The imbecile Trump arrives today for his three day state visit having already barged into the Brexit fiasco by telling us we should leave with no deal unless we get a good one and that Nigel Farage should be in our negotiating team. He is also backing Boris to be PM. If Robert Mueller needed more evidence Trump is nothing more than Putin's glove puppet, here it is. It's risible to think Farage could add anything to anything. His style would be to refuse to attend any meetings and simply keep bellowing how awful the EU is.
I was going to say I hope the planned protests embarrass Trump but he is a man without shame isn't he?. He is pure distilled ego made flesh.
Trump was supposed to drain the Washington swamp but has made the USA a joke. As the world's biggest economy they are able to manage things under the
erratic twerp who masquerades as POTUS because of who and what they are.
We couldn't. There is a world of difference between handling someone mentally
unbalanced armed with a Kalashnikov and dealing with a little old
lady with dementia. The world may not respect Trump but they fear him. We can't afford a clown as leader.
A few days ago there was a great article HERE in The New York Times about Farage, describing him as 'the most dangerous man in Britain' and 'the British crisis in human form'. I think these are not exaggerations. The writer, Richard Seymour, points to the disconnect between his City trader back story and transformation into man of the people. It's not unlike Trump or to a lesser extent Boris. These men are the establishment writ large but seem able to portray themselves as separate from it, even disruptors of it.
The weird thing about Farage is that I really don't think he wants power.
He gets his kicks from winding up the mob, strutting through provincial towns to adoring crowds and getting them fired up AGAINST something - anything - whether it's immigrants, the EU, the political class or whatever takes his fancy.
Farage hasn't the slightest interest in the slow, careful policy development or compromises that have to be made. God alone knows how he would cope in a government department with his own Sir Humphrey as a restraining influence. If he ever got close to the levers of power he would find an excuse to get out and begin heckling again from the sidelines.
He is the useful idiot employed by wealthy men like Aaron Banks and Richard Tice purely because he has this indefinable and priceless quality to influence Joe Public. BoJo is the same.
The weird thing about Farage is that I really don't think he wants power.
He gets his kicks from winding up the mob, strutting through provincial towns to adoring crowds and getting them fired up AGAINST something - anything - whether it's immigrants, the EU, the political class or whatever takes his fancy.
Farage hasn't the slightest interest in the slow, careful policy development or compromises that have to be made. God alone knows how he would cope in a government department with his own Sir Humphrey as a restraining influence. If he ever got close to the levers of power he would find an excuse to get out and begin heckling again from the sidelines.
He is the useful idiot employed by wealthy men like Aaron Banks and Richard Tice purely because he has this indefinable and priceless quality to influence Joe Public. BoJo is the same.
Seymour's NYT article makes the point that The Brexit Party is quite unlike any other. It has no National Executive, Central Office or endless committees grinding through policy. No it's a limited company with a CEO, Farage himself so it's very nimble. Want a policy change? Here it is, he just thought of it. Not good? Don't worry, scrap that and get another. The manifesto exists in Nigel's mind. Policy is what comes out of his mouth at any given moment. Seymour continues:
"The Brexit Party’s campaign was a one-man show. While it has a
sophisticated digital strategy, the party has no members and no
manifesto, and none of its candidates were democratically selected. It
offered only one policy: a “No Deal” Brexit. Its rallies focus on star
performances by Mr. Farage, introduced with thundering motivational
music. He is a gifted communicator, verbally dexterous, with a sense of
humor".
UKIP came under pressure when they produced a manifesto. Farage described
the 2010 version drafted by the former Conservative MEP
David Campbell-Bannerman as 'drivel' (HERE). Had he gained a few MPs it would have been a masterpiece. This is very Trump like isn't it? Blame everyone in the room except yourself when things go wrong and take all the credit when it goes right.
Behind the self-obsessed narcissist is a formidable social media machine with a phenomenal reach, akin to a marketing business for promoting a message of betrayal by our present leaders and a cult of personality for himself.
Amazingly, people actually think he could and would get things done. It's hard to think of anyone less able to achieve anything. He doesn't have any sort of track record beyond insulting and aggravating basically everyone he has ever worked with.
Amazingly, people actually think he could and would get things done. It's hard to think of anyone less able to achieve anything. He doesn't have any sort of track record beyond insulting and aggravating basically everyone he has ever worked with.
"Like many English reactionaries — including Mr. Johnson — he [Farage] speaks in a
nostalgic, “old world” register. He doesn’t talk about taxes or
privatization. He talks about unfairness and loss, about the sovereignty
supposedly ceded to Europe, immigration and elite cosmopolitans. And he
names a placebo solution within reach: Brexit. The great escape. It’s a
powerful antidepressant".
I am sorry to say that Brexit is just the sort of quack remedy that many British people want. It's the simple universal panacea for every ill that every leaver has ever suffered - or so they think. When the truth is outed their anger will be palpable.
And to finish, I remember in the good old days BB (Before Brexit), Daniel Hannan quoting lines from a G K Chesterton poem, The Secret People and in his mind this cohort was nothing less than the vast majority of the British people seeking to cast off the yoke of a hated oppressor (the EU). But it seems to me now that WE are the secret people, the campaign that dare not speak its name, as we see it is not a yoke we are casting off but the embrace of a friend.
If we hold a street stall or deliver leaflets we have to do it in numbers for fear of being verbally abused or worse. We shall soon need priest holes. This is the worst indictment of Faragism.
Anyway part of GKC's poem. The first two lines and the last two verses:
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.
We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.
