Farage vows to recruit major household names to the Brexit Party
- Thread starter Blackleaf
- Start date
Says who? Have you got the evidence for this?
It doesn't mean the Royal Canadian Navy has more money to spend than the Royal Navy. The amount of those ships each is getting depends on how many each navy needs.
IHS Janes described it as a "credible frigate" that will cover "maritime security, maritime counter-terrorism and counter-piracy operations, escort duties, and naval fire support... [sitting] between the high-end capability delivered by the Type 26 and Type 45, and the constabulary-oriented outputs to be delivered by the five planned River-class Batch 2 OPVs."[33] (which have a fixed price of £116 million).[34] A 7 September 2017 graphic released by the Royal Navy stressed modular adaptability and flexible construction of the design for export opportunities. Core requirements of the Type 31 frigate include a medium calibre gun, point defence systems, hangar and a flight deck for Wildcat or ten tonne helicopter operated by a crew of around 100 with space for 40 more personnel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_31_frigate#Characteristics
I think there's more than enough Type 45s for that task. There are eight of them.
The carriers, the £££££££££££££ F-35
£££££££££££££ and the ballistic nuclear subs have broken the budget.
And that just isn't true. It's simply co-operations between two allies. The Japanese and Italians are also do the same with their carriers.
The complete RN Fleet Air Arm squadrons are still years away from completion.[/QUOTE]
Who says this?
Coffee House
Behind the scenes at a Brexit Party rally: why Labour and the Tories should be terrified
Tom Lowe
Tom Lowe
17 May 2019
The Spectator
In a small town in the Black Country last night, a political rally took place which should have the two main parties feeling extremely nervous. Willenhall, on the outskirts of Wolverhampton, doesn’t even have a train station. Yet well over a thousand supporters packed out a wedding venue to see the Brexit Party’s latest rally, filling every seat, standing in the aisles and exhibiting a greater enthusiasm than has been seen in British politics since the rise of Jeremy Corbyn.
The Brexit Party launched only a few weeks ago but already this is looking like a movement which could have a profound effect on Britain’s politics. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Betty Mitchell, 85, “it’s people power.” Hearing the cheers and chanting and seeing the repeated standing ovations of the crowd, it’s evident that the setbacks plaguing the UK’s abortive attempt to leave the EU, far from dampening the spirit of leave voters, has turbo charged it.
None of the attendees I spoke to had been to a political event before. Michael Levin, from Willenhall, had come to listen to Nigel Farage. “I like what he says. He talks my language,” he said. I asked what he thought about accusations from his critics that he’s a “snake-oil salesman”. He shrugged: “He’s accused of a lot of things”.
Many had come to support “democracy”. “We feel so betrayed”, said Mary Fletcher, from Perton, Staffordshire, “I’ve never known a worse PM than this one”. Asked what she thought about calls for a second referendum, she told me: “It’s like a football match, and the losers didn’t like the result, so they’re saying let’s do it again because the winners didn’t know what they were doing.”
Willenhall was once famous for the manufacture of locks, which were exported around the world. Close to the venue where Farage appeared was a small memorial park for fallen WWI soldiers from the local lock works. A plaque emblazoned with a heavily eroded EU flag read: “This scheme was partly financed with aid from the European Regional Development Fund”. No one I spoke to at the rally seemed remotely bothered about this. “We contribute more than we receive”, said Andrew Clarke, from Sedgley, West Midlands.
It’s a sentiment that Farage has spent 25 years tapping into. Taking to the stage as the crowd stood and chanted his name, he produced a Brexit Party placard and held it up to the audience. Having just sat down, those gathered promptly rose to their feet again in rapturous applause. Farage hadn’t even started speaking yet. To his supporters it seems he can do no wrong. He has united lifelong Tory and Labour voters with a shared feeling that politics must finally “change for good”.
