The city, he said, could return to that former glory. A second “Big Bang” is possible, but some changes are needed. Playing a central part, he promised the crowd, would be crypto.

The Reform leader has been wooing the blockchain industry lately. Crypto might seem like an odd bedfellow for Reform given some of the party’s more nostalgic inclinations, but in Farage’s hands the industry becomes a throwback. Seemingly reminding him of his rip-roaring days on the floor of the London Metals Exchange, crypto allows him to talk about a sparkling vision of Britain as a financial hub once again.

This is not a jam and Jerusalem brand of nostalgia, but one of big hair and big phones and lunch at Sweetings. Crucially, this is a pre-Blair vision.

Farage has criticized the autonomy New Labour gave to both the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England. Shifting power to those bodies, he argues, has allowed politicians to distance themselves from the regulations that put more burdens onto business. “We have to go back to the more old-fashioned way,” he told the crypto crowd last month. That is, elected officials must make the decisions and face the consequences directly.

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For anyone familiar with the über-libertarian origins of crypto, increasing the involvement of central government may not sound particularly, well, punk. What you have to understand is that crypto is no longer the reserve of cypherpunks and Twitter anons; it is a thriving niche of the financial industry that employs just as many policy consultants and business development people as it does cracked hackers.

While there is certainly still an anarchic undercurrent, it is the “white collar crypto” contingent — both traditional finance firms adopting blockchain and crypto-native companies trying to stay on the straight and narrow — that would like to see politicians taking the sector more seriously.

Exact figures on the size of the UK’s crypto sector are hard to come by, and slightly depend on how you define the umbrella: everything from institutional investing in tokenized gold to Web3 gaming startups could be part of it. What we do know is that London has a leg-up on the rest of Europe, still just about benefiting from its reputation as the region’s financial center. A report from K33 Research found that there were around 13,000 people employed by the sector in the UK back in 2023, triple that of closest competitor Germany.

Farage has therefore spotted crypto as a small but potentially influential area in which he can own the conversation. He has little competition. Politicians from other parties seem unable to talk about crypto, perhaps terrified of its less salubrious associations with fraud and speculation.

This was not always the case. While they were still in power, some of the more technologically literate Conservatives made steps towards embracing the crypto sector. As Chancellor, Rishi Sunak embraced a series of since-abandoned projects (sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one who remembers the shelved Royal Mint NFT) and made noises about making Britain a crypto hub. Matt Hancock was a blockchain advocate while he was a junior minister in DSIT and continued to be so long after it was fashionable. Bim Afolami made inroads with the industry during his brief stint as City Minister before being booted both out of government and out of his Hertfordshire seat last year.

The problem was that not much happened. At one point crypto was seen as a potential area in which the UK could have asserted its newfound independence from the EU, but instead it fell behind: the bloc became the first territory to pass legislation that was specifically designed for cryptocurrency, rather than regulating it under existing laws, in 2023. That regulatory certainty has threatened London’s position as the leading crypto location in the region, as companies plot expansion plans in the EU.

By last year’s election, crypto was fully off the agenda, and although the FCA is now finally plodding towards a regulatory regime for the sector, the new government has not staked out much ground here. That may partly be because it is already onto its third City Minister. In fairness Lucy Rigby, appointed in September, has already been out and about talking about tokenization and meeting the founder of crypto leader OXK in recent weeks, but we are yet to see a shift in government policy.

Farage, meanwhile, gets to claim he was an early advocate for crypto. In fact he has been known to say he was the first politician to back it — something I imagine several Tories would dispute if any of them were still in public life.

Some of Farage’s earliest statements on crypto were made while he was working with Southbank Investment Trust. Back in 2020, he helped launch their investment newsletter, contributing his thoughts on investment opportunities, including crypto.

But what really seems to have bolstered both his conviction about the crypto space and his position within it was that whole kerfuffle with Coutts. When Farage publicly challenged the closure of his account with the Natwest subsidiary in 2023, he faced sneers and skepticism. Yet the conclusion of the whole affair proved he had been justified, allowing him to fashion himself as a kind of martyr to debanking. The experience has given him some common ground with crypto bros.

