As anyone with a functioning brain cell knows, Nigel Farage’s campaign to extract Britain from the EU flourished on a steady diet of misinformation. His pound‑shop patriotism and relentless soundbites, aided by propaganda‑filled buses promising billions for the NHS and dire warnings about immigrants, set the tone.
Armed with phoney statistics and the suggestion that Romanians were coming to ransack the country’s lace doilies and rip pearl necklaces from the heaving chests of assorted dowagers, the campaign gave the British public a simple, emotionally driven story about “taking back control.”
A majority of voters, flummoxed by nostalgia, insecurity, and a nationalistic urge to reassert sovereignty – often bound up with its less-savoury sibling, rank racism – swallowed the message. The outcome was Brexit: an act of economic self‑immolation repackaged as heroic liberation.
Post‑Brexit Britain feigned pride in its new paperwork and border queues, pretending the inconvenience was a badge of post‑imperial grit, even as complaints grew about the renewed hurdles to enter “Miyorca” (Majorca) for their full English breakfasts washed down with multiple pints, now that Europe had naturally responded in kind.
By contrast, Malta confronted its own existential question but took a different turn. Despite the Labour Party’s frenetic efforts, which matched Farage’s for energy if not for capacity, the campaign against EU membership eventually faltered. “Partnership” lost, though Sant had said it won.
Malta not only joined the EU but went on to enjoy the dividends, one of which was a passport that became a money‑spinner for Joseph Muscat, who, rather than being diminished by his referendum defeat, grabbed the opportunity with both hands.
Good ol’boy Nigel hasn’t finished. Having led his country into a geopolitical cul‑de‑sac, he is now lying about immigration with the same toxic enthusiasm as a televangelist selling miracle hair tonic.
He has discovered the easiest political currency: fear of “the other,” fear of “invasion,” fear of anything that doesn’t resemble the stock‑photo Britain that exists only in his imagination.
Fear, not to put too fine a point on it, of anyone whose skin is not a whiter shade of pale. Farage and his thuggish cohorts are turning Britain from a place of haven and decency into one that Trump would be proud of.
Compare that with Malta. For years, we sported “Tourists are Welcome” on the door of every bar and restaurant. They still are; their ready cash is always very acceptable. We imagined we were somehow immune to the cruelty of bigoted racism, though it was always there, ready to erupt.
The truth is that it is starting to seep up through the widening cracks: the same racialised anxieties, the same whispered prejudices, the same conspiratorial muttering about “too many foreigners.”
The coded comments increase, and those “others” are becoming targets. So far, aside from a small number of extremist voices active online, overtly racist messaging has not materially entered the political debate – at least, not yet.
Recall that we are constantly being fed lines about corruption scandals being “misunderstandings,” that the Vitals robbery is “complicated,” that institutions failing in unison is “a coincidence,” and that criticism is actionable “misinformation.”
We’re also told, for example, that AI will prevent the need for so many foreigners to be employed at St Vincent de Paul to care for the elderly, and generally that the influx of foreign workers will be controlled.
Some of those Faragian code‑words are starting to show up, which is not surprising when you bear in mind that our esteemed politicians (on both sides) are quick to latch onto populist themes, sometimes at the expense of common decency. And there’s nothing more populist than bigotry.
Far too many people nod along, the way their British counterparts gaze fondly on Farage. People who would never consider themselves racist adopt the vocabulary, posture, and paranoia of those who are. People who would have fainted at the suggestion of being corrupt nonetheless accepted corruption because it suited them, so it’s not inconceivable that the same process will follow.
The symptoms are there: a population increasingly primed to see migrants as problems instead of human beings; institutions collapsing under the weight of political interference; corruption defended with the zeal formerly reserved for religion; and elements of the political class that treat truth as an optional extra and threaten to sue anyone who gainsays them.
Britain was lied out of the EU and into reduced global standing. It is being bullied into a dark place as we speak.
Malta, unless we start to insist on caring about the truth and pushing back against the creeping tide of mendacity, may itself regress out of its democratic maturity not by cataclysm, but by attritional decline: drip by drip, shrug by shrug, excuse by excuse.
