‘Farage speaks my language’: Inside Britain’s most pro-Leave town

https://inews.co.uk/news/farage-speaks-language-inside-britain-pro-leave-town-brexit-election-3147094

by theipaper

33 comments
  1. “I’d still vote the same way,” says Jim Venness, 50, as he walks to work along Boston’s high street. “I’m not a short-sighted person; I know it’s going to take five to 10 years minimum to do Brexit properly. A lot of people think it’s going to happen overnight, but it’s not.”

    “The only thing that changed at the time was that [David Cameron said he can’t work any more](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron-resigns-after-brexit-11934?ico=in-line_link),” he adds wryly. “That’s about it really.”

    Boston, in Lincolnshire, was the most leave-voting area in the UK, with more than 75 per cent of its population wanting out of the European Union compared to the national average of 52 per cent.

    In the run-up to the election, **i** has been travelling across the UK to find out how life has changed since Brexit – and how this experience might affect their vote on 4 July.

    [Farmers in Wales](https://inews.co.uk/news/brexit-forced-farm-stop-sheep-lost-thousands-3132453?ico=in-line_link), [fishermen in Scotland](https://inews.co.uk/news/im-a-fisherman-and-lifelong-tory-who-voted-brexit-i-wont-vote-for-them-again-3139146?ico=in-line_link) and [border dwellers in Northern Ireland](https://inews.co.uk/news/scam-from-day-one-how-brexit-changed-northern-ireland-3141973?ico=in-line_link) overwhelmingly said their experience with Brexit had been negative, but here in Boston, many say they wouldn’t think twice about voting again to exit the EU.

    [Immigration](https://inews.co.uk/opinion/real-truth-immigration-hard-sunak-farage-stomach-3143734?ico=in-line_link) drove them to vote leave, they say, and remains their top issue when considering how to vote at the general election. But not everyone here agrees, with some Boston residents feeling frustration at the decision.

    Boston is considered a Conservative safe seat, with MP Matt Warman enjoying a [25,000 majority at the last election](https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3348/election/397). In 2015, the year before the Brexit referendum, [UKIP came second](https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3348/election/369), winning a third of the vote, but dropped into third in 2017 and didn’t contest the last election.

    This year, Mr Venness says he plans to vote Reform because he likes leader Nigel Farage.

    “He doesn’t use big long highfalutin words with more than six letters,” he says. “I’m an English person. I’ve got nothing against [foreign] nationals, but I’m from this country, I’m not very well educated, and he speaks my sort of language.”

    However, he says he thinks all of the major parties – Reform included – are “all going to piss in the same pot”.

  2. They still probably think we are in the EU because we have friendly relations with European countries

  3. Farage will speak any “language” that gets him money or power. Including ones that are mutually exclusive.

  4. Wasn’t Brexit good enough for these people? They don’t even know what they’re voting for. 

  5. Farage is very good at blathering on, but when there’s a whiff of work to do he disappears. He’s workshy, hence why he’s a kept man (see Aaron Banks).

    How anyone thinks he’s a good politician is beyond reason. He stirs the pot on a professional level (paid for by whoever pays the best) and then runs.

    As an MEP he never bothered to turn up to fishery committee meetings but had the audacity to get on a boat on the Thames acting as the (late to the party) voice of fishermen and women.

    People rallied around him because they wrongly believed what came out of his mouth during the Leave campaign but the moment people voted leave he disappeared claiming job done when the real graft was to come, all so he could buzz around Trump like a fly to faeces (which coincidentally Trump allegedly stinks of due to excessive drug use).

    Then when Brexit wasn’t going his or his handlers way his Brexit Party decided to stir the pot again ahead of December 2020 but then disappeared to become some halfwit TV personality on some gutter news echo chamber channel.

    Anyone who thinks he’s a good politician, let alone “speaks their language”, needs their head examined. He’s a grifter. A wolf that does an appalling job dressing up like a sheep for incredibly dumb sheep who’ll believe anything.

    It’s a good thing you can only vote for Reform on Saturday, today is a test vote for the polls (obviously joking but let’s face it, Reform voters and candidates probably burn through their braincells getting up in the morning and would believe anything).

  6. I hate how the goalposts for Brexit keep moving. It went from us having £350million immediately available to the NHS, to Brexit not being doable for 3 years, to Brexit being a short term hit, to being a medium term hit. Now we are at “it’ll be a decade before we see the benefit.” So 18 years after we voted for it we MIGHT see some good developments? In the meantime we have to have the lowest growth of the G7 nations. Oh and all that freedom to control our borders has lead to £72million cost per deported illegal migrants. 

    Honestly, when you ask pro-Brexit folk to name one good thing it’s done it’s always so nebulous and vague like “we took back control”. There’s nothing I can point to that suggests it’s done this nation a lick of good 

  7. > “He doesn’t use big long highfalutin words with more than six letters,” he says.