The party’s success in bringing together opposing political tribes is undeniable. Earlier this week, Paul Embery, the pro-leave trade union activist, tweeted a video featuring Ann Widdecombe, the Brexit Party’s lead candidate for the South East. Embery said the clip of Widdecombe being cheered at a working men’s club in a former mining town in Yorkshire “is the equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn being hailed by the Henley-on Thames branch of the Women’s Institute”. In the video, Widdecombe points to the party’s remarkable polling figures and says “if this is what we can do when we’ve been around for a few weeks, imagine what we can do when we’ve been around for a few years.”
What this party has managed seems almost surreal, but it suffers from a gaping flaw. It’s a phenomenon which can only exist within this campaign. Honouring the 2016 referendum and fighting for seats it hopes not to take is its raison d’etre. The motives which brought all of these disparate elements together only meet on this single issue and in this highly unusual context.
For now it is being held together by the common cause of getting past the first hurdle: leaving the EU. Beyond that looms an almighty split. Yet even if the Brexit Party does not stand the test of time, its unlikely coalition could well be the only way to resolve the parliamentary impasse and deliver Brexit.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/...hy-labour-and-the-tories-should-be-terrified/
Behind the scenes at a Brexit Party rally: why Labour and the Tories should be terrified
Tom Lowe
Tom Lowe
17 May 2019
The Spectator
In a small town in the Black Country last night, a political rally took place which should have the two main parties feeling extremely nervous. Willenhall, on the outskirts of Wolverhampton, doesn’t even have a train station. Yet well over a thousand supporters packed out a wedding venue to see the Brexit Party’s latest rally, filling every seat, standing in the aisles and exhibiting a greater enthusiasm than has been seen in British politics since the rise of Jeremy Corbyn.
The Brexit Party launched only a few weeks ago but already this is looking like a movement which could have a profound effect on Britain’s politics. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Betty Mitchell, 85, “it’s people power.” Hearing the cheers and chanting and seeing the repeated standing ovations of the crowd, it’s evident that the setbacks plaguing the UK’s abortive attempt to leave the EU, far from dampening the spirit of leave voters, has turbo charged it.
None of the attendees I spoke to had been to a political event before. Michael Levin, from Willenhall, had come to listen to Nigel Farage. “I like what he says. He talks my language,” he said. I asked what he thought about accusations from his critics that he’s a “snake-oil salesman”. He shrugged: “He’s accused of a lot of things”.
Many had come to support “democracy”. “We feel so betrayed”, said Mary Fletcher, from Perton, Staffordshire, “I’ve never known a worse PM than this one”. Asked what she thought about calls for a second referendum, she told me: “It’s like a football match, and the losers didn’t like the result, so they’re saying let’s do it again because the winners didn’t know what they were doing.”
Willenhall was once famous for the manufacture of locks, which were exported around the world. Close to the venue where Farage appeared was a small memorial park for fallen WWI soldiers from the local lock works. A plaque emblazoned with a heavily eroded EU flag read: “This scheme was partly financed with aid from the European Regional Development Fund”. No one I spoke to at the rally seemed remotely bothered about this. “We contribute more than we receive”, said Andrew Clarke, from Sedgley, West Midlands.
It’s a sentiment that Farage has spent 25 years tapping into. Taking to the stage as the crowd stood and chanted his name, he produced a Brexit Party placard and held it up to the audience. Having just sat down, those gathered promptly rose to their feet again in rapturous applause. Farage hadn’t even started speaking yet. To his supporters it seems he can do no wrong. He has united lifelong Tory and Labour voters with a shared feeling that politics must finally “change for good”.
The party’s success in bringing together opposing political tribes is undeniable. Earlier this week, Paul Embery, the pro-leave trade union activist, tweeted a video featuring Ann Widdecombe, the Brexit Party’s lead candidate for the South East. Embery said the clip of Widdecombe being cheered at a working men’s club in a former mining town in Yorkshire “is the equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn being hailed by the Henley-on Thames branch of the Women’s Institute”. In the video, Widdecombe points to the party’s remarkable polling figures and says “if this is what we can do when we’ve been around for a few weeks, imagine what we can do when we’ve been around for a few years.”
