It is becoming increasingly clear that the European Union faces fiscal crisis, Visegrad rebellion, ClubMed unrest, and growing calls for something far less than federal fascism. Yet at the very point when both UKIP and Farage are being further vindicated, both are coming across in the media as destructive. Urgent action is required to stop UKIP becoming a latter-day SDP.
Six months ago, I posted here about a lie at the centre of the debate about who has the upper hand in the Brexit negotiations. This was the seminal paragraph:
In classic fashion, the article was flayed alive by Left leavers – ‘more of the lies you told during the referendum’ – including one from ubiquitous EC rentagob Nina Schick, ‘a riduculous fantasy’. But within the last 48 hours, there are encouraging signs that at least some of the Western SMS are catching on to EUNATO’s penchant for dismissing every glimmer of Truth as “fake news”.
Reporting from Davos, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (always more real than most about the sleazy nature of the Brussels oligarchs) notes, ‘The EU’s uncompromising and united stance on Brexit has begun to unravel after European leaders in Davos offered deeply conflicting accounts of what sort of deal may eventually be possible.’
The reality is that it was never there in the first place: as a fully paid-up Bankster, Emannuel Macron has always been a hardliner determined to have the London City in the igloo pissing out, or dead from exposure. His views are not shared by Italy or Greece, both of whom would like to see Il Duce Draghi’s ECB nuked at the earliest opportunity…along with the entire idea of federalism. In turn, the German Bundesbank (along with Angela Merkel) regards Supermario with profound suspicion. And of course, none of the East European Visegrad Four (Hungarians, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks) want any truck with either the euro or the EC’s insane migration policy.
Yesterday brought us a stonking piece from John O’Sullivan in the Spectator, in which he went for the jugular of the ongoing NATO/CIA/EU disinformation campaign against the Visegrad group. Large tracts of it read like extracts from The Slog over the last three years:
‘The umbrella explanation of central Europe is that populists are undermining the EU, and putting democracy there into crisis — that the so-called Visegrad Four are descending into authoritarianism. Look closer, however, and you can see something else. In their first 20 years these young democracies found that too many levers of power — the courts, the media — were in post-communist hands under rules, constitutions and bureaucracies shaped by the communists. They’re doing what democracies are supposed to do: reforming institutions to channel into government policy what their voters chose through elected politicians……while their ideas on borders, immigration and culture have been contrary to Brussels orthodoxy, neither people nor governments in these countries are hostile to the EU itself. They don’t want to leave; they want to stay in and get back some of the power lost recently to centralised EU institutions. In some cases they are for ‘More Europe’ — Hungary’s Viktor Orban is a strong advocate of a European army. But they want a different Europe with greater respect for its newer and smaller members — and they’re working together in groups like the Visegrad Four to pressure Brussels more effectively.’
I still believe that the longer Brexit tides ebb and flow unpredictably, the more other EC/ECB/NATO lies will, like so many sandworms, wriggle to the surface. So it is both ironic and frustrating that – at this, the hour of approaching EU darkness – Nigel Farage and UKIP appear determined to snatch bitter recrimination from the jaws of united vindication.
Although Farage is a long way from being my favourite person, he is now without doubt the most historically important UK politician since Margaret Thatcher. The Majors, Blairs, Browns, Cleggs and Camerons have come and gone, but only he since 1979 has made the will of the British people prevail with such spectacular success. He has done this without a trace of ideological constipation (albeit at times with perhaps too much verbal diarrhoea) and devoid of any long-term ambitions of political power for the sake of it. Once he saw a job done in 2016, he was keen to get his life back.
The problem is, in 2016 he was guilty of prematurely ejaculating from the Party. And since his departure, UKIP has stumbled from one badly handled leadership/media crisis to another.
In the same vein as Millwall FC in soccer, in politics the Establishment loves to hate UKIP. The Tory press rightly sees it as threatening the country’s natural Conservative hegemony, and of course the mad wing of LeftLib “thinking” sees Farage’s creation as the spawn of devilish KKK loins that will doom Britain to becoming Schloss Nazi in the long term.
It says a lot about the tenacity of UKIP’s members that, in the best Sarf London tradition, they happily sing “Nobody loves us and we don’t f**kin’ care”; but post-Brexit Tory backsliding has dictated that Real Brexit remains unfinished business….half-done work that could prove catastrophic for those of us who want our direct democratic liberties back.
There have always been two absolute truths about UKIP: first, without Farage at the helm, its effectiveness is diluted by at least 85%; and second, it is a broad church crammed to the top of the steeple with those who, at best, represent English individualist common sense incarnate…but at worst, loopy eccentrics. Apply the second point to the first, and you have it all in one.
In that context, even a water-walker like Farage can’t have it both ways. He must either join a metaphorical trappist monastery, the better to grow roses in silence; or he must storm back in and rescue UKIP from itself. Commenting from the sidelines and watching the old media twist his words is not an option.
There is far more than a single-issue Party at stake here. Between now and 2022, the best thing for tolerant freedom in Britain would be a strong Party of dissidents with the capacity to deliver not just self-determination, but also break the political duopoly that has divided us since 1970.
The Slog 