美国国家公共电台 NPR Trump's Kindred Spirit, UK's Nigel Farage, Will Be An Honored Guest Friday

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: 

Among the guests Donald Trump 1's inauguration 2 tomorrow will be one of his kindred spirits, a fellow populist who railed against immigration and who helped drive an electoral upset that stunned 3 the world. I'm talking about the British politician Nigel Farage, a major force behind Brexit.

Unlike Trump, Farage does not hold political office in his home country. And since the Brexit vote, he's been searching for a new role. NPR's Frank Langfitt reports from London.

FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE 4: After his victory in last June's referendum, Farage was his brash self. Here he is in Brussels sticking it to fellow members of the European Parliament.

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NIGEL FARAGE: You know, when I came here 17 years ago and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me. Well, I have to say, you're not laughing now, are you?

LANGFITT: But Farage, a 52-year-old former commodities trader, is like the dog that finally caught a car. After achieving his ultimate goal, he faces the question. Now what? The answer so far...

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DONALD TRUMP: Mr. Nigel Farage...

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FARAGE: Thank you, Donald. Welcome everybody to the first Nigel Farage show exclusively live here on LBC.

LANGFITT: In an interview with NPR, Farage said he wants to use this show which goes out on London's LBC radio to bring more people to his brand of populist politics.

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FARAGE: It's a fantastic platform. But I get the chance at the end of the hour every night to give my thought for the day. And I think that I can use this opportunity. I can continue to help shift thinking on major issues in this country.

BRIAN KLASS: I think that Nigel Farage, like Donald Trump, really likes the spotlight 5.

LANGFITT: Brian Klass is a political scientist at the London School of Economics. He says talk radio may be the best way for Farage to stay relevant. Given that his politics are so polarizing, they've kept him from winning a seat in the U.K. Parliament.

KLASS: Nigel Farage is someone who hasn't built up a base much beyond the diehard Brexiteers.

LANGFITT: But Klass says they still add up to millions of fans who admire Farage's quick wit and silver tongue.

KLASS: And that's where the transition to the media empire could be very helpful because you don't need to win over the entire public to have a successful radio show, as we see in the United States with the sort of hard-right and hard-left media. You get a constituency; you get good ratings.

SOPHIE GASTON: This is where populists can be so powerful. They don't need to be in power. They don't need to be leading the government.

LANGFITT: Sophie Gaston works for Demos, an independent London think tank. She says even though Farage was not a member of parliament, he was able to use his rhetorical skills to shape the debate on Brexit like other populists in Europe playing to fears about immigration.

GASTON: They know how to identify simmering or nascent 6 social tensions and seize upon them to drive cleavages in societies.

LANGFITT: Farage's critics unfairly demonize him and the U.K. Independence Party, known as UKIP, which he used to lead. He says his UKIP supporters are just like the Trump fans he met when he campaigned with the president-elect last year in Mississippi.

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FARAGE: I found they were exactly the same kind of people that have been voting for UKIP and voted actually for Brexit. They generally had jobs. They very often had kids who were not doing as well at the age of 25, 30 as they'd been doing.

LANGFITT: He says they saw a failing political system and demanded change.

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FARAGE: The time had come for somebody bold to stand up in public and say what they'd been saying in private for some years.

LANGFITT: An apt description of Farage himself. Farage says if Prime Minister Theresa May follows through on Brexit as she pledged to do in a speech this week, he says he'll eventually retire from the political battlefield. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, London.

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