Fond O' Lying?

Ursula von der Leyen has, as expected, been shooed into the position of EU Commission President by the faux democratic process of voting, from a shortlist of candidates including herself and… er, herself. The result has been loudly touted as 52% to 48%, mirroring the Brexit referendum and therefore as equally valid. After all, sayeth the righteous remoaners, if 52% is an ‘overwhelming majority’ (something leavers have never actually claimed) why all the belly-aching?

Why? Well it’s as if Keith Vaz were to chair the committee for standards in public life for some time after the cocaine-fuelled rent-boy episode. Or as if renowned anti-white racist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown were to appear on our televisions almost every day to berate us for our skin colour. Or – and you’ll have to admit this is something of a stretch – as if unelected advisors were given titles so that they could take seats in the House of Lords and thereby bypass the election procedure and end up being cabinet members.

It’s all a question of legitimacy and the Brexit Party, among others, are in the EU Parliament precisely to try and open your eyes to what is really happening. To suggest that a disgraced German politician – under investigation for insider dealings in defence contracting – and utterly unknown outside her home country is a fit person to lead the commission is risible at best, sinister if you tend towards darker imaginings.

“But she was voted for!” They cry. Narrowly, yes. But no alternative was given. This wasn’t a contest, it was a rubber-stamping exercise, exactly as Nigel Farage has been saying for years. The majority of MEPs in the chamber are paid up EU devotees and yet they only just managed to get sufficient ‘yeas’ to pass the appointment. But where were they in the selection process? Where were the Euro-hustings allowing the ruled to see who would rule over them? Where were the preliminary voting rounds?

“How did Farage get to be leader of the Brexit Party, then?” they demand, “That’s exactly the same thing!” Is it? Did the BP suddenly take over the country? Is Farage the Prime Minister, or is he, in fact, simply the very popular leader of a party he founded? It is normal, indeed it is healthy, to question nepotism, secret committee selections, graft, corruption and abnormal voting outcomes. It is right to question polls limited to specific cohorts. And it is also right to question the current Tory Party system, but at least its members have had a say and all the selections have been highly public; embarrassingly so.

But the closed-door shenanigans of the EU’s ruling elite are not properly held to account. They aren’t even properly held to the light.  This is the entire point of Brexit. We have enough trouble being informed of the intentions, the motives, the reliability of our own, usually directly elected ‘representatives’. But how can we be represented by people we have never heard of, who often come with political or even criminal baggage and over whom we have no power to deselect?

Me? My, what a surpise!

At a time when more transparency is being demanded here at home; when higher standards are being demanded of our governors; when people are demanding a greater say in how our country is run; it is ludicrous for those who shout “Who funds you?” at Nigel Farage to be cheering on the farce of this ‘election’. There have always been crooks and low-lifes in positions of power, but why should we stand for a system in which this is not a regrettable exception, but an entry requirement?

Who are the neo-Nazis?

Theresa May has at last resigned, but at least she has finally secured a lasting legacy - and one which will be celebrated for generations. By the Labour Party. The total breakdown of the Conservative and Unionists over the issue of Brexit has been spectacular, nail-biting and at times simply farcical stuff. But if Labour supporters are cheering this on they might also want to take time out to consider their own precarious legacy, for it is movements of the left, for whom Labour wants to fly all the flags, which have connived to altogether destroy the credibility of the press, Parliament and almost anybody in public life.

To say that leftists have double standards is to make hypocrisy sound as harmless as having a favourite flavour of milkshake. Of course, we all cry foul when our side is attacked and retaliation in kind is rarely the answer, but this past week has seen the ability to overcome cognitive dissonance being stretched to breaking point in some quarters. When Jeremy Corbyn was egged they were furious, yet when similar happened to Nigel Farage (or as the bien pensants now have it, just ‘Farage’) they cheered to the rafters.

Having spent the three years AC (After Cox) frenetically ranting about the rise of the right and politically motivated violence they barely flinch when charged with encouraging the same thing. In fact they openly mocked those who were conflating dairy-based assault with something worse, even as people like Tommy Robinson_(NHRN) were facing down screaming, baying, brick-throwing mobs issuing death threats. What did police do? Not much; they have a right to counter protest, one silver commander opined.

While the left have reacted like hysterical children to every imaged slight, every slogan, every banner, every campaign talking point from those they label ‘the far right’, said far right has largely got on with the job and tried to peacefully make their point. And what has been the result? When a pensioner in Aldershot was milkshaked for supporting the Brexit Party they doubled down. Not only was this his just desserts_[sic] it was obviously a fake.

