With some additions.
The soil that grew this poisonous plant is nostalgia for Empire. The English wallow in rosy-tinted fantasies of the past. One symptom: They have more Railway Preservation Societies than the rest of the world put together. I occasionally receive Steam Railway, a news magazine about these societies, whose mission is to promote steam locomotives. A recent story about defunct steam locos referred to the railroad "turning its back on steam". The implicit accusation of betrayal is obvious.
Or consider Downton Abbey, another example of treacly nostalgia, with every episode signalling that these were the days of glory when England ruled the world, and somehow the Others have since stolen England's place. Note how everyone knows their place, and accepts it. Oh, the days of tugged forelocks and curtsying maids! Gone, gone forever!
Farage's message is the same: The cosmopolitan elites have betrayed all that was best in England, and he will restore it. See also Rees-Mogg's affectation of wearing Edwardian costume. But of course what they and their like really want is an England in which they rule unfettered by bothersome regulations about environmental protections, social safety nets, and financial probity.
Beware: As we age, we become curmudgeons who wish the times were as simple as we misremember them. That wish distorts our perceptions, and influences our votes. That's what the Farages and Trumps count on.
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