What this party has managed seems almost surreal, but it suffers from a gaping flaw. It’s a phenomenon which can only exist within this campaign. Honouring the 2016 referendum and fighting for seats it hopes not to take is its raison d’etre. The motives which brought all of these disparate elements together only meet on this single issue and in this highly unusual context.
For now it is being held together by the common cause of getting past the first hurdle: leaving the EU. Beyond that looms an almighty split. Yet even if the Brexit Party does not stand the test of time, its unlikely coalition could well be the only way to resolve the parliamentary impasse and deliver Brexit.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/...hy-labour-and-the-tories-should-be-terrified/
Meanwhile, things aren't going quite so well at the opposite end of the Brexit spectrum...
Change UK is the gift that keeps on giving
The gaffe-prone ChUKas are not the real threat. But let’s enjoy them while they’re here.
Tom Slater
Deputy Editor
Spiked
16th May 2019
Chuka Umunna is on the front cover of GQ this month. Meanwhile, his newly formed anti-Brexit party, Change UK, the ChUKas if you will, is at around five per cent in the polls for the European Parliament election – an election that ChUKas were supposed to storm as the true party of Remain. The enthusiasm gap between media and public has, of course, been there since the party first launched a few months back. It is designed to appeal to metropolitan anti-democrats who are overrepresented in our media and politics. Most of the supporters of Change UK are probably either in it or covering it. But it’s nevertheless been hilarious watching the hype collide with reality over the past few weeks.
And what a few weeks it has been for the ChUKas. First there was the battle over its name. When the parliamentary bloc first formed out of 11 disgruntled Tory and Labour MPs it went with The Independent Group, or the TIGgers, as a placeholder. Then it chose Change UK – or ‘Change.org’, as Change UK MP Anna Soubry mistakenly first announced it in the Commons (causing consternation at the popular e-petition website). Then they decided to combine the two, presumably to keep the fun TIGger thing. Now they’re ‘Change UK – the Independent Group’, as if they are trying to jog people’s memory: ‘We’re Change UK. You know, The Independent Group? No…?’
Perhaps it was a smart move. Indeed, ChUK has gone so far under ordinary people’s radar that a poll a few weeks ago suggested that just 38 per cent of voters knew the party was anti-Brexit. And as the European election campaign has worn on, the public has become no more enthused. Its stage-managed ‘rallies’ look like regional sales conferences, only less well attended. Its primary achievement so far seems to have been to resuscitate the Liberal Democrats, the erstwhile ‘Party of the 48%’ that ChUK planned to plunder for candidates, supporters and donors. Last night, ChUK’s lead MEP candidate in Scotland went in the opposite direction, defecting to the Lib Dems.
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh, and there has been no end of gaffes to keep us amused. Within hours of their European elections launch, two candidates had to step down over dodgy tweets. The party that poses itself against Farage-style Little Englandism was on a UKIP-in-2014 sacking streak. Ali Sadjady, a candidate in London, was found to have tweeted: ‘When I hear that 70 per cent of pickpockets caught on the London Underground are Romanian it kind of makes me want Brexit.’ Joseph Russo, who had been due to top the party’s list in Scotland, was found to have tweeted ‘black women scare me’ – a phobia he puts down to ‘being chased through Amsterdam by a crazy black whore’. And they say Brexit voters are the bigoted ones…
The irony of all this is that at least part of the ChUK sell is that these are Blairites and Cameroons forged in the era of slick politicking and so they understand PR and how to win. But the past few weeks have proved that they clearly understand neither. Take their logo, comprised of four parallel black bars. As Sky’s Adam Boulton put it, when Anna Soubry started having a pop at the Brexit Party’s logo on his show last week, ‘yours looks like redacted information’. ‘Let’s have grown-up politics here’, was Soubry’s response. Then, of course, there’s the ChUK battle bus, which made them look like a discount coach company. As one commentator pointed out, it was a remarkable oversight given they seem to think the last referendum was won by a certain big red bus.
