Taking a punt

by Rick Johansen

One fear I have is that in 2029 when the next General Election is due, the Great British electorate concludes that the Labour government elected in 2024 has failed, it already knows that the Conservatives failed and people decide something along the lines that things couldn’t get any worse, so let’s give Nigel Farage a go. His Private Limited Company Reform UK Ltd has already made inroads, racking up a lot of votes for a handful of seats and many of us see them as a clear and present danger to our country. So, what is Reform UK and why is it a danger?

Reform UK masquerades as a political party, but in truth it is not a political party in the conventional sense. The company has no democratic infrastructures. It is, essentially, a vehicle for its ‘leader’ Nigel Farage, a man who is arguably the most successful politician in the UK. He is a very rich, privately educated former commodities trader, in every sense a member of the establishment he purports to loathe.

You have to be very careful what you say about him because he is not just a rich member of the establishment, he is extremely litigious. That is why, despite my tiny readership, I will not describe his political status in the way I believe it to be. Suffice to say, he is a member of the illiberal far right, a thoroughly modern Mosley. He is liked and admired by the far right everywhere, not least. by the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. I have a view on his relationship with Russia, too, but again living in a country, the UK, where free speech exists only if you can afford it, I am loathe to say what I really think. These are not the only reasons why we should fear a Farage government, or anything approaching it.

As well as loathing foreigners, Reform UK Ltd does not like human rights and would love to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which we were closely involved in setting up. Being outside the jurisdiction of the ECHR would put us in the place as Russia and Belarus and almost no one else in the free world. If electing a government opposed to human rights does not scare you, what does? How about the NHS?

I believe the principle of the NHS is what makes us civilised. Everyone contributes collectively through taxes and we are treated free at the point of delivery. 14 long years of Conservative misrule has caused severe damage to the NHS and our new Labour government is in the process of restoring it to the world class organisation it was when it last left office. There will be immediate improvements before 2029 but it will be a long job, perhaps a decade, to restore it to good health. Voters will need to choose whether they can support long term structural change or take a punt on someone else, like Farage. But here is the point. Farage and Reform have virtually no policies, other than leaving Europe and attacking migrants. One they do have is opposition to the NHS. Don’t take my word for it: take Farage’s:

The funding of the NHS is a total failure. “The French do it much better with less funding. There is a lesson there. If you can pay; you pay. If you can’t, you don’t. It works incredibly well.” The French system is different to ours but as ever with Farage you have to look beyond his actual words. He is opposed to the NHS, always has been and always will be. He believes in a low tax, small state country. You cannot have an NHS as we know it in that kind of country. Farage would love to have an American style of healthcare. He literally said it:”If you can pay; you pay. If you can’t, you don’t.” The actual meaning of this is, “If you can’t pay, you don’t get treatment.”

As with all Farage promises, they never deliver. Leaving Europe, he said, would make the UK more prosperous, it would cut migration. Leaving Europe has provided no benefits, the UK is poorer by every measurement and under the last Conservative government – a government almost as right wing as him – migration ballooned. The safest thing to do with anything Farage says is always to believe the opposite.

Taking a punt of Farage is taking a punt on everything. Taking a punt that slashing taxes and the public sector will somehow give us better public services. It won’t. Obviously, it will do the opposite. The Conservatives got close to wrecking the country. Farage would finish the job. Taking a punt on a c …  no, let’s not go there.

If you still aren’t sure, read this. I hope I’ve told you something to make you change your mind.

 

 

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