[in bed. And with Trump storming the presidential elections on
television and asking African-Americans, ‘What have you got to lose?’
by voting for him, she found herself questioning her own assumptions.
She began reading up on politics, economics and what she sees as the
cultural control of the left. She decided that Big Government is the
enemy of religion and family and self-reliance. She concluded that a
Democrat elite is bent on creating a client-state that ‘needs [benefit-
claiming minorities] to need them’. By last year, she had ‘taken the red
pill’ – an analogy from The Matrix, which calls for facing up to the tough
realities of life, and a favourite with the alt-right – and started a sassy
conservative YouTube channel, which now has nearly 300,000 followers.Last October, Owens founded the Blexit movement to
undermine the Democrats’ grip on minority voters; according
to her calculations, if she could convert just five per cent of
them, that would create a margin significant enough to
keep a Republican in the White House for ever. (‘Actually,
I’m going for 20 per cent now!’ she says.) The move brought her to the
attention of Charlie Kirk, a 25-year-old wonder-boy of the American
right, confidant of Donald Trumps Senior and Junior, and founder of
Turning Point. Kirk showed his media savvy by co-opting Owens to the
cause (who could say all nationalists are racists after that?). ‘I mean,’
Owens has said, ‘do I look like the kind of person who would get along
with Hitler?’ Perhaps not, but that didn’t stop
her invoking him at the Turning Point UK
(TPUK) meeting: ‘Whenever we say nationalism,
the first thing people think about, at least in
America, is Hitler. He was a national socialist.
But if Hitler had just wanted to make Germany
great and have things run well, okay, fine. The
problem is that... he wanted to globalise.’
What brought her to the UK? As Owens
says, ‘Brexit is Britain’s Trump’, pointing to an
affinity of anger on both sides of the Atlantic.
But then there is the ever-growing hysteria
among British student societies too, which has
centred on turning away speakers as diverse as
Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell, for seeming
infractions that make them worthy of ‘no platforming’. In Tatchell’s
case, the country’s best-known gay-rights campaigner was refused a
podium at Canterbury Christ Church after it was discovered he was pro
free-speech, and therefore, exclaimed an NUS officer, ‘transphobic’.
It was perhaps only natural that Turning Point’s aims should have
rung bells in some student quarters over here. So late last year, a plan
was hatched to launch a British franchise of Turning Point, and in
December, the Owens-Kirk combo flew in for the party at the RAC.
The next evening, there was dinner for a dozen people at Olivocarne
in Belgravia, at which TPUK was instituted and Farmer was appointed
Acting Chairman. He committed to paying for a London office for
TPUK, and with his impassioned speaking style, he might have gone on
to be a useful frontman. As it is, he’d kept the seat next to him reserved
for Owens – who was late – and over the tiramisu, ‘fell in love so hard,’
he says, ‘that nothing else mattered.’
Farmer followed Owens back to the US later that week, joining her at
the Republican conference in Miami and then at a Blexit rally in Los
Angeles. They had dinner four nights in a row and, she says, ‘It was like
I’d known him my whole life. We shared the same views, we had the
same sense of humour. When he went back to London, we still hadn’t
kissed – but I was, like, “I’m pretty sure my husband just left.”’ That she
was absolutely right can be deduced from the almond-sized diamond on
her left hand.Now, if you believe it’s best to marry someone from the same background,
you could see potential issues in this match between a girl from the pro-
jects and the son of a former Tory Party treasurer. But look at their
‘ heroes’ and you can see the synergies.
Owens’ 76-year-old grandfather was born on a sharecropping farm:
‘He was picking tobacco aged five.’ Michael Farmer, George’s 74-year-
old father, ‘grew up in the slums’ to become, later in life, so big in the
metal markets that he was known in the City as Mister Copper. He
started his career ‘as a £5-a-week difference account clerk, because he
needed money to eat. Literally, to eat!’ Farmer Jnr continues – ‘It was
the Thatcherite reforms of the Eighties that allowed my father to turn
his talent into success, which is what I want for everyone else, regardless
of colour or creed, and it’s why I find Candace such an inspiration.’
Inspiration? Owens’ reaction to the Parkland high-school shooting of
2018 was to join the National Rifle Association (‘No member of the
NRA has ever committed mass murder’). Once a supporter of the Dem-
ocrats, she only officially became a Republican after the Brett
Kavanaugh sexual-assault hearings, because ‘the Democrats had clearly
spiralled into lunacy’. The New York Times believes that by embracing
Turning Point she has allowed ‘a racist, misogynist movement to hold
her up as evidence that it is neither.’
Not that Owens would accept any responsibility for all these info wars.
She points instead to the time that she arranged a White House delegates
reception for Young Black Leadership. (She has
met Trump ‘about 20 times’, Farmer has met
him twice so far, he says.) ‘And the media reported
that the delegates had been paid to attend.
Can you imagine? So now those 400 kids have
been called liars, which just makes them more
committed, and their parents are so outraged
that they’re changing their minds about the
Democrats, too!’
Farmer nods vigorously, but he’s glancing at
his watch, a chunky Romain Jerome number
decorated with recovered copper from the
Statue of Liberty. He needs to go and sort out
security clearance at Parliament.
But Owens, one’s sure, can look after herself.
She may have a pleasant smile but backing down is simply not in her
nature. ‘What have I ever said that is extreme?’ she asks. ‘I’m a centrist,
not an extremist. All I’m arguing is that free speech should be allowed in
colleges, and that blacks and Latinos don’t have to be Democrats. I’m
saying that virtue-signalling is a luxury and that feeding your family is
more important than bathroom signs. They’re such obvious propositions, I
really shouldn’t need to exist.’
Still, exist she does – though one of Owens’ lines is ‘the most dangerous
place for African-Americans is in their mother’s womb’. And though she
says abortion is taught in schools as a consumer choice, that doesn’t mean
she’ll cut single mothers too much slack. ‘They have to take responsibility
for their mistakes,’ she says flatly.
You have to wonder how that sits with Farmer and, indeed, his father;
mid-career, Michael Farmer took two years out to devote himself to Bible
studies and, back in the Square Mile, ran courses on how to reconcile
commerce with Christianity. His son is cut from the same cloth: Farmer
takes his faith so seriously that he even converted from Anglican to Catholic
at school.
But you have to ask what place either he or Owens give to compassion.
She is, of course, absolutely sure of her ground. ‘I think Christianity is
about lifting people up,’ she says, her eyes gleaming with certainty, ‘and
capitalism has proved to be the best way of doing that.’ ‘Exactly,’ says
PHOTOGRAPHS: INSTAGRAM/@REALCANDACEOWENS; TWITTER/@JACOB_REES_MOGG Farmer, and smiles. (Candace Owens says,‘Do I look like the kindof person who wouldget along with Hitler?’That didn’t stop herinvoking himtatler.com Tatler July 2019 9506-19WELL-GeorgeFarmerKC.indd 95 03/05/2019 15:27