was because the PM “isn’t patriotic,” and “doesn’t understand our culture.”

Sunak’s Hindu parents immigrated from East Africa.

On the upside, Farage will be glad to hear that if Labour wins in July, they’ve pledged to fix a million potholes a year.