The profound crapness of ChUK will come as no surprise to anyone outside SW1. There is still a reactionary Remoaner rump out there in the country, but thankfully there’s not that many of them. And in any case, even they want a credible outfit to call their own. The only danger ChUK poses to Brexiteers is one of distraction. As Mick Hume writes on spiked today, Labour is edging closer and closer to backing a second referendum. And shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry’s statement this week that No Deal should be left off a second ballot in all circumstances – just in case, I suppose, we vote for it – is as anti-democratic as anything the ChUKas have said. Meanwhile, Theresa May is giving her sellout Brexit deal one last crack next month. The most dangerous Remainers in the political class are still the ones in the two main parties.
But let’s enjoy Change UK while they’re here. To put it kindly, they won’t be around forever.
Tom Slater is deputy editor at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/16/change-uk-is-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/
Change UK is the gift that keeps on giving
The gaffe-prone ChUKas are not the real threat. But let’s enjoy them while they’re here.
Tom Slater
Deputy Editor
Spiked
16th May 2019
Chuka Umunna is on the front cover of GQ this month. Meanwhile, his newly formed anti-Brexit party, Change UK, the ChUKas if you will, is at around five per cent in the polls for the European Parliament election – an election that ChUKas were supposed to storm as the true party of Remain. The enthusiasm gap between media and public has, of course, been there since the party first launched a few months back. It is designed to appeal to metropolitan anti-democrats who are overrepresented in our media and politics. Most of the supporters of Change UK are probably either in it or covering it. But it’s nevertheless been hilarious watching the hype collide with reality over the past few weeks.
And what a few weeks it has been for the ChUKas. First there was the battle over its name. When the parliamentary bloc first formed out of 11 disgruntled Tory and Labour MPs it went with The Independent Group, or the TIGgers, as a placeholder. Then it chose Change UK – or ‘Change.org’, as Change UK MP Anna Soubry mistakenly first announced it in the Commons (causing consternation at the popular e-petition website). Then they decided to combine the two, presumably to keep the fun TIGger thing. Now they’re ‘Change UK – the Independent Group’, as if they are trying to jog people’s memory: ‘We’re Change UK. You know, The Independent Group? No…?’
Perhaps it was a smart move. Indeed, ChUK has gone so far under ordinary people’s radar that a poll a few weeks ago suggested that just 38 per cent of voters knew the party was anti-Brexit. And as the European election campaign has worn on, the public has become no more enthused. Its stage-managed ‘rallies’ look like regional sales conferences, only less well attended. Its primary achievement so far seems to have been to resuscitate the Liberal Democrats, the erstwhile ‘Party of the 48%’ that ChUK planned to plunder for candidates, supporters and donors. Last night, ChUK’s lead MEP candidate in Scotland went in the opposite direction, defecting to the Lib Dems.
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh, and there has been no end of gaffes to keep us amused. Within hours of their European elections launch, two candidates had to step down over dodgy tweets. The party that poses itself against Farage-style Little Englandism was on a UKIP-in-2014 sacking streak. Ali Sadjady, a candidate in London, was found to have tweeted: ‘When I hear that 70 per cent of pickpockets caught on the London Underground are Romanian it kind of makes me want Brexit.’ Joseph Russo, who had been due to top the party’s list in Scotland, was found to have tweeted ‘black women scare me’ – a phobia he puts down to ‘being chased through Amsterdam by a crazy black whore’. And they say Brexit voters are the bigoted ones…
The irony of all this is that at least part of the ChUK sell is that these are Blairites and Cameroons forged in the era of slick politicking and so they understand PR and how to win. But the past few weeks have proved that they clearly understand neither. Take their logo, comprised of four parallel black bars. As Sky’s Adam Boulton put it, when Anna Soubry started having a pop at the Brexit Party’s logo on his show last week, ‘yours looks like redacted information’. ‘Let’s have grown-up politics here’, was Soubry’s response. Then, of course, there’s the ChUK battle bus, which made them look like a discount coach company. As one commentator pointed out, it was a remarkable oversight given they seem to think the last referendum was won by a certain big red bus.
