In Farageland
James Meek, 9 October 2014
Thanet, where Nigel Farage will try to win a Westminster seat at the next election, lies nicely along the axis of his commute between his home in South London and his office at the European Parliament in Brussels. If Kent, cartographically speaking, is England’s rigfht foot, the Isle of Thanet is its big toe, pointing east into the sea towards Belgium. It hasn’t been an actual island since the 15th century, when the channel separating it from the English mainland silted up, but it’s still surrounded by water on three sides, and when the sun shines in summer, the light suffusing the air over the chubby peninsula has a vertiginous depthlessness.