Debanking is a major issue for founders, employees and even customers of crypto companies. In the UK, half of firms in crypto and Web3 have either been rejected from opening an account or had one closed. Banks often put these decisions down to their anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your customer (KYC) obligations. But some think the approach is heavy-handed, likely to catch those with a legitimate connection to crypto, or even those with only a passing association.

While Farage’s experience was different, debanking still gives him a common cause. Several crypto-adjacent issues also fit into Reform’s wider approach to civil liberties. The party has begun incorporating online freedoms into its platform, pledging to repeal the Online Safety Act and criticizing the police response to social media posts. A natural extension of that approach would be online financial freedom, allowing investors to put their money in whichever assets they please. Recent proposed limits on how much individuals can hold in stablecoins have provided a useful political wedge issue there.

Resistance to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) also goes hand in hand with the party’s opposition to digital ID. Issued and controlled by monetary authorities, CBDCs are unsurprisingly not always popular with crypto advocates. Farage even said at the Web3 conference that he would go to prison rather than be forced to use a CBDC. A brave stand, no doubt, though slightly undercut by the fact that the Bank of England has been cooling on plans for a digital pound and doesn’t look likely to introduce one anytime soon.

Perhaps none of this is surprising. Anyone who has followed the way Donald Trump has interacted with crypto will see a possible model for Farage. The crypto-rich became a lucrative source of donations to the campaign, and more recently to the White House’s new ballroom. Reform certainly seems conscious of a similar opportunity, having dedicated a page on its website pointing donors towards how to make a contribution using crypto.

Since taking office, Trump has continued to signal his favor for the industry. In March, for example, he issued an executive order to establish a Bitcoin federal reserve. Farage, for his part, says he has urged both the Bank of England and the Chancellor to use Bitcoin seized as part of criminal investigations to begin such a fund, saying it would help “further legitimize this space”.

Trump’s relationship with crypto, though, has raised eyebrows, not least when it comes to the dealings of his family’s own crypto company, World Liberty Financial. Farage will need to tread carefully to avoid similar suspicion — speaking at crypto events has already become part of his portfolio of side hustles. Whether he actually owns any crypto-assets himself though is unclear — there is no obligation, currently, for MPs to declare their crypto holdings in the same way they might for shares. Then there’s his association with crypto investor Christopher Harborne, who previously donated to the Brexit Party and more recently paid for two of Farage’s trips to the States.

Whether you think Farage is a true Bitcoin believer or an opportunist though, he demonstrates a deeper understanding of crypto than the US President, a former skeptic who seems guided by his sons in his crypto endeavors. In shaping a political narrative around the industry, too, the two men have very different approaches. While both might connect this new technology to their reminiscences about a financial heyday, Farage recognizes the frustration of the industry and positions himself as an underdog alongside them, a martyr to the cause. In his telling, it’s more Passion of the Christ than Art of the Deal: just a way to make Britain a richer place, by bringing more well-paid jobs to London — if only Reeves would let them.

What exactly would that entail? Probably reining in the powers of both the Bank of England and FCA. But those expecting a bonfire of red tape and quangos may be disappointed. Farage isn’t totally anti-regulation, recognizing that it can help stimulate investment when the rules are clear. In a world where he wins the next election, the FCA’s new regime will likely already be in place. Barring any major objections, it seems unlikely he would change it, preferring stability and clarity for businesses.

Where he might look at changes would be on the consumer side. Regulation can be bad when it “protects idiots from themselves”, Farage said at the conference. Regulators often have to find a balance between allowing people freedom to do what they will with their money and preventing them from coming to harm. That has led in some situations to rather tight rules for ordinary investors: up until October, only professionals were permitted to invest in crypto-based exchange-traded notes (ETNS). It would not be surprising if a Farage administration tipped the scales in favor of consumer freedom rather than risk aversion.

