Will the real Nigel Farage now please stand up?
I’m puzzled (1)
When I saw, the weekend before last, the press release put out under Nigel Farage’s name by UKIP, I got the impression that his candidates had been put under the ‘Fresh Choice for London’ banner because of some simple administrative cock-up. And that’s why I posted to that effect.
I’m puzzled (2)
Whatever doubts I had about Farage as a leader of either UKIP or Britain, I’d always assumed he was on the same planet as the rest of us, just not quite so refined. And that’s why I posted to that effect.
However, following his Mayoral ‘hands up’ release, I received a shoal of emails from UKippers who were very much of the impression that the London Fresh Start thing was anything but an accident. Here is a printable extract from one of them:
‘Farage is pretty close to the odious “Tory Boy” “Alan B’stard” type of character. He now appears to be parodying himself.’
Hmm. Another gave me a link to this site, which pretty bluntly opined:
‘The real problem for him, remaining in his cosy position of leader that is, is membership. If UKIP kept hemorrhaging members at the rate it had done he would have been out on his ear. But if UKIP was too successful, very talented people would switch from the Tories, and the inadequacies of the existing team would be exposed. So what he needs to do is gently bleed the Tory party, but not so much where he and UKIP are considered a viable alternative.
It seems clear to me that it would not have helped Nigel strategically if UKIP had done too well in London. The result came down to the wire, and there was barely a few percent that could easily have lost Boris the mayoralty and installed Ken back in.’
Ooo-er. And another one:
‘He drinks a lot. He is the sort of chap who thinks very well on his feet and enjoys deceit and turning the tables but is no use at consistent policy and the steady building of trust and an intellectual consensus. For all his facility with words, he lacks intellectual depth and gets rid of anybody who shows signs of possessing it and of becoming prominent in the party. He is fond of outwitting his “foes” in the party and basking in the uncritical adulation of many of the the rank and file who know no better. He has surrounded himself with sycophants and made himself the ultimate arbiter of candidate selection for the EU parliament.’
Well that seems pretty clear, then. And among the comment threads were these:
‘“But for The Slog, it’s what it has always been: UKIP’s organisation and leadership is pure AmDram codswallop.” Agreed. Now, let’s see if they can manage to fill out their election expenses form correctly. Failure to do so could result in a short stay at one of her majesty’s hotels for the UKIP agent.’ Quite a few like this one – including:
‘“UKIP’s organisation and leadership is pure AmDram codswallop.” Sadly so, yet funny how they can fill in their names correctly on expense forms albeit the amount being claimed even ‘Arthur Daley’ would laugh at’.
What on Earth can all this mean? We know not for certain, so let’s move on and ask, “Does Nigel Farage have his suede-shoed feet on the ground, or is he off with the fairies?” There now follow some excerpts from an email sent by Our Nige to a Greek admirer earlier this month.
Here’s the first:
‘A remarkable emergence is now taking place, into public view, of the totalitarian intentions of the EU-élite, which constitutes an important element of the forces now attempting to create a dicatatorial world-government (i.e. “the New World Order”)’
I’m sorry: I’m more than satisfied by the overwhelming evidence in favour of a minute percentage of the very powerful being greedy sociopaths, but I don’t believe a word of this bollocks – any more than I accept bonkers ideas about the Elders of Zion, or men with black eye-patches stroking white cats while planning to chuck James Bond into a vat of sharks prior to nuking Fort Knox. There is no New World Order, Nigel. It doesn’t exist.
‘What we need is a democratic, patriotic party, in every EU-captive nation, and, indeed, in every country around the world, to oppose the power of the Brussels-clique and its supra-nationalist backers elsewhere, namely the governments and institutions, including the United Nations Organisation, which are led by the Council on Foreign Relations, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and their numerous branches and hireling pressure-groups.
Oh dear, he’s off on one again. This para reads like an unholy coupling between mid-1950s Izvestia and a Madeleine McCann site. A new conspiracy theory is born: “Cliquy sprouts and the UN are in league with Chatham House and the backing band for that Gothic Evil rock act, The Supranationalists. Straight up, Cecil: this bloke in suede shoes down the pub told me.”
Leave it out, chum.
Mr Farrago has never struck me as being even remotely potty, so I can only conclude that this email to a Greek admirer was designed to give the impression of a mind wrestling with far more Universal issues than the plight of Dear Old Blighty. The fact is, I sympathise with almost all of the UKIP leader’s aims, but the feedback I’m getting from Out There is that he could be a nincompoop, a scheming control freak, or a conspiract theorist. I don’t know (because I’ve spoken to him on the phone just the once) whether all of none of those are true.
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