Farage on Question Time 17 Feb

As always I watched this the morning after so as not to have nightmares. Farage like the curate's egg was good in bits and bad in bits. Overall it was a 6/10 performance IMO.

On the opening paedophile/prisoner/ECHR issue he gave his usual long and ultimately self defeating demagogue rant, something Heseltine picked up on and rightly called it Nigel's usual rant. It was interesting to compare his performance with Hanaan's today on the same topic on the Daily Politics where he was opposed by Charlie Faulkner. Hanaan was much more measured, accurate and effective. The Beeb put Farage on QT so often as they know he will turn up in his spiv suit, reinforce UKIP's fruit cake and loony image, and try to turn every answer into an anti-EU rant. Hence at the end of his opening salvo the applause was muted indicating he had lost the audience.

Thereafter he calmed down and did quite well on UK youth unemployment, selling off UK forests and aid to India. On the latter he clearly had the support of most of the audience enhanced by the opposition of the other four panel members all of whom exhibited an unwise and quite alarming predilection for poor foreigners over poor Brits. But again Farage's liking for an anti EU rant enabled Dimbledore to make a fool of him by pointing out the question was about India. Its what you call an own goal.

He let Heseltine away with one huge and important EU lie that a good debater would have nailed viz, it is thanks to the EU we have had peace in Europe these last 50 years. Rubbish! That is down to NATO with its overwhelming US component. It was NA/to not the EU that sorted out the Balkans conflict of 10 years ago! Farage is really a one trick pony. He has his rant but then he switches off. On Indian Aid it was the lady in audience who was feeding him the lines to pick up on!

Finally, NF had to be told off by Dumbledore for hectoring interruptions of Mrs Y Balls. Like me you may detest Mr & Mrs Balls but Farage had the line on 'professional' politicians with no experience of real jobs that he should have nailed Mrs Balls with. Maybe NF's tools have been blunted by over indulgence in Brussels.