The right approach to that depends on whether you think crypto should be seen as analogous to stocks and shares or more like a wager on the horses. Finding a way to legitimize some of the trading going on in grey zones could be beneficial, not least for the Treasury’s coffers: the FCA reckons some 12% of adults own some kind of crypto asset. But it could come at a cost of consumer protection if firms are not held to the same standards as other financial institutions.

None of this, though, is necessarily a game changer when it comes to elections. Crypto can be a way of opening conversations about individual liberties, or over-regulation, or business investment. But it doesn’t tend to be a primary issue for voters, nor was it the magic bullet for reaching male voters in the US elections that some thought it might be.

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Where it might make a difference is more broadly in the City’s buy-in to the Reform agenda. When I worked on a financial newspaper in 2017, it would have been hard to imagine Farage winning anyone round, so soon after Brexit. Now, he’s making speeches at Banking Hall and promising to appoint people with business experience as ministers, while bankers take meetings with his team behind closed doors. Crypto is just one item on an allegedly pro-business, pro-entrepreneur agenda, and also fits neatly into Farage’s stated desire to reward risk-takers.

People in the industry like to say that the crash that came after the collapse of FTX was actually a good thing, washing many of the bad actors and speculators out of the space. This is both true to some extent and difficult to take seriously, since those who have left always seem to be replaced by others. The excesses of the NFT boom have been exchanged for memecoins. Scams and hacks are still an everyday feature of the cryptosphere.

In this context, Farage’s retro-futuristic vision of a crypto-enabled “Big Bang” sounds risky. But it’s a calculated risk. Despite some of crypto’s crazier corners, the white-collar portion of the blockchain industry is increasingly professionalizing, having been embraced by a once-skeptical Wall Street. Major firms take pains to show that they are compliant with local laws and are preparing for massive IPOs. Respected technology and finance firms are incorporating stablecoins into their plans for the future.

Much as Farage might think of himself as a maverick, he is following a path that global regulators and governments have already cut. As crypto sells itself as a legitimate, wealth-generating sector, countries around the world are figuring out how to give it room to grow. In fact, the UK is already working to align its approach with the US on digital assets and other financial innovations. His pitch, then, is far more psychological, symbolic even. It’s about recognizing a group that has at times felt ignored or dismissed. Whether it’s based on fact or not, that can be a very effective message.

In some ways, this picture is accurate: a geopolitical competition really is in the process of boiling over into open confrontation. But it’s also fundamentally shallow and misleading. When it comes to the most fundamental political questions, China and the United States are not diverging but becoming more alike, with both superpowers converging on the same not-yet-fully-realised system of technocratic-managerial governance.

This system, described by James Burnham and George Orwell as “managerialism”, is the product of a new class of professional managers bound together by a shared self-interest in the expansion of technical and mass organisations, the further proliferation of managers, and the drawing of society into the meddling embrace of managerial expertise. At its heart is a conviction that all things — even the complexity of society and Man himself — can be understood, managed and controlled like a machine with sufficient scientific technique.

It was managerialism that emerged as the true winner of the 20th century’s ideological battles. As Orwell prophesied in 1945: “Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralised society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic.” China is just a bit further down the path towards this same totalitarian future. The West is following.

To get a sense of but one aspect of this ongoing convergence, we should travel back to Fengqiao (“Maple Bridge”), once a picturesque little township in China’s Zhejiang province. Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his officials like to muse wistfully about the pleasures of the “Fengqiao experience” (枫桥经验), but I’m afraid it is not a tourism package. Rather, in the Sixties, Fengqiao distinguished itself as a model town in the eyes of Mao Zedong. While usually Communist Party thugs had to go around identifying and rounding up “reactionary elements”, in Fengqiao the people handled it themselves: “Not one person [had to be] rounded up, and still the vast majority of enemies were dealt with,” as a report from the town informed Mao.

Here at last was a true example of the “dictatorship of the masses” that Mao hoped to establish. Mao encouraged the party to learn from the experience of Fengqiao, and in doing so planted a seed that would take root in the hard soil of the CCP imagination: a dream of a population so thoroughly conditioned by Chinese socialism that someday it would practically manage itself.