Oh yes, Alastair Campbell, Emma Kennedy, Mike Stuchberry and others implied, suggested or downright insisted that this was staged by the ‘far right’ to stir up division and hate. It is only a couple of steps down Conspiracy Street and they will be imagining that we invented Nazism just so that a century later we could accuse the Labour Party of anti-Semitism. Talk about judging somebody by your own poor standards – if the right are as stupid as they insist we should barely be capable of spelling conspiracy, let alone plotting one.

But further, they insist that eligible voters have been turned away from polling stations. And no doubt, once the results are called, they will denounce every electoral official in the land for collusion with Russia. When you consider that they have been demanding a second referendum all along you would think they would have welcomed this, albeit accidental, opportunity to have their voice heard again. But the voice is week and wheezy, so they resort to what they do best – imagining that they really won, but were cheated.

When purple-faced, throbbing veined, distorted-featured, shrieking malcontents throw bottles and bricks and repeatedly close down debate, sabotage peaceful events, threaten physical violence and even death, yet imagine that it is not they who are the Nazis you know that all reason has been lost. One day, it is to be hoped, they may look at their badges, their masks, their paraphernalia, their slogans; they may take stock of the atrocities they have committed and the lies they have told; they might just wake up and see the illusions they constructed and ask themselves – were we the baddies?

EU Woes

Once again the Eurovision Song Contest was political and once again the UK’s place in the political pecking order in Europe was established. Nul points; last again. Just as in realpolitik the substance doesn’t matter; we could have had the best act in the competition but still we would have been judged on our level of buy-in to the project. In truth we know that Eurovision is a camp little exercise in frivolity, vacuity and daftness and we have always been rather too earnest about it all.

But the timing could not have been better. As inconsequential as success in Eurovision is to the wider and rather more serious issue of the EU, coming last in the run-up to the real Euro elections will have done nothing to dampen enthusiasm for Nigel Farage’s insurgent Brexit Party. Hopes run high for the BP, come Thursday, but I have to caution that for many people their optimism runs a risk of tipping over into fantasy. Yes, the Faragistas have a real chance of dominating the poll this week, but beyond that I fear it will be somewhat less ‘earthquakey’ than many will wish for.

In short, Nigel Farage is not becoming Prime Minister in any decade of this century, if only because the forces he rightly rails against have far more power than we, the people, can possibly muster. Yes, he will make a dent – he will certainly, I feel, fatally damage the Conservative Party – and yes, people will begin to disbelieve what they are told when the evidence they see goes against it, but I fear we will have to endure the setback of a decade of Labour wrecking before sense prevails again. I wish it were otherwise; I truly do, but...

The first step for a bona fide non-violent full scale Political Revolution is trust. And whereas people no longer place much trust in the old party system, the establishment has inflicted deadly wounds on the corpus of Farage himself. Fake tweets, accusations of dark money, the Russians! But worse than that, for a movement that seeks to attract and mobilise the disenfranchised, the seedy notion that somehow Nigel is getting rich out of it. It is true that every attack piece increases the determination of supporters but it also damages the chance that the undecided will come on-board. This is exactly how the ‘Democrats’ in the USA go for Trump.

And it matters not how popular Farage is with the crowd; what matters is how that translates into power and influence; this is the real problem. We rejected an alternative to our first-past-the-post system in 2011 and the electoral game strongly favours entrenched, if outmoded parties, almost regardless of who they put up for office. Brexit will take a few Tory seats but they will almost certainly run second to Labour, even in places where the new party is gaining huge support for the EU elections. Most people simply don’t turn out to elect MEPs and come a general election old habits die hard.

At best the Brexit Party might – might – get to be potential king-makers to a minority Labour Party, a role they cannot possibly accept as it means certain death to Brexit. As a new party they have undoubtedly hooked into the zeitgeist and the appetite to fight the same old politics is clear. But they now have to settle into the long war, build a real party, unite hugely disparate ideologies among their candidates and future MPs and develop policy which has a chance of appealing across the board.

Propping up the same old dinosaurs...

As much as I want change and as much as I heartily endorse our withdrawal from the EU, this alone is not enough. We need to tackle the enormous departure of our society as a whole from what once made us the model for democracy the world over; but the forces that caused our current national distress are deeply entrenched and will take generations to overcome. Tony Blair may have accelerated the decline, but he didn’t start it. And the Brexit Party are going to have to be even more influential than he was before any tectonic shift will begin. I’m not investing in any earthquake defences just yet.