THE BIRTH OF DEMOCRASSY?

THE BIRTH OF DEMOCRASSY?

Over the last week or so we have had the spectacle of Nigel Farage, from here on to be referred to as ‘that man’, airily declaring that ‘you will see some policies soon…’ in between loudly interrupting anyone who tried to question his simplistic statements as well as declaring that party manifestos are no more than ‘lies’ and that’s why his party doesn’t have one yet. I have read that he has claimed that the relevant policies will be revealed AFTER the EU elections! So that’s alright then.

Obviously, this means that he hasn’t saved enough fag packets yet or consulted enough with his very, very rich backers. It may also have something to do with this answer, heard on this morning’s (May 14th) ‘Today’ programme:

BBC interviewer: ‘Which EU rules do you think are holding back your ideas on spending?’

Brexit Party (millionaire) candidate in Peterborough, after a noticeable pause: ‘I haven’t looked into the detail. I JUST KNOW that we are hampered in what we want to do.’

Well, I ‘just know’ that I am more attractive to women than Daniel Craig. This type of exchange really is on that level and should not be dignified as part of our democratic process, voters are being offered a pig in a poke, a very big one.

Unfortunately, some in the media are not doing their job properly to counteract this scandalously ‘policy-free and proud of it’ activity, which should not even qualify as political. There are numerous examples to show this:

* Privileged access to television programmes for that man, in interviews which fail to ask him any serious questions. If a question is seen as being too hard to address, that man resorts to distraction tactics – eye-rolling, insults and raised voice. These should be occasions when the interviewer and not the interviewee walks out or shuts down the session.

* No real explanations of the organisation’s structure, its lack of actual members, for example and processes such as who will eventually decide on its policies. The implications of these short-comings need to explained.

* An acceptance that manifestos are ‘dead’. This view was expressed by the commentator Iain Dale, best known to me for making one of the worst predictions of the 2017 GE result – 122 Conservative majority – on the eve of the election and for assaulting an older and smaller anti-nuclear protestor who had the temerity to intrude on his video to plug a book he had published at the time. Dale is a Conservative and so it’s no wonder that he is sceptical about the value of manifestos, saying that they are, basically, just lies.

* The regular claim that the recent local elections and the rise of the BP show that our political model is ‘broken’ and that both the main parties are struggling. This will only be true if we let it be so. The Labour Party does have its problems but most of those are generated internally by recalcitrant MPs and others who are not true socialists and don’t want a Corbyn government. None of the other parties can touch the LP on policy, they know it and so do the media, hence the general media silence whenever a major LP policy - and there have been quite a few – is announced.

Contrary to the Brexit Party claim that they are bringing back democracy, they are themselves a democracy-free party with no members to have a say on what their policies might be, should they ever have any but with a bunch of high net-worth individuals backing them, people who don’t invest money without expecting a return. And those are just the ones who appear in public.

Worse is the effect that the suspiciously sudden appearance of the party appears to be having on the political and media world in general. The response of some of the media whores is dealt with above but, again on Newsnight, we had the spectacle of a Tory MP suggesting that, in a General Election scenario, his party might ‘have an accommodation’ with the Brexit Party. At this point, it would be appropriate to swear but it’s better just to ask just where politics in this country is going if this is a serious suggestion. One answer might be that the BP has simply been lurking within the Tory Party waiting to be let out.

That man says that his campaign is about democracy when, in fact, he and it represent contempt for the very concept of democracy.

Notwithstanding M. Thatcher’s idea that terrorists and similarly dangerous people should be starved of the ‘oxygen of publicity’ I am joining the Fan Club that is the BBC by giving N. Farage a little whiff. – Bob, Your Uncle

Nigel Farage with PSA sign for voters.