Make 'Em Laugh!

Selecting candidates to stand for election is a very fraught and difficult process, but Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party have excelled themselves with their latest acquisition - the former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe who is probably best remembered as being one of the worst contestants ever on 'Strictly Come Dancing'.

 

Farage - Mutton Dressed As Lamb (24/04/19)

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.

Golden Goodbyes (11/12/13)

Westminster MPs are back in the headlines thanks to the recommendation by IPSA (Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority) that Westminster MPs should receive a big 11% pay increase - boosting their salaries to over £74,000 a year.

IPSA justifies its proposals by saying that the cost of MPs will remain neutral because elf other reforms - such as the removal of old discredited practices such as the payment of 'golden goodbyes' to MPs who lose their seats at general elections.

Yet, I fail to see the connection between the two things - MPs deserve no credit or pay rise for simply getting rid of practices which don't exist in other walks of life, so while there's a debate to be had - this is not the way to win friends and influence people.   

Golden Goodbye for MPs (30 October 2010)

MPs who resigned or lost their seats at the general election received more than £10.3 million in controversial 'golden goodbye' payments - on top of their already generous pensions.

The maximum payment is one year of an MP's salary - £64,766 at the last election - the first £30,000 of which is tax free.

And dozens of MPs who were caught out making ludicrous expenses claims - have benefited from this windfall.

Including, for example, Margaret Moran - the former Labour MP for Luton South - who claimed £22,500 on dry rot at her seaside house - a hundred miles from her constituency

A total of 220 politicians received the payouts - which have to be claimed by MPs - as opposed to being paid automatically.

Sir Alistair Graham, the former public standards chief, condemned the payments saying:

"I am sure there will be continued public anger that MPs seem to want to continue to milk the system even though they know it will strengthen public feeling about previous abuses of public funds.

Martin Bell, the former independent MP and anti-sleaze campaigner, said:

"I do not see there is any justification in paying those who are standing down. They have got a pension anyway. There is no cause for a payment for an MP who is standing down, none whatsoever.

The House of Commons authorities explained that the grant is intended to assist ex-MPs - with the transition back into a non-parliamentary life.

Former Labour ministers received severance pay when they left office - this group alone received more than £1 million of the total.

So, there you have it - how the other half live.

And just be relieved that if Ann Widdecombe falls on her arse - during tonight's episode of Strictly Come Dancing.

She'll have a big fat financial cushion to break her fall - and help her make the 'transition back into non-parliamentary life'. 

Noblesse Oblige (28/02/12)

I listened to the ridiculous old booby Lord John Prescott give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry yesterday.

If LJP's not the most inarticulate man in Britain - I'll swear I'll hop on one leg all the way to Motherwell Civic Centre - and back.

As far as I can gather - and I listened very attentively - old Two Jags thinks he is the victim of a terrible conspiracy.

Because his name appears on a list drawn up in 2006 by a private investigator - Glenn Mulcaire - working for News International.

But you can see why the deputy Prime Minister of the day was of interest to the press - because he was  conducting a clandestine affair with a junior civil servant - his diary  secretary at the time, Tracey Temple.

So why wouldn't the media want to expose the old goat?

Because there was a good argument for sacking the deputy PM - for mixing together his professional and personal lives - though what the much younger woman saw in  the now 73-year-old Lord Prescott is anyone's guess.

In any event Lord Prescott has now received a £40,000 settlement from News International - without producing a shred of evidence to show that he suffered any actual harm or financial loss.

At one point in his evidence Lord Prescott said he did not use the voicemail on his mobile phone - because "it means you have got to reply to them if they leave a message".

Exactly, that's the whole point of having a mobile phone with a messaging service - so that government colleagues can contact you and get you to ring back if necessary - in the event of some urgent official business.

So it's pretty unebelievable that a person in high public office like the deputy Prime Minister - could be out of reach for long periods - unless it was inconvenient to be contactable in the first place of course.

Nowadays Prescott is treated a minor TV celebrity - he pops up absolutely everywhere - like a Labour version of the former Tory minister - Ann Widdecombe.

Someone told me LJP appeared in Hello Magazine a while back - which ran a big feature on LJP's big house in Hull - under the grand title 'Prescott's Castle' would you believe.

But I'm drawing a clear line in the sand.

If old Two Jags appears on the next series of Strictly Come Dancing, then that's it - I'm definitely asking for my licence fee back.