The profound crapness of ChUK will come as no surprise to anyone outside SW1. There is still a reactionary Remoaner rump out there in the country, but thankfully there’s not that many of them. And in any case, even they want a credible outfit to call their own. The only danger ChUK poses to Brexiteers is one of distraction. As Mick Hume writes on spiked today, Labour is edging closer and closer to backing a second referendum. And shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry’s statement this week that No Deal should be left off a second ballot in all circumstances – just in case, I suppose, we vote for it – is as anti-democratic as anything the ChUKas have said. Meanwhile, Theresa May is giving her sellout Brexit deal one last crack next month. The most dangerous Remainers in the political class are still the ones in the two main parties.
But let’s enjoy Change UK while they’re here. To put it kindly, they won’t be around forever.
Tom Slater is deputy editor at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/16/change-uk-is-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/
Nigel Farage blasts 'dishonest' Nicola Sturgeon and says the SNP's promises of Scotland achieving independence within the EU will NEVER happen as polls predict huge win for the Brexit Party in European elections
Nigel Farage has asked Scottish pro-independence voters to 'lend your votes to the Brexit Party' in an impassioned speech during a rally at Edinburgh's Corn Exchange. He slammed Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's independence drive while being pro-EU as the 'most dishonest political discourse' he had ever seen. He also suggested that up to 30 per cent of SNP voters do not want to be part of the EU.
Nigel Farage has asked Scottish pro-independence voters to 'lend your votes to the Brexit Party' in an impassioned speech during a rally at Edinburgh's Corn Exchange. He slammed Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's independence drive while being pro-EU as the 'most dishonest political discourse' he had ever seen. He also suggested that up to 30 per cent of SNP voters do not want to be part of the EU.
Brexit Party: why the shit isn’t sticking
The elite’s smears won’t work, because they just aren’t true.
Brendan O'Neill
Editor
Spiked
13th May 2019
One of the most beautiful things in British public life right now is the disparity – the colossal disparity – between the media smears about the Brexit Party and the continued success of the Brexit Party. It’s wonderful to behold. Increasingly embittered Remainers from the media set and the political class hurl slurs and epithets at the Brexit Party, insisting with increasing shrillness that it’s a far-right outfit, loopy too, a coalition of extremists whose rallies echo Hitler’s robotic mass gatherings in Nuremberg. And yet then come the opinion polls, one after another, all showing the Brexit Party soaring ahead in the public’s affections. The elite is throwing a lot of shit at the Brexit Party, but it just isn’t sticking.
The attacks on the Brexit Party, and the utter failure of the attacks to impact on public sentiment, reveal two things. First: the debasement of political life at the hands of the technocratic elites. Having spent the past three decades draining public life of politics, morality and ideology, in favour of presenting themselves as the cool, neutral ‘managers’ of society, these people have completely forgotten how to do politics. Their outsourcing of political authority to Brussels, and their eschewing of ideological debate in preference for the drab managerialism of the so-called Third Way, has led to their own infantilisation, to their transformation into bureaucrats ill-versed in substantial discussion. This is why they must now rely either on fear (‘a Hard Brexit will plunge us into dystopia’) or insult (‘the Brexit Party are far-right weirdos’). Because in hollowing out political life, and self-consciously elevating it above the rough and tumble of democratic debate, they made themselves bereft of conviction, ideas, even basic debating skills. All they have left as a means of public persuasion is terror and abuse.
