Nigel Farage has given an interview to Mishal Husain for her show on Bloomberg TV check. A transcript is available HERE. It’s a warning of what is to come if the British people are ever unwise enough or sufficiently disillusioned with their lives to vote him into Downing Street. We have had to suffer Brexit to finally convince a majority that leaving the EU was not the solution that he claimed it was, or indeed to anything at all. Life hasn’t improved one iota as a result of Brexit. If anything, it’s got markedly worse. I fear that it may take a catastrophic period of Farage government to demonstrate just how spectacularly ill-equipped he is to manage anything.
I don't know if he's paid by Russia or if he does it all voluntarily, but there is no doubt he is doing exactly what Putin wants. He is the divider-in-chief, another in the Trump, Le Pen, Wilders mould, and doesn't even try to hide it any more.
He claims he is "ready" to be Prime Minister, but I doubt he has the slightest idea what the job entails. When Husain suggests he's not known as someone who brings people together, this is his brazen answer:
NF: "I think we’ve had too many unifiers. Look where consensus politics has got us.
MH: So you would govern as a divisive figure?
NF: You’d govern as a majority government, on a radical manifesto that says the country needs fundamental reform. Some people won’t like it, but that’s the way it is.
We've tried unity, let's see how much better we can do with division. It is quite insane to think the country can ever be successful with half the nation hostile to its own government. This is the Russian plan being implemented in the United Kingdom. Emulate Trump in America and get the country at war with itself, dial up the chaos to the maximum and pave the way for a strong man to restore order. This is how fascism takes root.
His take on Brexit is that the referendum result was a good thing, naturally. Husain asks if the 2016 vote was worth it:
"Do I think freedom’s worth it? Yes, absolutely. Do I think self-governance is worth it? Yes, of course I do. Do I think the ability to control your borders is worth having? Yes, I do. Now, have we exercised it? No."
We are back to the 'Brexit wasn't done properly' argument. Six PMs from four different governments. two political parties and umpteen cabinet ministers have tried to make a success of it, including raving Brexiteers like Johnson, Davis and Rees-Mogg, all helped by the cream of the entire British civil service, but have singularly failed.
Farage's claimed they were all "weak people" who "didn’t believe in it" and "never believed in it."
All failed to "take advantage" of Brexit, and asked if he thought he could do any better if he had been PM:
NF: "Oh, miles better."
MH: "So if you became prime minister, would you rip up the treaty, the agreement that Keir Starmer made with the EU earlier this year?"
NF: "Well, the whole treaty is up for renegotiation anyway. It’s a very poor treaty. We can do a lot better than that. We’ll have to play hardball. If you play hardball, you have to mean it."
Later, asked how he would reshape the treaty and whether he would end alignment with EU rules, this is his answer:
NF: "Alignment’s catastrophic, moronic."
MH: "You’d end alignment with the EU if you were prime minister?"
NF: "100%. It’s keeping us firmly hooked back in the 20th century, not in the 21st."
All this is an open pledge to deliver the hardest Brexit known to man. To erect the highest non-tariff and tariff barriers possible and cut off as much trade as possible with the hated EU27. We would go back to the 1950s when nobody mentioned Europe, and we knew more about Africa, and British military bases in Germany, Cyprus, Aden and Singapore.
He is like all authoritarians, offering simple solutions forced through regardless of the damage.
Farage would deliberately mis-align us with Europe for ideological reasons, blind to the loss of jobs, trade, convenience or prosperity. Overt racism would become the norm again. Thugs like Tommy Robinson would have their own show on GB News.
On and on it goes. Nathan Gill was "one bad apple," the governor of the Bank of England and the FCA would go:
"The Bank of England, the British government, the regulator, they’ve all got to understand the world is changing — has changed — very very rapidly. We have to be inventive. I think that’s a skill I bring. I think I’m good at seeing opportunities for the country as we go ahead."
He thinks he's "inventive" code for bull-headed and tin-eared in his case. Thousands of illegal immigrants would be kicked out: "If we do it nicely and do it properly, [they] will accept they have to go. In most countries, if you enter illegally, you are chucked in prison."
This bit is sickening:
"The rank, the title, the position [of PM] doesn’t interest me at all. There are fundamentally two types of people in politics — those that want to be something, and those that want to do something. I’ve always been a person that’s wanted to do something. In the past, what I’ve done is help change public opinion, help shift national debate. I’m now moving that on to the next logical stage."
If you believe that, you'll believe anything. Unfortunately, at the moment, about 30% of the voters do.
