Tuesday 21 May 2013

The Relentless Charm of Nigel Farage

This is the title of a very interesting piece in Prospect click on  to link read. It was written based on Farage's performance in the South Shields by election. It rightly empasises Farage's strengths, his ability to converse meaningfully with ordinary people something other political party leaders lack. The Frank Field quote sums it up, Farage operates in the gap between the political elite and the ordinary people. Its a big and growing gap which Farage exploits very well and is a major reason for UKIP's recent strong electoral showing.

It rightly points out Farage is best on two issues, immigration  and the invisible EU referendum. Following the implosion of the BNP the former issue belongs to Farage. The latter enables Farage to exploit the huge democratic deficit in the UK with LibLabCon contortions to avoid giving the British people a vote on leaving the EU. On other issues particularly economics Farage is much weaker. I saw Wolfe, UKIP's City of London spokesman on the Daily Politics yesterday and I thought he did OK. Unfortunately UKIP's Tim Congdon, a good technical monetary economist, is a poor communicator when talking to Joe Public.

UKIP's problem is it is the Nigel Farage party. The Prospect piece makes the point that the boozing and the fags will be taking its toll on Farage to say nothing of the injuries he sustained in the air crash. If he goes for whatever reason UKIP will crumble. He has had more than his fair share of luck but eventually it will run out and he has not developed the party organisation bequeathed to him by Roger Knapman..

4 comments:

Mike Bridgeman said...

When only 30% of people bothered to vote and 70% are either not interested in party policy or structure but think the three other parties are all the same and in it for themselves I think Ukip is pushing at an open door.
You and I may fret about the detail but there are not many like us when it comes to polling day.

Eric Edmond said...

Indeed not Mike and they're all deid as the old Scottish toast goes

ALAN WOOD said...

What an accurate pen picture of Farage!

He does not know that Farage has eliminated opposition to his single-minded idea to get a referendum on IN-OUT (before he's strong enough to win it).

Anonymous said...

Well as part of the organisation bequethed to Farage by Roger I can say he actively destroyed it rather than tried to do anything with it. I sometimes wonder if I'd been as big a yes man to Farage as I was regularly accused of being then could I have been worth a few million Euros and be contemplating life from my Brussels flat while paying my wife to keep the home fires burning.......as they say "Heiniken don't do politics, but probably.......lol....."