Making plans for Nigel

by Rick Johansen

Just when you thought it was safe to turn the radio back on and he’s back. Three days after resigning from his job, Nigel Farage is back to lead the “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” of Ukip.

I would imagine at least the BBC will be thrilled about this news. During the election campaign, actually for many months before it, no news bulletin would be complete without Farage. Not only that, Farage was almost always bowled half volleys. His ordinary working chap act, which is about as genuine as Boris Johnson’s buffoon act, seems to appeal to many, but the truth is that this is a privately educated former merchant banker (feel free to employ the use of rhyming slang) who is part of the very establishment he pretends to despise.

The bad news for Farage, I fear – no, make that hope – is that Ukip has passed its high water mark of support. David Cameron has stationed his Tory party to the hard right which is precisely where the Kippers want to be and within 18 months, in my opinion, this country will be having the referendum that may well separate us from Europe and trigger a further referendum in Scotland that will break up the UK. In such an event, Farage could reinvent his party as the English Independence Party (EKIP), except that it would effectively have been given itself independence anyway. The further bad news for Farage in the event of a BREXIT would be that he would have to leave the European Parliamentary gravy train from which he has done very nicely indeed, whilst misrepresenting Britain’s interests.

I suppose Ukip at least did us the public service of unconsciously placing Nick Griffin’s odious BNP on life support, but the bad news is in the history of far right politics. After a few years, they argue and split and then they come back under a new name. Maybe Farage will do just that, but deprived of the mission of bigotry and xenophobia he has enthusiastically assumed, he is more likely to drift to the outer reaches of politics, steadily becoming less and less important. Farage deserves nothing better than obscurity, leading a party in which some members refer to Gurkhas as “parasites” and women as “slags”. I hope he just goes back to the snug bar in the Jolly Racist and stays there.

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