This has become a serious problem in 21st-century public life – the shift away from discussing ideas and policy towards obsessing over an individual’s alleged character or ‘hidden motives’. The Brexit Party has received an extraordinary amount of character assassination – or rather, attempted character assassination. Claire Fox’s political past is dredged up, by those who clearly have nothing of substance to say about her political present and her arguments in defence of democracy. Nigel Farage is branded ‘far right’, with not so much as a sliver of evidence: everyone’s ‘far right’ in the eyes of the politically illiterate technocratic elite. ‘WHO FUNDS YOU?’, anti-Brexit observers bark at the Brexit Party and everyone else they disagree with. Whenever you hear this question, the witless cry of panicked elites, you know you’ve won the argument. It’s because they’re unable to confront what you’re actually saying that they go looking for the billionaire or Dark Money foundation or Jew that they’re conspiratorially convinced is pulling your strings.
Then there’s the second thing revealed by the non-sticking shit being thrown at the Brexit Party – the fact that the old, decaying establishment increasingly struggles to connect with the public. Their borderline McCarthyite assaults on everyone associated with the Brexit Party just aren’t working. Day after day they brand the Brexit Party fascistic and dangerous, and yet its popularity grows. The most recent poll suggests 34 per cent of voters plan to support the Brexit Party at the Euro elections on 23 May – more than Labour (21 per cent) and the Tories (11 per cent) combined! That’s extraordinary for a party founded just weeks ago. The campaign of demonisation hasn’t worked because the people behind it – technocratic politicians, out-of-touch Remainer MPs, the liberal media – can make hardly any connection with ordinary people these days. And they can increasingly sense this, too. Witness Nick Cohen’s boilerplate column in the Observer yesterday in which he bemoaned the media’s failure to shift politics away from Brexit and in a more ‘desirable’ direction – this is the wail of a collapsing establishment horrified that its fury and bluster and conspiracy theories make no impact whatsoever beyond certain parts of London.
Indeed, not only has the smearing of the Brexit Party not worked – it is likely to backfire and end up helping the Brexit Party. See Andrew Marr’s incredibly ill-advised attempt at a ‘gotcha’ against Nigel Farage on TV yesterday morning, when he kept throwing Farage’s past statements at him and demanding: ‘DO YOU STILL THINK THIS WAY?’ It was meant to embarrass Farage, but it embarrassed the BBC, confirming that the corporation has very little sense of what voters are thinking, why the Brexit Party is popular, and that the vast majority of people are sick to the back teeth of media gotchas, journalistic pontification and offence archaeology and are crying out for some proper, principled discussion.
Here’s the thing: the rise of the Brexit Party is the least strange thing to happen in British politics in years. It makes perfect sense. It is entirely rational. This is a group of politicians and voters uniting around a clear and important cause – the defence of democracy. These are people who for three years have watched as the establishment reneged on its promise to enact the 2016 referendum result. These are people who have watched as their own MPs have conspired to thwart the thing they voted for in 2016. These are people who feel lied to and betrayed, and who believe that democracy will be seriously harmed, perhaps irreparably, if the largest democratic vote in UK history is undermined. Call off the thinkpieces, park the conspiracy theories, chill your McCarthyite urges, because it’s as clear as day why the Brexit Party is doing well – because millions of British people believe in democracy and they’re prepared to vote for it and fight for it.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/13/brexit-party-why-the-shit-isnt-sticking/
The elite’s smears won’t work, because they just aren’t true.
Brendan O'Neill
Editor
Spiked
13th May 2019
One of the most beautiful things in British public life right now is the disparity – the colossal disparity – between the media smears about the Brexit Party and the continued success of the Brexit Party. It’s wonderful to behold. Increasingly embittered Remainers from the media set and the political class hurl slurs and epithets at the Brexit Party, insisting with increasing shrillness that it’s a far-right outfit, loopy too, a coalition of extremists whose rallies echo Hitler’s robotic mass gatherings in Nuremberg. And yet then come the opinion polls, one after another, all showing the Brexit Party soaring ahead in the public’s affections. The elite is throwing a lot of shit at the Brexit Party, but it just isn’t sticking.
