And the winner of The Times ‘Briton of the Year’: Nigel Farage. And the winner of the ‘Most out of touch newspaper of the year’ is The Times.
Now this is some accolade for the small-minded bigot who leads a populist right wing political party, founded on casual racism and xenophobia, especially in view of the competition.
Alan Henning, the Salford taxi driver, who was murdered by islamic fascists for having the temerity to want to help people and save lives; so Rupert Murdoch’s once proud newspaper plainly thought he wasn’t worthy. Nor Stephen Sutton, the 19 year old from Birmingham who raised £4.5m for cancer research whilst at the same dying from it. And certainly not William Pooley, the British nurse who went to Sierra Leone to help fight Ebola, contracted Ebola, was successfully treated for Ebola and then returned to Sierra Leone to resume the fight against Ebola. Plainly not worthy.
So the Briton we are supposed to look up to is a wealthy, privately educated ex banker who is standing up against…er…the establishment Eh? With a privileged background like that, how on earth could you not be in the establishment?
The Times’ new hero is the leader of what is, essentially, a one man ban of a political party which is otherwise full of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.” These are not my words, by the way. The quote comes from one David Cameron when he was still in the business of trying to make the Tories nicer. He’s long given up on that, mind you, lurching to the right ever since he went into government with Nick Clegg and his useful idiots of the Liberal Democratic Party. And it is true that Farage’s form of bigotry has resonated with a lot of people who genuinely fear the effects of immigration in cultural and economic ways. I get that, as Cameron likes to put it. I have no doubt that immigration from certain countries has forced down wages in certain areas, certainly in low skilled areas where these days you will find me. Immigration and the EU (Farage’s main beef), are worth debating and because certain parties, especially those who are left of centre (which these days is the Labour Party and the Greens, what with the Lib Dems on the centre right or maybe even further to the right than that).
If Farage’s award has been to acknowledge the work he has done in dividing people, in encouraging people to hate each other, to blame foreigners/the EU for all our problems and to want to turn our back on the rest of the world, then he deserves it. It is a wonder that he retains his popularity given the conduct of so many of his Ukip colleagues, but he seems to be made of Teflon. And getting endless, unquestioning coverage from the BBC helps his cause even more.
I suppose I should not be surprised that Farage has won the ‘Briton of the year’ from a newspaper that is owned by an American who used to be Australian. And I should not be surprised that last year’s winner, the architect of failed austerity and a crumbling economical (lack of) strategy as we plod through the slowest ‘recovery’ in our history, was George ‘Don’t call me Gideon’ Osborne.
Bigot, casual racist and xenophobe of the year, but Briton of the year? Only on Planet Murdoch.
