The March to Leave, which left Sunderland yesterday led by Nigel Farage, has not exactly gained a great deal of publicity. Why should it? The Daily Express announced that 100,000 people would be marching from Sunderland to London, whereas only circa 350 actually turned up. That number has today dwindled to 77, including several photographers. Farage himself is not, of course, one of them. That’s because he is a shameless huckster, a conman and a liar.
I am reading that those who are still marching are overwhelmingly good and decent people, doing something they genuinely believe in. On that basis alone, I am not attempting to ridicule them. Good and decent people doing something they genuinely believe in is what democracy is supposed to be about. Good luck to them (and I mean it, man).
This march should not be confused with the Jarrow March of 1936 where people marched to oppose poverty and unemployment. This march potentially sets out to do the precise opposite. But do not be fooled. I doubt that it will dwindle away to nothing and that once the march reaches London, numbers will once again swell, including the nicotine stained man frog Nigel Farage.
What Farage is is not what he pretends it is. He is not the man standing up to the establishment. He is the establishment, a political insider who knows all the tricks, has all the connections. And he is very good at providing sound bites like this march to leave. Less good, however, at getting his hands dirty. He loads the gun and then runs away. Then again, that’s what Brexit is all about.
The main leavers argue their case away from the front line where real decisions have to be made. Farage, Rees-Mogg, as well as the resigned Tory ministers like Johnson, shout from the sidelines. Anything that requires hard work is anathema to the cheats and shysters of Leave.
The March to Leave is a joke at the moment. It is a joke not because of the decent women and men who are walking the walk but because of the likes of Farage who just talk the talk.
The sunlit uplands of Brexit don’t exist. In fact, the future resembles more the grim, stormy darkness where the march started yesterday. The country will suffer because of Farage and co. Increasingly the country is beginning to realise that, probably too late. But once decay to Britain really sets in, they will know who to blame.
