A hard-right Trump ally seeks liftoff in forgotten Britain

Trump ally Farage on cusp of smashing Labour in deprived Welsh towns with hard-right, anti-immigration message

MERTHYR TYDFIL, Wales — A clamor of stage smoke, campaign placards and pounding music. It’s the kind of rally energy that once greeted politicians from Britain’s left-wing Labour Party here in its ancestral heartlands, where it dominated politics for more than a century.

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Instead, out stepped the face of the mainstreamed hard right, grinning in light blue pants and a sports jacket.

“Let’s start a political revolution here in Merthyr!” Nigel Farage told the crowd Tuesday night, standing on a pop-up stage in a shopping mall parking lot, beneath gray skies and green hills.