Brexit mastermind Nigel Farage says social media the key to successful election campaigns

Conservative parties across the globe are lagging behind the liberal left in the electioneering battlefield of social media, says Brexit champion Nigel Farage.

Forme British MP Nigel Farage says conservatives are lagging behind the liberal left in use of social media. Source: Supplied.

Conservative parties across the globe are lagging behind the liberal left in the increasingly crucial electioneering battlefield of social media, according to Brexit mastermind Nigel Farage.

In a documentary on election campaigning, by Sky News Australia’s Peta Credlin, Mr Farage – who piloted the UK’s Brexit Party from 2019-2021 – said “micro-targeting” of voters via social media was an entrenched campaigning tool for all major political parties, and would be a key factor in the looming federal poll in Australia.

“Something that couldn’t happen before modern-day computing and algorithms … is micro-targeting. I mean, in countries like America, these guys can virtually tell you what you had for dinner last night, that is how much they’re able to access where we shop, where we travel, what we do and to break all that down into different socio-economic groups,” Mr Farage told Credlin.

“You get a lot of micro-targeting aimed right down to little local communities. While there are some clever people on the conservative side of global politics, I think the liberal left are much, much better at this, much further advanced at this.”

But while Mr Farage said conservative parties needed to ­improve their pitch to voters via social media platforms, he also suggested left-leaning parties have significant electoral challenges of their own – namely the alienation of traditional, working-class voters who are becoming increasingly disenchanted by the extreme views being ­espoused by progressive leaders.

“They’re desperately vulnerable, and that’s because the old traditional, soft left-of-centre parties were always patriotic parties,” he said.

Sky News Australia host Peta Credlin.

“But they’re now being ­hijacked in many cases by a really extreme agenda, an agenda that obsesses on trans issues, an ­agenda that obsesses on deconstructing history of our countries, an agenda that wants to cancel anything it doesn’t really like.

“So what you find almost everywhere is up to half of people who vote for socialist, liberal parties do not like many of the things that the new radicals stand for.

“So I do actually believe that conservative philosophy has got everything to play for, despite the difficulties. The left is becoming just too extreme.”

Mr Farage said Scott Morrison’s handling of the pandemic had left him politically vulnerable at the upcoming election.

“I think that he’s acted in a profoundly unconservative way as leader (in relation to Covid lockdowns),” he said.

“If Morrison wants to win this election, he needs to rebalance that relationship between the ­individual liberties and freedom of the person, and the powers of the state.”