Nigel Farage, Andrew Tate and conservatism’s struggle against a moral rot

Resurfaced comments from the political leader who has rocked Britain’s election campaign are truly revealing – and not in a good way.

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Suppose you’re interested in men. You’re swiping through the apps in search of abs, cute dogs, a height of six feet, perhaps even the slightest hint of emotional maturity – whatever one is meant to seek in a modern male partner. What leaps out as an immediate red flag?

I’ll nominate one: a guy who never, ever smiles. There he is topless at the beach, glowering. At the club with his mates, scowling. Leaning on a glitzy car, in a laughably undersized shirt and excruciatingly undersized chinos, wearing teensy tiny leather shoes without socks, maybe smoking a cigar, and marring his face with an expression of inexplicable, furious contempt.

The Super Intimidating Alpha Male Frowny Face, as we might call it, is a staple of men who take themselves far too seriously and are, shall we say, morally challenged.

Sorry, sunglasses in bed, that’s another sign.

That face when your trapezius looks a bit like a tumour.

I only started to notice it when Andrew Tate arose from the muck of the internet, with his signature brand of egotism, selfishness, cruelty, misogyny and other sad emotional problems masquerading as masculinity.

Tate never smiles, you know. In all his wealth-flaunting videos, all his self-indulgent rants, you will find little that even resembles joy. Ever. Only anger and animus. The closest thing he can manage is a snarl.

He is a preposterous, ridiculous, broken man. Someone who is obviously an asshole of stupendous proportions. Someone against whom you would protect your daughter, and against whose views you would protect your son.

You would recognise Tate for what he is. You would shield your kids from him. Not everyone though, apparently. Including some people who would quite like to be our leaders.

Andrew and Tristan Tate outside court in Romania, where they’re charged with various crimes. Picture: Daniel Mihailescu/AFP

Tate resurfaced yet again this week, like an unflushable turd, to make his skid mark on Britain’s election campaign.

It transpires that Nigel Farage, the former lead Brexiteer whose far-right party is now surging in the polls, once described Tate as “an important voice” for men.

This happened when Mr Farage spoke on a podcast back in February. His comments have been rediscovered and duly resurfaced by The Guardian.

“Tate was a very important voice for an emasculated – you three guys, you are all 25. You are all kind of being told you can’t be blokes, you can’t do laddish, fun bloke things,” Mr Farage told the podcast’s hosts.

“That is almost what you’re being told. That masculinity is something we should look down upon, something we should frown upon.

“It’s like the men are becoming feminine and the women are becoming masculine and it’s a bit difficult to tell, these days, who’s what.

“And Tate fed into that by saying, ‘Hang on, what’s wrong with being a bloke? What’s wrong in male culture? What’s wrong in male humour?’ He fed into those things.

“His was a campaign of giving people perhaps a bit of confidence at school, or whatever it was, to speak up.”

Giving people a bit of confidence at school! Ah yes, irrational hatred of all girls and women. Just what a young lad needs. To boost his otherwise fragile confidence, you understand.

Nigel Farage. Picture: Jeff Overs/BBC via Getty Images

These guys are always so deliciously vague, aren’t they? “You can’t do laddish, fun bloke things.” Which things, in particular, can’t men do anymore, Nigel? To which dinosaur-like behaviour in particular are you referring?

We can’t make extremely off-colour jokes without pushback? Can’t pinch passing waitresses on the bum? Can’t assault each other at the pub and write it off as “boys being boys”? What exactly can’t we do, Nigel? For what refuse from the dustbin of history do you pine? Please, do enlighten us. They never bloody specify what they’re talking about.

Anyway. Tate. He’s never been anything resembling “an important voice” for men, or indeed a voice for anyone except misogynists and misguided creeps. But his influence online is twisting our boys into emotionally stunted young men who are barely fit to enter society.

You would be horrified, utterly horrified, if your son grew up to be anything like Tate. It doesn’t take 20/20 moral vision to recognise this. Yet Mr Farage merely sees a man who “maybe”, perhaps, possibly, sometimes, has gone “too far in his relationships with women”. Whose comments have occasionally been “over the top”.

“The jury is still out” on the charges against Tate, says Mr Farage. (Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have been charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. They deny the allegations.)

But we don’t need a jury to render a verdict on Tate’s character. He’s quite evidently a monstrous human being. How can someone like Nigel Farage, who has been on this Earth for 60 years, possibly fail to notice that? He uses harsher language describing Britain’s Remainers than he does when speaking of an unapologetic misogynist.

He so angee.

Partisanship, is the answer. Tribalism. Someone free of these shackles views Tate with sickening clarity. The Farages of the world are too blinded by their culture war obsessions to admit who else might be on their side.

Something in your political philosophy has gone badly, badly wrong when you start to excuse, or even idolise, loathsome people.

This is a moral rot that has often, in the past, infected the left of politics – the Soviet Union cultivated Western apologists for decades. Now it’s on the right.

We currently have politicians in the US and UK repeating Russian talking points on the invasion of Ukraine. Some of them have openly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin, hailing his supposed “strength” as a leader.

His strength! A man so terrified of being challenged that he uses the apparatus of the state to suppress dissent and make his opponents disappear. A man so pathetically diminished by his screw-up in attacking Ukraine that, this week, he visited the dictator of basket-case North Korea and acted like a nervous medieval peasant on a date with their liege-lord.

But the left hates him. Joe Biden is against him. So we must rationalise Putin’s aggression by blaming NATO, as Mr Farage did in an interview a few days ago, for “provoking” him.

Mr Farage during said interview. Picture: Jeff Overs/BBC via Getty Images

The cause célèbre of America’s right wing, this week, was a proposal to require Christianity’s Ten Commandments to be displayed in all schools, by law. I need not tell you who this idea’s most enthusiastic supporters want to be president, nor which of the commandments he has habitually broken throughout his life.

It doesn’t matter. All sins are forgiven, or at the very least minimised, when you’re on the right team. That’s how moral corruption works.

Twitter: @SamClench