Nigel Farage has an article in The Telegraph today (HERE), verbally dragging his kango hammer across the political scene and claiming the people want to 'break' the two party system. The demolition man, fresh from smashing both the Conservative party and UKIP, now wants to set about Labour as well. Brexit is going to break the British economy and the United Kingdom. Society is dividing into leavers and remainers. Families and friendships have been broken. The EU has been damaged but is at present intact, no thanks to Farage, although I assume if elected he will join the right wing group in the EU parliament comprising Matteo Salvini's Lega Nord party in Italy and Marine Le Pen's National Rally party in France. They will then try to destroy the EU.
What is it that motivates Farage? Where does the mad desire to break everything come from? What sort of demons drive him on?
Whatever it is, there is something about him that appeals to a certain sort of right winger. According to the Survation poll from yesterday's post, Farage is second favourite amongst Tory councillors to be their next leader! What are they on?
End of the Tory party: Survey of 871 Conservative councillors by @Survation for Mail on Sunday pic.twitter.com/sWzXaepB2N— John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) April 21, 2019
Conservative Home (HERE) say over 60% of Conservative party members would vote for the Brexit party while only 23% intend to vote Tory. What is going on!
In one respect of course, the members and councillors are right. Farage would certainly deliver Brexit. He would do it regardless of the cost in lost output, jobs, tax revenue, goodwill, reputation and anything else you can name. He could do it because he has said several times Brexit for him isn't about money, it's sovereignty that matters. Farage would see the nation on its knees and still maintain Brexit was right - and let's be honest, probably 20% or more of the population would agree with him.
And when Brexit was crushingly delivered, Farage would step down from atop the wreckage and tell us to get on with it. He doesn't care about anything else. He doesn't do foundations.
A lot of the Tory party membership are like Farage, comfortably off and probably immune to the wider impact of Brexit. They will lose by Brexit of course, we will all lose something. Reduced public services, higher taxes, less investment in infrastructure, a hollowing out of environmental and social policy and so on but wealth can cushion a lot of it and they will never admit Brexit was a disaster.
In one respect of course, the members and councillors are right. Farage would certainly deliver Brexit. He would do it regardless of the cost in lost output, jobs, tax revenue, goodwill, reputation and anything else you can name. He could do it because he has said several times Brexit for him isn't about money, it's sovereignty that matters. Farage would see the nation on its knees and still maintain Brexit was right - and let's be honest, probably 20% or more of the population would agree with him.
And when Brexit was crushingly delivered, Farage would step down from atop the wreckage and tell us to get on with it. He doesn't care about anything else. He doesn't do foundations.
A lot of the Tory party membership are like Farage, comfortably off and probably immune to the wider impact of Brexit. They will lose by Brexit of course, we will all lose something. Reduced public services, higher taxes, less investment in infrastructure, a hollowing out of environmental and social policy and so on but wealth can cushion a lot of it and they will never admit Brexit was a disaster.
The Politics means Politics (PMP) website has a piece about Farage (HERE), including a section on Crispin Odey. He is described by Bloomberg as 'both a top fundraiser for Farage and a leading contributor of campaign cash to the pro-Brexit side'. His firm, Odey Asset Management, made about $300 million from Brexit out of the turmoil on currency markets following the result. This happened when Farage initially conceded defeat on the morning of 24th June 2016 when the pound rose, only to have leave confirmed the winner a few hours later when the pound sank. These are the people for whom Brexit has already paid dividends.
In The Telegraph piece Farage references a couple of Tory remainers and says:
"These are mere snapshots but they illustrate how horribly confused and divided the Tory party has become. That its principal players are happy to make such anti-democratic pronouncements is even more troubling".
But of course, his Brexit party isn't really a political party is it? It's a policy masquerading as a party. Uniting a group of people about one policy is not very difficult to do. The problems come later when campaigning for office and you try to present a manifesto. You have one policy on which everyone agrees and dozens of others on which basically no one agrees. This is always the difficulty with single issue parties. It will kill the Brexit party eventually.
As soon as voters get a taste of his latest 'party', which as we know is just a vehicle for Farage's giant ego, they will reject it. But in the meantime, get the earplugs out, his jackhammer will be going full blast for a while yet.
Spare a thought this morning for Ukraine. It seems that yesterday they elected a comedian with no political experience to be their president (HERE). Volodymyr Zelensky won by a landslide 73% of the vote. Trump and Brexit are no longer seen as aberrations, they have been normalised. Mr Zelensky was known for playing the lead role in a satirical TV comedy as a teacher who becomes president after a rant about corruption went viral. The writers probably thought they were writing fiction not forecasting the future. I suppose it goes without saying that Russia must have been involved in it somehow.
I will now make a forecast. In five years Ukraine will be in a worse position than it is now.
Don't get me wrong, I am not condoning in the least the corruption which led to the incumbent Mr Poroshenko, being ousted. It should be stamped out of course. However, if a comedian can manage to run a country of 45 million and improve the lives of ordinary people while engaged in a low level war with Moscow I will take my hat off to him.
It will tell us something about leadership if he just keeps things on an even keel. Apparently during the campaign he avoided any serious debate and succeeded by posting a series of 'light-hearted' videos to social media.
FaceBook and Twitter have a lot to answer for.
As soon as voters get a taste of his latest 'party', which as we know is just a vehicle for Farage's giant ego, they will reject it. But in the meantime, get the earplugs out, his jackhammer will be going full blast for a while yet.
Spare a thought this morning for Ukraine. It seems that yesterday they elected a comedian with no political experience to be their president (HERE). Volodymyr Zelensky won by a landslide 73% of the vote. Trump and Brexit are no longer seen as aberrations, they have been normalised. Mr Zelensky was known for playing the lead role in a satirical TV comedy as a teacher who becomes president after a rant about corruption went viral. The writers probably thought they were writing fiction not forecasting the future. I suppose it goes without saying that Russia must have been involved in it somehow.
I will now make a forecast. In five years Ukraine will be in a worse position than it is now.
Don't get me wrong, I am not condoning in the least the corruption which led to the incumbent Mr Poroshenko, being ousted. It should be stamped out of course. However, if a comedian can manage to run a country of 45 million and improve the lives of ordinary people while engaged in a low level war with Moscow I will take my hat off to him.
It will tell us something about leadership if he just keeps things on an even keel. Apparently during the campaign he avoided any serious debate and succeeded by posting a series of 'light-hearted' videos to social media.
FaceBook and Twitter have a lot to answer for.
