Farage - Mutton Dressed As Lamb
Hugo Rifkind has a great column in The Times the other day which rightly mocked Nigel Farage and his efforts to distance himself from the fruitcakes and rape apologists of Ukip.
Yet it seems to me that Farage and his Brexit Party are not a blank slate or a fresh start - they're more like 'mutton dressed as lamb'.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/13a3c86a-6516-11e9-877f-447086620e98
Nigel Farage can’t escape the foul legacy of Ukip
By Hugo Rifkind - The Times
The leader of the Brexit Party is riding high in the opinion polls but how long before his past catches up with him?
Within the bounds of what we must still, if reluctantly, call the mainstream political spectrum, parties furthest to the right don’t get that much attention. Ukip owned the 2014 European parliament elections and brought about the Brexit referendum, yet if most voters in Britain can recognise anyone still in it, I’ll eat my garish tweed cap.
More recently, think of the wall-to-wall media coverage of why various members of the Independent Group, or Change UK as it’s become, quit their various parties. That exciting new force is now managing a sad single handful of points in most opinion polls. By contrast, Britain’s other new schismatic party, the Brexit Party, is polling in the high twenties, and will almost certainly come out on top if we take part in next month’s Euro-elections. Nobody seems to care much why its members left Ukip. “I mean, you would, wouldn’t you?” seems to be the general view. As if there wasn’t much point in learning any more.
For those not keeping up, Nigel Farage left Ukip last December because he came to believe, I suppose much like Ken Livingstone came to believe of Hitler, that it had gone mad. The immediate cause of this was Ukip’s new leader Gerard Batten and his embrace of the far-right thug Tommy Robinson. According to Farage, this sort of thing displayed a “fixation with the issue of Islam” that could only harm the case for Brexit.
Under Batten’s leadership, Ukip has also welcomed in a special breed of online activist, exemplified by new recruits Mark Meechan and Carl Benjamin. If those names don’t ring a bell, it may help to know that Meechan also trades under the name “Count Dankula” and that Benjamin normally goes by “Sargon of Akkad”. One of them is the bloke who was fined for teaching his girlfriend’s pug to do a Nazi salute, and the other was Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons. Wait, sorry, no he wasn’t.
Whether these men sit on the far right of the political spectrum or somewhere different but equally horrible is hotly contested, especially by them. I’m not sure it matters. At Ukip’s Euro-election launch last week, they dominated proceedings, with Batten standing next to them with the stunned look of a man who has invited a Tinder date to a family wedding, and suddenly isn’t sure it was a good idea. Benjamin was asked by Sky News whether he still thought it was acceptable that he had tweeted at the Labour MP Jess Phillips: “I wouldn’t even rape you”. “Yes!” he screamed back. “One hundred per cent! Deal with it!” Hopeless naif that I am, I hadn’t previously considered Ukip to be a party with a long way to fall. Well done them.
So, like a sneaky bankrupt founding a new company, Farage is now the leader of the Brexit Party instead. As he put it last week, there is “no difference between the Brexit Party and Ukip in terms of policy” and that the problem with Ukip was that “the brand is now tarnished”.
Is it unfair of me to point out that under Farage, Ukip was the party with councillors, candidates and even MEPs who spoke of “Bongo Bongo Land”, of telling Sir Lenny Henry to move “to a black country”, of having a “problem” with “negroes” because there was “something about their faces”? Back in 2014, the year of their triumph in elections to the European parliament, they had a councillor who blamed floods on God’s wrath at new laws to allow gay people to get married. Farage himself has spoken of his unease at hearing foreign languages spoken on trains, and has blamed immigrants for clogging up the M4 — and that’s before one even mentions his campaigning in the EU referendum. His horror at how Ukip has turned out reminds me of Captain Renault’s horror at gambling in Casablanca. Shocked, he was, shocked.
To return to a comparison with Change UK, Nigel Farage is no Luciana Berger. A better parallel would be if Jeremy Corbyn had left Labour, but only on the basis that he was fed up with the way it had become overrun by beardy old socialists who kept banging on about Palestine.
Indeed, the first leader of the Brexit Party, pre-Farage, was a former Ukipper called Catherine Blaiklock who lasted two months in the job. She herself has already — already! — resigned from the new party over some of her earlier social media posts which very much express the sort of views Farage insists his party definitely doesn’t have.
Believe it or not, I don’t intend any of this as an attack on the Brexit Party. What would be the point? If anything, I approve of Farage’s belated desire to unshackle himself from everything that Ukip no longer has the strength to pretend it isn’t. At the weekend, he was even insisting that he wouldn’t accept donations from his old chum Arron Banks. Harsh but necessary. Drinks on him next time, I’d expect.
How long, though, will it last? As the referendum showed, the most appealing Brexit is the one unshackled to anything at all. The greatest strength of Farage’s new party is that today it is just a name, a blank slate, a formatted disk, a fresh new flower bed in which the weeds have not yet grown. Yet they will come. One day, his new party will come to look like his old party did, with the same members, the same supporters, the same views, and the same baggage, too. Sure as night follows day. You know, he knows it, everybody knows it. I wonder if he’ll ever have the courage to ask himself why.