The attacks on the Brexit Party, and the utter failure of the attacks to impact on public sentiment, reveal two things. First: the debasement of political life at the hands of the technocratic elites. Having spent the past three decades draining public life of politics, morality and ideology, in favour of presenting themselves as the cool, neutral ‘managers’ of society, these people have completely forgotten how to do politics. Their outsourcing of political authority to Brussels, and their eschewing of ideological debate in preference for the drab managerialism of the so-called Third Way, has led to their own infantilisation, to their transformation into bureaucrats ill-versed in substantial discussion. This is why they must now rely either on fear (‘a Hard Brexit will plunge us into dystopia’) or insult (‘the Brexit Party are far-right weirdos’). Because in hollowing out political life, and self-consciously elevating it above the rough and tumble of democratic debate, they made themselves bereft of conviction, ideas, even basic debating skills. All they have left as a means of public persuasion is terror and abuse.
This has become a serious problem in 21st-century public life – the shift away from discussing ideas and policy towards obsessing over an individual’s alleged character or ‘hidden motives’. The Brexit Party has received an extraordinary amount of character assassination – or rather, attempted character assassination. Claire Fox’s political past is dredged up, by those who clearly have nothing of substance to say about her political present and her arguments in defence of democracy. Nigel Farage is branded ‘far right’, with not so much as a sliver of evidence: everyone’s ‘far right’ in the eyes of the politically illiterate technocratic elite. ‘WHO FUNDS YOU?’, anti-Brexit observers bark at the Brexit Party and everyone else they disagree with. Whenever you hear this question, the witless cry of panicked elites, you know you’ve won the argument. It’s because they’re unable to confront what you’re actually saying that they go looking for the billionaire or Dark Money foundation or Jew that they’re conspiratorially convinced is pulling your strings.
Then there’s the second thing revealed by the non-sticking shit being thrown at the Brexit Party – the fact that the old, decaying establishment increasingly struggles to connect with the public. Their borderline McCarthyite assaults on everyone associated with the Brexit Party just aren’t working. Day after day they brand the Brexit Party fascistic and dangerous, and yet its popularity grows. The most recent poll suggests 34 per cent of voters plan to support the Brexit Party at the Euro elections on 23 May – more than Labour (21 per cent) and the Tories (11 per cent) combined! That’s extraordinary for a party founded just weeks ago. The campaign of demonisation hasn’t worked because the people behind it – technocratic politicians, out-of-touch Remainer MPs, the liberal media – can make hardly any connection with ordinary people these days. And they can increasingly sense this, too. Witness Nick Cohen’s boilerplate column in the Observer yesterday in which he bemoaned the media’s failure to shift politics away from Brexit and in a more ‘desirable’ direction – this is the wail of a collapsing establishment horrified that its fury and bluster and conspiracy theories make no impact whatsoever beyond certain parts of London.
Indeed, not only has the smearing of the Brexit Party not worked – it is likely to backfire and end up helping the Brexit Party. See Andrew Marr’s incredibly ill-advised attempt at a ‘gotcha’ against Nigel Farage on TV yesterday morning, when he kept throwing Farage’s past statements at him and demanding: ‘DO YOU STILL THINK THIS WAY?’ It was meant to embarrass Farage, but it embarrassed the BBC, confirming that the corporation has very little sense of what voters are thinking, why the Brexit Party is popular, and that the vast majority of people are sick to the back teeth of media gotchas, journalistic pontification and offence archaeology and are crying out for some proper, principled discussion.
Here’s the thing: the rise of the Brexit Party is the least strange thing to happen in British politics in years. It makes perfect sense. It is entirely rational. This is a group of politicians and voters uniting around a clear and important cause – the defence of democracy. These are people who for three years have watched as the establishment reneged on its promise to enact the 2016 referendum result. These are people who have watched as their own MPs have conspired to thwart the thing they voted for in 2016. These are people who feel lied to and betrayed, and who believe that democracy will be seriously harmed, perhaps irreparably, if the largest democratic vote in UK history is undermined. Call off the thinkpieces, park the conspiracy theories, chill your McCarthyite urges, because it’s as clear as day why the Brexit Party is doing well – because millions of British people believe in democracy and they’re prepared to vote for it and fight for it.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/13/brexit-party-why-the-shit-isnt-sticking/
If it does, I just hope the U.S. finally develops the sense to stay out of it next time y'all decide it would be jolly good fun to slaughter each other.