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Today, Xi has revitalised and modernised this idea by marrying it to newly available tools: those of the digital revolution. Traditional methods of Fengqiao-style social mass monitoring and control, also known as “social governance”, have been combined with internet-wide mobilisation and a vast digital surveillance apparatus.

The jewel in the crown of this approach is intended to be China’s blossoming social-credit system. The system intends to assign each person, company or organisation a unique aggregated “social credit” score. This is much like a financial credit score: based on observed behaviour and other “risk factors”, the score can be adjusted up or down to designate an individual or business as more or less “trustworthy” or “untrustworthy”. Those with higher scores are rewarded with escalating perks, such as priority access to travel, loans, housing, higher education or even healthcare. Those with lower scores face escalating punishments, such as losing access to the financial system, being prohibited from buying luxury goods or real estate, or having their children denied admission to certain schools and universities.

Importantly, the system is deliberately social in nature. Those with low scores are publicly listed and shamed online or on public billboards; even some dating apps have trialled incorporating social-credit scores. Most significantly, since having too many relationships with low-scoring people risks lowering one’s own ranking, people avoid associating with the “discredited” at all, accelerating their progressive unpersoning by society. The goal of this gamification of the mind is to create a “New Man” to fit into its managerial machine; this is always and everywhere the inexorable object of managerialism’s obsession with control.

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Such social engineering has already been effective. I vividly recall, for example, how, when I visited China as late as the 2000s or mid-2010s, everyone used to jaywalk to cross the street. It was simply a fact of life, a cultural constant seemingly ingrained by who knew how many centuries of the Chinese peasantry’s wonderfully incorrigible pragmatism. Today, nobody jaywalks (at least in the city), because if you do, your identity is captured by a facial recognition camera, your face, name and ID number are plastered on a billboard of shame next to the intersection, and a fine is sent to your bank. All those centuries of evolved cultural attitudes have been successfully overwritten by only a few years of conditioning by the machine.

This is not a million miles away from what is happening in so-called Western liberal democracies. In June, the British bank Coutts closed the account of Nigel Farage without explanation. Farage was subsequently refused service by 10 other banks. Internal “reputational risk” documents obtained by Farage soon after showed Coutts’s reasoning for “exiting” him from his account: he had been found to no longer be “compatible with Coutts, given his publicly-stated views that were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation”. The terrible sins listed on Farage’s rap sheet included: being friends with Donald Trump and unvaccinated tennis champion Novak Djokovic; campaigning for Brexit; being “anti-Net Zero”; being “seen as xenophobic and racist”; and having been a “fascist” when he was a schoolboy, according to some second-hand rumours.

In this case, caught red-handed “debanking” a prominent and savvy politician for political reasons, the bank was forced to apologise and some of its top officials to resign. Such consequences are an exception to the rule, however. Debanking has in recent years become increasingly routine practice across the West; in the US, mere days after the Farage scandal, JP Morgan Chase shuttered the accounts of anti-vaccine proponent Dr Joseph Mercola, as well as his business’s CEO, CFO, their spouses and all of their children. Farage says he has begun assembling a “very large database” of potentially thousands of similar cases from the UK alone.

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Much debanking is politically motivated. Most memorably, Justin Trudeau’s Canadian government invoked emergency powers to freeze the bank accounts and seize the assets of the truckers protesting his destructive vaccine mandates and demagoguery. Yet banks are not the only ones involved; online payment platforms have joined in too. GoFundMe, for instance, seized money donated to the truckers through its platform. PayPal, meanwhile, in one of the more symbolic instances of its prolific debanking habit, cut off the Free Speech Union for promoting “intolerance”. PayPal also attempted to slip language into its user agreement allowing it to confiscate $2,500 from users each time they spread “misinformation” or said or did anything “harmful” or “objectionable” (all defined at PayPal’s “sole discretion”).