What's News Pussycats? (18/04/19)
The news that George Galloway has endorsed Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party comes as no surprise because it's an old truth in politics that the far-left and far-right are really just two sides of the same coin.
Fishes and Bicycles (21/02/19)
The news that George Galloway is redoubling his efforts to rejoin the Labour Party couldn't have come at a worst time.
But my view is that since Labour is overrun with leftist cranks and political ideologues these days, what possible difference could one more make?
And although Labour needs people like George in the same way that a fish needs a bicycle, there's no doubt he'd be at home with the likes of Len McCluskey and Seamus Milne.
Come Into My Parlour (25 April 2014)
Labour leader Ed Miliband has raised more than a few eyebrows at Westminster and elsewhere - with the news that he held a private, hour long meeting with George Galloway, the Respect MP.
Now why would Ed do such a thing? - since the news of a 'secret' meeting was bound to leak out - sooner or later - and could only work to the Labour leader's disadvantage.
Because it looks distinctly odd it has to be said - as if Ed Miliband is on the back foot - cast in the role of the fly and not the spider.
Some of the newspapers say it was to discuss the recent vote boundary change legislation - which sounds bonkers and completely unconvincing, to me at least.
Now I haven't come across George Galloway in the flesh, so to speak, for a very long time - many years ago in the 1980s we went to a football game in London - to White Hart Lane the home of Tottenham Hotspur, if I remember correctly.
But to me George has evolved into the worst kind of politician - a demagogue and a political carpet-bagger, whose giant ego overwhelms everything else including his undoubted talent as a public speaker.
So, no disrespect - but I wouldn't cross the road to see George these days, never mind invite him into my private office for an hour long chat.
Fishes and Bicycles (6 May 2011)
So George Galloway has failed to win a seat in the Scottish Parliament elections.
Now this comes as no great surprise - here's what I said about the relevance of his campaign for a list seat in the Glasgow region.
Seems like the voters in Glasgow agreed with me - that the former Respect MP had little to offer Holyrood.
Which chimes with my own views - because I didn't vote for him either.
Fishes and Bicycles (2 December 2010)
George Galloway is to politics what Jose Mourinho is to football - though without the evident talent and smouldering good looks.
'Gorgeous' George is a tired old pussycat these days - both vain and vainglorious in equal measure - whose current claim to fame is that he writes a regular column - wait for it - for the Daily Record.
The other day George was rude and condescending about Christopher Hitchens - saying that he would 'pray' for the avowed atheist - who is terminally ill with throat cancer.
George also boasted - as is his wont - about his public debates with Hitchens in 2005 - suggesting that these had been a great success - and that he had come out on top.
So I watched these recordings and other interviews on You Tube and it seemed to me that - as on many other issues - the former MP is simply deluding himself.
The two men clearly detest each other - which makes for great theatre and sparky TV.
Yet for me Hitchens had the measure of his opponent - whom he would probably characterise as a populist demagogue.
Apparently George is interested in standing for the Scottish Parliament in next year's elections - and his penchant for flowery words and phrases would certainly bring some colour to its debates.
But as his political interests have always been dominated by foreign affairs - Holyrood needs George about as much as a fish needs a bicycle.
What's New Pussycat? (30 March 2012)
The news today that George Galloway has won the Bradford West by-election is a devastating blow to the Labour Party.
Bradford West has been a safe Labour seat since 1974 - one where Labour has actively courted the Muslim vote - but the bottom line is that the voters rejected Labour in favour of a political demagogue.
Now as regular readers will know - George Galloway stood in the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections - and got absolutely nowhere.
My view is that the voters of Glasgow were too canny and wise - to be taken in with his particular blend of bombast - which is designed to appeal to disaffected Muslim voters these days.
Which is not to say that George does not raise some important issues about wars and military intervention in foreign countries - the present conflict in Afghanistan being a case in point.
Because the original mission was to deny a safe haven for the al-Qaeda terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks on New York - yet what purpose we are serving there now seems a mystery to many people - including me.
But George Galloway was against the original military mission - which was fully backed by the United Nations (UN) - it has to be said.
Just as he was against the decision to intervene in the civil war in Yugoslavia - of course - which ended the 'ethnic cleansing' regime of Slobodan Milosevic.
I haven't hear any of George's thoughts about the military intervention in Libya - come to think of it - which finally got rid of Colonel Gaddafi and his murderous crew.
Although I would be surprised if he was anything other than completely opposed to that decision either - which had the support of the UN and Arab League.
To my mind George is against just about everything - except George.
Which is why I think the voters of Glasgow decided he wasn't worthy of a seat in the Scottish Parliament - and sent him packing elsewhere.
As I said at the time Holyrood needed George - in the same way as a fish needs a bicycle.
But I suppose Labour now needs him in Westminster - like the party needs another hole in his head - because how does Ed Miliband explain such a crushing defeat?
George knows - of course.
Apparently God was on his side - which we know because he said so on Twitter - proclaiming his great victory over Labour was 'By the grace of God...'
A dog whistle comment if I ever heard one.
