Horse 3352 - Will Nigel Farage Do Anything As An MP?

Betteridge's Law Of Headlines states that any newspaper headline which exists in the form of a question, can always be answered with 'no'.

Now then...

Avalanches about - business continues below.

When Nigel Farage decided to launch Reform UK's manifesto on a rundown council estate in Merthyr Tydfil this week, he did so knowing that neither the Tories, nor Labour, nor the Lib Dems, nor the Greens, were ever going to visit places like this. Launching Reform UK's manifesto in Merthyr Tydfil is purely about what marketing people from the 1980s would have called the 'optics' of the event. This was purely about making Nigel Farage appear to be the political messiah for places like this, and painting him as the hero who will give voice to the voiceless.

Optics is all this needs to be. The truth is that as soon as he's gone, that's the end of it. Farage has no intention of ever giving people like this a voice. Even when it comes to Reform UK, the political 'party' which Farage currently wears the tie for, Farage has no intent there either. Farage exists almost purely as an actor on a political stage, spouting whatever lines are necessary to fulfil the current role he is in. As we found out well before Brexit, there is zero substance to the man. Quite literally everything and anything that he says is as hollow and as temporary as an easter egg.

Reform UK is therefore quite an apt party for this political charlatan to be spruiking lines for. It is as equally as vapid and hollow as Farage. Its political manifesto, if it can be called that, is also equally as devoid of substance as its celebrity thespian. The thing about political manifestos is that they usually contain a list of policies and promises that the party will achieve if it gets to government. Reform UK will not get into government. Reform UK has no intention of honouring any of its promises and nor does it need to.

What Reform actually offers the people of Britain, is a set of excuses to blame anyone other than white people for their predicament; which is exactly the kind of thing that a small, very racist, portion of the population likes: Decimate the civil service. End the BBC, teach real 'history' so that children can learn that black people were every bit as cruel to white people as white people were to them, teach children that slavery was justified because they were doing it to each other, tax cuts for everyone, stop the boats; that kind of thing. The pamphlet itself actually contains less information than an average pizza parlour pamphlet.

Nothing that Reform UK says either needs to be subtle, plausible, sensible, or even doable. That is not Reform UK's job. Nor is the point of Reform UK do act as a protest vote either because a protest vote would suggest that the people who vote for them want to register displeasure at something and want positive change. A vote for Reform UK is not even about that. Really the only reason that it exists, is as a conduit for people’s rage. Reform UK is theatre dressed in the clothes of politics, with no actual intent of playing anything other than a pantomime clown.

This is where Farage excels. Farage is a posh boy who is playing the act of being rough. Farage likes to play in the clothes of what he thinks that normal people look like, despite the fact that when it actually comes to normal people, he thinks that they are disgusting. He likes to dress up with pint in hand and maybe even a cigar because that is the storybook version of what rich people think poor people are. In reality, Farage is as establishment and old money as you can get.

Even when it came to his most prized costume, pretending to be as British as John Bull, that costume came off as soon as possible. When it came to the actual implementation of Brexit, Farage applied for and got a German passport within 30 days of the legislation being passed. As the instigator who pushed the Conservative Right to make this policy centre stage during the 2015 General Election in which David Cameron was trying to hold together a Conservative Party which was fracturing, Farage used the opportunity to get free publicity knowing full well that he would never be subject to any of the consequences. As an MEP for Europe, he was on the gravy train right in the middle of Brussels, and even then he knew that his actions were of zero consequence to him.

The truth is that I have no idea if Nigel Farage believes anything that he says. Mind you, I do not think that he needs to believe anything that he says either. His current election run for the seat of Clacton is likely based on someone running some numbers and deciding that he could pick off the Conservative candidate and win sufficient number of votes to beat the Labour candidate. Owing to the fact that the United Kingdom uses a most votes wins system to decide who gets sent to the House of Commons, the actual amount of work that any potential MP needs to do to win most of the 649 seats is minimal. Farage as celebrity clown, merely has to rely on his name to achieve enough brand recognition to get enough old racist duffers to go out on a Thursday and put their cross in a box.

I suspect that the people of Clacton will soon discover that a vote for Nigel Farage is a vote for self-disenfranchisement. He will never deign to speak for any of the issues of the people of Clacton. That of course assumes that he would turn up in the House of Commons very much at all. I suspect that as an MP who would be subject to the rules of the House, being told to sit down and be quiet after being a disruptive schoolboy, probably no more than twice, will mean that he can claim that his right to free speech is being curtailed and thus he wins more free publicity. I think that Farage will end up being like Sir Isaac Newton, whose only recorded words in the House of Commons were to request that someone close a window.

Farage is the same kind of politician as his friend Donald Trump; who is equally devoid of substance. I genuinely think that Trump had no plans beyond 20th January 2017 and that the only reason that he ran/is running for President is that he likes being at the centre of the theatre. Nigel Farage also likes being at the centre of the theatre and when tested to see if he would join the Conservative Party he consistently says 'no', which indicates to me that he is not concerned with the actual machinations of parliament.

Perhaps this is his saving grace. One of the pitfalls about voting for clowns is that eventually they will laugh us all to hell. Farage is certainly a clown who likes to caper in the sawdust ring of politics but the fact that he is content to play the fool who stands aside from the people whom he wants to claim as his pantomime villains, means that he will never be allowed near the levers of power. Perhaps one day he might be sent to the House of Lords for reasons that make less than zero sense to me but the best that that future party will be able to hope for is that they have appointed Lord Belch to a comfy bench for naptime.