Why is this happening? Why would private banks and other businesses force out paying customers like this? Because it is in their interest to do so if they want to survive and thrive, and indeed they have little choice. These banks are not really fully “private actors” — they are part of the managerial economy in a budding managerial party-state much like China’s, where an oligarchic elite class seeks to preserve its rule. Critically, there can be no neutral institutions in a party-state. The party-state’s enemies are the institution’s enemies, or the institution is an enemy of the party-state (which is not a profitable position to be in). This is what “reputational risk” really means: the risk of appearing to be on the wrong side of the party line.

In a society as digitised as ours, control over digital transactions means surveillance and control over nearly everything. When someone is debanked — and then inevitably blacklisted from all other banks — they are cut off from participation in almost every aspect of modern life. They will have no easy way to receive pay from a job; they cannot buy property and may not even be able to rent. They will be unable to purchase almost any digital service and, increasingly, will be prevented from buying everyday goods offline as well. Once the ongoing war on cash is won, they will be well and truly screwed. Debanking therefore serves as an extremely effective means to isolate and silence a targeted person or group, quickly breaking any presence and influence they may have once had within society. Which is, of course, the point.

This appears to be a lesson taken directly from the Chinese method of dealing with dissidents. Indeed, the West’s managerial elite seem to have concluded that they now have the tools and latitude to begin implementing a Chinese-style social credit system here. Although not yet anywhere near as comprehensive, this nascent system shares the same fundamental characteristics: using public-private coordination and “social governance” to collapse any distinction between public and private life, thereby greatly raising the risks for public non-conformity and dissent from the narrative. Utopia is doubtless just around the corner.

In fact, we can see transparent steps towards the construction of something like a social credit system in the now widespread use of such innovations as ESG (environmental, social, and governance) scores. Major financial institutions wield them to vocally conform to specific social and ideological practices required to access capital. Similar NGO-led scoring schemes such as the Corporate Equality Index and UK-based Diversity Champions programme also threaten those businesses that fail to conform with “reputational risk” blackmail and de-platforming.

How far might this all go? While the powerful realm of financial flows is today’s focus, there is no reason to think that, on the current trajectory, the same dynamics won’t eventually be applied to every other sector of our economy and society. We shouldn’t be surprised if someday soon apartment leases come with ideological morality clauses, airlines unite to ban customers with the wrong beliefs from travelling, or people find themselves evicted from their insurance policies for speaking out of turn online. This will simply be the behaviour of a hardening managerialism seeking stability through mechanistic control over all the details of life.

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New technologies such as AI and, especially, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will only continue to make this kind of granular control easier. A few months ago, an American man found himself completely shut out of his digitally controlled “smart home” by Amazon after a delivery driver accused his doorbell of saying something racist. Why would Amazon bother to do this? Because they can; and so, under a managerial regime, they must. As our managers find that every day it feels easier and easier to “solve” problematic people with the click of a button, they will not be able to resist hitting that button, hard and often.

Such is the very Weltanschauung — the whole way of seeing and believing — of the managerial mind. As more and more powerful technology comes within the grasp of the managerial machine, its grip will only continue to tighten. For, as C.S. Lewis understood, “each new power won by man is a power over man as well”.

Today, as Orwell predicted, the great super-states struggle for possession of the earth. But for all past speculation that the 21st century would be defined by a “clash of civilisations”, there is now only one, smothering form of modern civilisation that has stretched itself across the face of the globe, its multiple personalities vying for imperial supremacy. In the West, progressive managerialism softly strangled democracy to death over a century of manipulation, hollowed it out, and now wears its skin. In the East, the imported virus of communist managerialism wiped out a once-great civilisation in a river of blood, then crystalised into the cold, hard machine that now rules the lands of China.

This is the truth behind why China and the West, for all their proclaimed differences, share the same managerial hubris, are tempted by the same growing technological powers, and are sheltering the same elite insecurities and delusions. Even as they roil and clash, they are converging on the same destiny: the same socially engineered submission of everything human, real and free to technocratic nihilism and the false reality of an all-encompassing machine-government — to a total techno-state.

***

This essay is an extract from a longer piece on The Upheaval.