HOW PEOPLE POWER IS SPLITTING EUROPE
DONALD TRUMP MET WITH HIS FIRST FOREIGN ally just a few days after winning the U.S. presidency. But it wasn’t one of the world’s leading statesmen who got the invitation to Trump Tower. It was Nigel Farage, a man once considered a footnote in British politics—but who, in 2016, found himself on the snug inside of one of history’s hairpin turns.
As the face of the United Kingdom Independence Party, a right-wing group on the fringe of British politics, Farage campaigned for 17 years for the U.K. to leave the European Union, styling himself as a “middle-class boy from Kent” who was not afraid to tell hard truths about the failures of the European project, from out-of-control immigration to the coddling of radical Islamism. On June 23, British balloters finally granted Farage his wish, voting to leave the E.U. in the stunning Brexit referendum. The result was one