    An actual quote.

  8. I saw the headline and thought “please don’t be Boston”.

    I grew up in Boston and still visit every other year, it’s really sad to see what the town has become. The high street is mostly dead, it’s a mixture of phone shops, pawn shops and charity shops.

    It’s kind of ironic how anti Europe the town was considering the European population are what are keeping the town alive.

    Boston suffers from a brain drain as there are no opportunities for the young and the nearest city is an hour away.

    I think it must be easy to fall into the trap of blaming someone else when you’re living in a zombie town and there’s no real way of saving it.

  9. I’m assuming said language consists of grunts and hand gestures.

  10. It’s like how in certain Americans areas they will keep voting republican even tho all their services are suffering, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida to name a few..

    Voting against their own interests as they’re blinded by their racism and bigotry.

    Dying to own the libs..

  11. Really?  You went to an elite public school then worked in the city due you ?

  12. > “He doesn’t use big long highfalutin words with more than six letters,” he says. “I’m an English person. I’ve got nothing against [foreign] nationals, but I’m from this country, I’m not very well educated, and he speaks my sort of language.”

    People like this are a compelling argument for an IQ test before voting.

  13. Farage’s ‘language’ is basically ‘W*gs out’.

    Imagine actually admitting in national media, with a straight face and without hiding your identity, that you are a racist piece of scum.

  14. I really feel sorry for the people of Clacton. If they do vote for Nigel Farage then they’ll have no one representing them in Westminster. We all know that his goal is to get inside Westminster and shit stir. That’s all. He doesn’t care about the people of Clacton, he only cares about the grift.

  15. “The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the Axe, for the Axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them.”

    Turkish Proverb

    Sums up Rich Farage and his white poor working class voters.

  16. He is highly fluent in bullshit so this I can well believe

  17. I remember listening to an NUT rep try to claim that Boston was ‘the crime capital of Britain’ in ’16 because of EU membership and FOM. People can be educated and still thick as two short planks.

  18. > “He doesn’t use big long highfalutin words with more than six letters,” he says. “I’m an English person. I’ve got nothing against [foreign] nationals, but I’m from this country, I’m not very well educated, and he speaks my sort of language.”

    I count 11 highfalutin words in that phrase. Did your dad even die in the pits mate?

  19. If Farage “speaks your language” you should be terrified of your language.

  20. As much as they are utter loons in terms of their policies, there is value to having Reform (and UKIP, Brexit party and whatever they’ll be called next) in our political sphere.

    They’re much like the greens (who are also utter loons, but are still healthy to have around), both Reform and the Greens do raise real issues, ones which the main parties are often too afraid to talk about (namely climate and the environment for the greens, and immigration and other social issues for Reform), and so these parties ensure that those very real issues are kept in the conversation.

    Now both parties’ actual solutions to these problems are extremist and often downright crazy, as are may of their candidates and members, so you’d never want to let either of them anywhere near any meaningful power (just look at how the greens butcher the councils they control, thankfully reform don’t control any), but having their voices be heard to raise their respective issues, and keep them in the political arena to be discussed is valuable.

  21. I know a bloke in Boston who voted Leave because, and I quote, “there’s too many *insert Pakistani slur here* working in the NHS.”

    This was a thing. It happened.

    The average IQ in Boston is not world class, I’ll say that much.

  22. The far right will always appeal to the simple minded.

  23. The sheer volume of Reform posts on social media, often prefaced with “Without sounding like a conspiracy theorist”, has been quite a surprise. There’s a fair few in the boomerbook car groups that I’m a member of, which means I often have to bite my digital lip and just block them, so not all obviously bots and trolls. Apparently Farage “just makes sense” and “no one else has said they will sort out our farming”. I just despair about people and then remember Brexit happened and that a big chunk of the electorate are thick as mince.

  24. But Reddit told me mass immigration is an unalloyed benefit to the working class areas of the UK

  25. I like how Farage (and the media quite frequently) frame Reform as speaking for ‘normal people’ but the actual people everyone knows who vote for reform are like you’re one weird uncle who starts stupid arguments every Christmas, the crazy lady in your office everyone hates, your dad’s horrible mate from high school who does sex tourism holidays in Thailand etc.

  26. Balding 50 year old whose benefitted from being in the EU most his life says he’d still vote the same way because he isn’t struggling as a result of it.

  27. These are the type of people to shoot themselves in the foot and still blame the gun.

  28. My local reform candidate is a solicitor for Shell. Real man of the people

  29. Let’s face facts, this country is full of brain dead morons.

  30. Random guy say it was going to take 5-10 years for Brexit to work.

    The vote was 8 years ago and we left 4.5 years ago. Clock’s ticking mate.

  31. He does well in older, pro-leave, anti-immigration settings and rural areas. So basically the old labour areas and Tory consistuences in the countryside. 

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