The owner of Britain’s biggest fascist company, Nigel Farage, was interviewed by Britain’s biggest fascist newspaper, the Daily Mail, yesterday. Farage makes it clear who is biggest enemy is: people on benefits. There will be a “massive change of thought needed on benefits – that’s going to be the biggest war of them all,” he said. “There’ll be riots, and there’ll be strikes and there’ll be protests, we know all of that, but that’s what we’re going to have to do.” I don’t need to tell you that this is not a policy by Farage, it’s a populist slogan, declaring war on people on benefits. So, who will Farage’s government be declaring war on, exactly?
The fastest growing group of benefit claimants is people claiming the state Retirement Pension. The population is getting older, there are more pensioners than ever and we are protected by the triple lock because pensioners vote. I have the feeling that Farage, who is increasingly beginning to resemble a thoroughly modern Oswald Mosley, doesn’t have old people in his sights, not before the general election anyway. But the sick and disabled? It would probably not be a good idea to be sick and disabled if Reform Party UK Ltd came to power.
One big lie told by Farage is that people are raking in vast sums for conditions like “mild anxiety”. Just go along to your GP, say you have mild anxiety, the GP will sign you off indefinitely and you will be showered with state riches, including a free top-of-the-range car. Now I would agree that the motability scheme, which has the biggest fleet of vehicles in Europe and the second biggest in the world, after the Chinese Army, needs a major review but the reality is there is no free car: claimants use part of their benefits to lease a vehicle.
The trick is to persuade the public that everyone on benefits is a scrounger and could go to work if they could be bothered. Now, I am of the view that many people who are on benefits could work, given the necessary help, support and encouragement, but the idea that we have millions of people sitting around enjoying lives of luxury while everyone else works all the hours God sends just to put bread on the table is nonsense. But that’s not the point. The Fagash Fuhrer Farage wants us all to believe that millions of people are on the make and every single benefit claim is fraudulent. If the opinion polls are to be believed, he’s succeeding. The riots, strikes and protests part of his interview is pure shit-stirring.
Who, pray, is going to riot? Armies of severely disabled people in their wheelchairs and mobility scooters? Who is going on strike? So far as I am aware, people on benefits do not belong to trade unions and ballot benefit claimants in order to go on strike, from what, exactly? And protests? Well, yes there might well be protests if people with severe disabilities and the terminally ill have their modest benefits cut of even withdrawn in order to provide tax cuts for the better off, like the people who run Reform Party UK Ltd. Farage is being provocative, trying to show how tough he would be if anyone dared to disagree with his plans to destroy the welfare state. Next week, millions of people, mainly older people, are going to vote Reform Party UK Ltd in the local elections. Every single vote for Farage is, in its way, a vote to remove the safety net for the poor, the sick and the vulnerable and, let’s be crystal clear, Reform Party UK Ltd’s opposition to the National Health Service (NHS).
The word “benefits” has become a dirty word over the years, as exemplified by so many pensioners who object to the state pension being called a benefit, which it 100% is. Everyone is committing benefit fraud, no one is really ill and people who are unemployed could all work if they wanted to and, worst of all, every single benefit claimant, living a life of luxury, is a dodgy foreigner, almost certainly a Muslim who has come here on a small boat. This has no basis in truth but decades of drip fed lies in the gutter press have persuaded far too many people that it is true.
I suspect the fascists of Reform Party UK Ltd will enjoy huge gains in the council elections and that Farage will be all over a sympathetic media, which sadly these days includes the right-leaning BBC, calling for Labour to call a general election. This won’t happen but after the results have been declared, Britons will have voted in record numbers for the most right-wing party in British electoral history. If this doesn’t scare the shit out of your average liberal (with a small ‘l’), I don’t know what will.
There is a warning from history, 1983 actually, when the Labour politician Neil Kinnock explained what would happen if Margaret Thatcher was to win the general election. Here’s what he said:
“If Margaret Thatcher is re-elected as prime minister on Thursday, I warn you.
I warn you that you will have pain–when healing and relief depend upon payment.
I warn you that you will have ignorance–when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right.
I warn you that you will have poverty–when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can’t pay.
I warn you that you will be cold–when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don’t notice and the poor can’t afford.
I warn you that you must not expect work–when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don’t earn, they don’t spend. When they don’t spend, work dies.
I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light.
I warn you that you will be quiet–when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient.
I warn you that you will have defence of a sort–with a risk and at a price that passes all understanding.
I warn you that you will be home-bound–when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up.
I warn you that you will borrow less–when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.
If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday–
– I warn you not to be ordinary
– I warn you not to be young
– I warn you not to fall ill
– I warn you not to get old.“
Thatcher did win the general election, by a landslide as it happens, against a Labour Party that had slid to the far left with a manifesto which was described by the MP Gerald Kaufman as “the longest suicide note in history”. And that Kinnock’s warnings all came to pass is demonstrably true. When the Tories were finally removed from office 14 years later, the country had been ravaged by the excesses of Thatcherism. The main victims were the poor, the sick and the old. This is a very different Labour Party, one that is quietly rebuilding our country after yet another 14 years of Tory destruction, but people are going to reject it this week in favour of easy answers to complex questions.
Reform, dear people, are not your friends. If you thought the Conservatives were bad – and they were, very bad – then frankly you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. In its own way, Farage is Britain’s Trump, albeit one without frontotemporal dementia but still a narcissist. And he’s a far smarter political operator than the orange gibbon across the pond.
We need to talk about Nigel because he is a threat to everything we believe in and stand for, subservient to Trump’s America, beholden to fascist Russia, whose leader he has said publicly he greatly admires. It will not just be the sick and the vulnerable who would suffer the full effects of full fat Farage: it is all of us. And if we vote for him, we will deserve all we get.