The US did the last time, too. You only joined the fight after there slaughter came to you. As a matter of fact, Germany declared war on you, not the other way around so you were reluctantly forced into it.
So much for the Great Crusade myth you all have created about yourselves.
I think he forgot about Pearl Harbor.
I wish Yanks would stop peddling the myth that they got involved in "someone else's war". They didn't. They entered the war after they were attacked by the Japanese. And who, of course, aren't European.
Yeah, that's the other thing. What kind of idiot gets into a fight just because the other guy says he wants to fight?
The American kind, apparently.
We may have a Great Crusade myth, but at least we don't send our younger generation to die just because Mama Briddin got into a tiff. Pavolv's dogs had more independence than you.
The "Amti-Nazi Crusade" thing or "Saving England from the Germans" are both equally American bullshit, as well. Before Germany declared war on the US, a lot of the Americans were fervently anti-British (they were all taught in their classrooms that their glorious revolution was all because of the evil British). There was all sorts of sympathy there for Nazi Germany and the advancements that they had made. German racial laws didn't bother the Americans one bit as they were almost word-for-word a copy of the Jim Crow apartheit laws that a big chunk of the USA were under. Also, tens of millions of Americans were of German descent and pre-Pearl Harbour, were sympathetic to Germany while France was falling and Britain was besieged.
Lend Lease? ...was very profitable for the US and the British only just finished paying off the full tab for it about a decade ago. Some of the gear that was leased was junk, too ... obsolete Hudson aircraft, 50 baffed out destroyers of inferior design that proved to be next to useless in the North Atlantic and we're mostly tied up and used for training. British small warships were light years ahead of American designs and when the Yanks got around to making decent escorts, there "reversed engineered" a British designed Frigate that was built in a Canadian ship yard. slapped the ole "Proudly Made in USA" sticker on it and added their warship design prowess to the myth.
Yes, it was terrible when a European country attacked Pearl Harbor.
You are an amazingly stupid man.
Gotta admit, it was a deal worthy of Trump!
Sorry, CC, our involvement in Europe in either of the 20th century wars was a waste of time, money, and blood.
But we're not real bright. Our obsessive insistence on "playing with the big boys" cost us our opportunity to do something really new and different in the Americas.
Not that we wouldn't have effed that up too, mind.
It was seriously debated here whether Canada would join in WWII. It was not automatic. I was told by some from my parent's generation that the most fervent activists against the war here were the veterans of the first one. They were known to hang around outside recruiting depots to try to talk the young men out of joining up. We too have "cleansed" portions of our history. Anyway, after ten days of debate as well as official Debate in our House of Commons, Canadians decided that it was the right thing to do. It's really hard to argue that they were wrong, now that we know more, innit?
The United States ententered the war poor, week and with a failing economy and exited the other end as the richest nation ever and the preeminent global superpower right up to the present. No bad, eh?
Woulda happened anyway. Natural consequence of being the only industrialized country in the world that hadn't recently been carpet-bombed. We coulda built just as much industrialization by selling weapons, and then cleaned up (as we did) by answering fifteen years of pent-up consumer demand after the war.
Hard to tell. One thing that I know for sure, commercial aviation would hardly exist if it weren't for wartime aircraft production. We fly around in jet airliners because all of the development work was done previously to develop bombers. The economic impact of that on us is almost imeasurably huge. We travel in space because the ICBM was developed and the integrated circuits developed to guide them led directly to personal computing. It's impossible to stuff genies back into lamps. It's impossible to imagine a "what if" world. The problem is just too complex to unravel.