The
political right is alive and thriving in the UK. Conservative politics (in the
political and not literal sense) are the order of the day, helped in no small
part by the ingenious act of shifting any blame for the 2008 global financial
crisis from banking institutions onto the ruling Labour party of the time.
Brits now pay far more than they ever have done for what they get and what they
get is at its worst in decades. Sure, you could argue that the re-emergence of
the right is a natural consequence of economic strife. Equally though, I place
the blame squarely at the door of the fractious, shallow and bewildered left.
If
you set aside the brief golden age under Tony Blair, the left just haven’t won
over Britain. Their time in government has seemingly always been characterised
by the absence of unity of ideology and direction. It truly was a miracle that
Tony Blair managed to somehow glue the ruins of the Labour left into something
quite so strong for so long.
That’s
an uncomfortable reality for many on the ‘left’ left to take. The reality is,
if Gordon Brown had overseen the Campbell Irvine revolution of the party,
they’d have been out of office within one term. Blair was able to drag the
whole thing kicking and screaming into a third term. How the hell did he do it?
The
simple reality is that the man was an outstanding political creation, a man
with the right team behind him who enabled his party to be far far more than
its constituent parts. In reality, beneath the genuine baseline of political
talent in Brown, Cook, Straw and Blunkett there wasn’t much else to write home
about. This is apparent in abundance in what staggered out of the ruins of New
Labour; an impotent party that hasn’t draw a bead of sweat from a conservative
forehead since it has sat in opposition.
Blair
managed to achieve an incredible amount in his first years in office, pushing
through legislation that some of those sitting on the backbenches could only
have dreamed of in the preceding dark ages and even convincing his party to
swallow legislation that had former leaders like Neil Kinnock spinning in the
shallow grave that Thatcher had dug him years earlier. In his later time as
prime minister, Blair’s madness and dogmatism alone helped him to squeeze out every
last bit of power and then some for far longer than most would have been
allowed to. A politically brilliant man whose single mindedness got him a hell
of a lot before he finally shot his load.
I
cannot help but think that somewhere in a hollowed out volcano, Nigel Farage
was positioned upside down taking the weight off his wings and taking notes…
Farage
is UKIP, he’s been marketed as their guy. When people go to the polls for the
European elections that is who they’ll be voting for. Beneath him the party is
pretty threadbare. This hasn’t been capitalised upon by the left anywhere near
effectively enough. For those on the left, they’ve been reduced to thinking
that rambling interviews during which Mr. Farage’s character is assassinated represent
‘victories’ for rationality over a racist.
NOT
TRUE.
The
fact Farage puts himself out there to be judged has won him friends. In turn, the
way in which he stands up against these flawed assassinations demonstrates that
he is a shrewd and sound debater. The media are playing into his hands by
providing him with the platform to use them.
For
the simple truth is that people don’t care for muck raking when they think that
someone is going to get a job done. Farage is promising that and speaking to
people who are convinced that their concerns far outweigh the ‘moral demands’
of the common good. Take for example his recent views on second/third language
students. Mr. Farage made a comment about how teachers are struggling to
integrate speakers of English as a third language into their classrooms. This was
dismissed by a cringeworthy LBC interviewer as nonsense given his kids were
bilingual (which completely missed the point) and dismissed as hokum by the
main parties and the media but for the underfunded teacher on the ground there
is an element of truth in what he has said. However, rather than offer a
solution, the mainstream parties and their cronies’ solution is to hammer on
Farage who is more than skilled at letting that kind of thing bounce off him.
UKIP
will do pretty damn well at the next election and the left will only have
themselves to blame…
