Farage: The Man Who Made Brexit, review: He’s the world’s greatest political con man – but not many have seen the man admit it’s all a game

There are moments in Nigel Farage: The Man Who Made Brexit (Channel 4) when the mask of the greatest political con man in this country’s history appears to slip.

It happens when he’s badly lit, holding a cup of tea and shooting the political breeze with the documentary maker, when what might just be the real Farage is seen.

Farage, the politician, which is to say, the deceiver, the preacher of hate, is a sight well known to anyone who takes even a passing interest in politics. When he’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, spitting out carefully honed tricola of demonstrable falsehood, this is the sight a nation has become accustomed to.

Those who follow politics more closely than most saw through it years ago. But it’s fair to say not many have seen the man admit it’s all a game.

“Of course politics is about sales,” he says, seemingly unguardedly but nevertheless on film. “It’s about selling ideas, it’s about selling hope, sometimes it’s about selling fear.”

Elsewhere, Farage is to be found in the backs of cars, ruminating in real-time on the decisions that cut him out of any kind of deal with the Tories in the 2019 election. The deal, in short, that might have returned him to Westminster at the eighth time of asking.

Westminster watchers will enjoy hearing Farage call Dominic Cummings a “horrible, nasty little man”. Cummings will probably enjoy it himself. On Friday night, Farage, Richard Tice and co will be hosting a ragtag kind of celebration in Parliament Square. Together they form what Cummings once called the “flying monkey” wing of the Eurosceptic movement.

Farage’s story is well known and doesn’t need to be retold. It is a statement of the certain fact that without the monkeys Brexit would never have taken flight.

But Farage telling the unvarnished truth is a rare thing.

“Sometimes it’s about selling fear.”

It’s hard to decide if it counts as a bombshell, to hear the man admit it. He appears to know his battle is over, the victory won. Many is the con man who works out that his next meal will come from showing the victim how it’s done. The forger who takes a job at the national mint; the convicted burglar turned security consultant – one suspects Farage might already know his next act will come in selling the story of how he conned a willing nation into taking aim at its own demonstrable self-interest.