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Posts Tagged ‘Nigel Farage’

The Uncuts: 2024 political awards Part I – Politician of the year: Keir Starmer

31/12/2024, 02:21:33 PM

Politician of the year: Keir Starmer

Obviously its Keir Starmer. The man just led Labour back to government with an eye-wateringly large majority. Who else could it be?

But there are layers to Keir Starmer being Uncut’s politician of the year. Yes, the achievements demand recognition. Perhaps more interesting though is how this politician continues to baffle and confound Westminster.

Here is a post by John Rentoul from Sunday 29^th December, quoting Tim Shipman’s intro in his piece in the Sunday Times. It’s extremely well written and smart intro, perfectly encapsulating the current conventional wisdom on Keir Starmer, the extent to which he is serially misread and why his success will continue to surprise.

Intro of the day from @ShippersUnbound https://t.co/v4YCm9xJLB pic.twitter.com/8Tkt2iBAC9

— John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) December 29, 2024

There’s nothing factually wrong or incorrect but two issues show how the gaze of the cognoscenti is in the wrong place.

First, there’s the focus on the immediate with the emphasis on the government’s day to day travails. Labour has a near impregnable majority, no election due for several years and a very recent general election where pollsters were, to put it politely, all over the place. But somehow snapshot polls and the horse-race lens still dominate reporting. There’s lots that’s negative that could be written that is material to understanding Keir Starmer’s position, but it would be about policy travails not who’s up or who’s down. The mirroring of Sunak and Starmer in the intro is neat but their respective positions, Sunak at the end of a difficult parliament with an evaporating majority and Starmer at the start of a parliament with a huge majority, could not be more different.

Second, there’s the appearance of Nigel Farage. With his quips and accompanying online malestrom, Farage is Westminster’s ideal of a politician. Yet while he did present a threat from the right to Sunak, he was quite the reverse for Keir Starmer, making a significant contribution to Labour’s majority by splitting the Tory vote. However, the framing is of Farage chasing down Starmer as he did Sunak. Once again there are plenty of threats to Labour, more relevant than Farage. For example, what about the Greens, they have almost the same number of MPs as Reform and actually took seats that were Labour targets.

Beyond the headline achievements, Keir Starmer is Uncut’s politician of the year because of how he has got to the top of the greasy pole: he is not of Westminster, he doesn’t do what’s expected, he doesn’t play the game, he rarely chases headlines, he isn’t attentive to the lobby and commentariat, but yet…he sits atop the biggest Labour majority in decades and has bent Westminster to his will.

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Nigel Farage is a malign influence on British politics but he’s also Labour’s greatest electoral asset. He splits the Tory vote, drags them too far right and unites the left

28/12/2024, 09:03:00 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Nigel Farage is a grifter and political huckster. He infects politics with prejudice and, as his conduct over summer demonstrated, cares not a jot about the real consequences of his posturing. But he is also the man who could help cement a new voter coalition for Labour that sustains the party in power over multiple general elections.

Three interlinked factors make Nigel Farage a unique electoral gift to Labour: Britain’s First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system, the idiocy he engenders within the Conservative party leadership and his toxic – for the majority of voters – personal brand.

Britain’s FPTP voting system has ensured that the choice at constituency level has usually been one of two parties for as long as Britons have gone to the polls. The identity of the two parties might vary in different parts of the country – for example, in Scotland, the SNP are normally one of the two, in parts of England, the Lib Dems are in the mix – but it is mainly Tory versus Labour.

FPTP’s iron law of two means that if one of the duopoly somehow has its vote divided by a new entrant, then the other party tends to win big. In the 1980s, the SDP detached a section of Labour’s support and helped the Tories register triple digit majorities. In 2024, Reform was the Tories’ version of the SDP.

Currently there is a mania sweeping the Conservative party that Reform could replace them in the top two. To an extent, anything is possible, yet this scenario is extraordinarily improbable. The last time a party was replaced was when Labour supplanted the Liberals 100 years ago, but it took an utterly unprecedented level of self-harm from the Liberals to hand Labour their position.

The Liberal party split into two, each faction led by a former leader who had been prime minister with unbounded personal acrimony poisoning any chance of rapid rapprochement. Both versions of the Liberals wilfully acceded to being junior partners for different governments, first with the Tories in 1918 for Lloyd George’s National Liberals and then with Labour in 1924 for Asquith’s Liberals. It was a near unique set of circumstances where each faction legitimised Tories and Labour as the senior party and very publicly obviated the point of voting Liberal to potential supporters of any hue, whether from the left or the right.

This is the level of upheaval required to be replaced as one of the main two parties under FPTP. Now, ask yourself, is anything vaguely comparable likely in the next few years – are the Tories going to split in two? Are the factions going to support Labour and Reform? Kemi Badenoch might be a dreadful leader but she’s not going to preside over that. Probably.

Rather than the Tories being replaced nationally, much more feasible is that Reform win handfuls of seats at the next election, establishing footholds in groups of constituencies where they are competitive with the Conservatives. This future, where the split on the right is perpetuated is one where versions of the 2024 election are rerun again and again with Labour taking seats that would have previously been lost, because the vote on the right is split.

It is a future made more likely by the madness that engulfs Conservative leaders when dealing with Nigel Farage. The choice for Tory members at the leadership election might have been between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, but in terms of attitude to Reform the options were Farager or Faragerer, with the same underlying basic pitch: ‘Nigel was right, the Conservative government was wrong and as a senior Cabinet Minister in that government I failed to make a difference’ It is baffling that anyone would seriously mount this type argument, entreating right-wing ex-Conservatives to switch back to proven failures, while the impact on more centrist ex-Conservatives who moved to Labour or the Lib Dems (17% of their 2019 voters), voters who recoiled from the bouts of performative right-wing grandstanding of recent Tory governments, seems to have been entirely ignored.

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Nigel Farage and Reform were the Cleggmania of the 2024 campaign

06/07/2024, 09:11:57 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Earthquake? What earthquake. Nigel Farage might be talking up the result Reform secured but the facts tell a different story.

In 2015, Nigel Farage’s Ukip secured 3.9 million votes, 13% of the total and 1 MP. In 2024, Nigel Farage’s Reform won 4.1 million votes, 14% of the total and 5 MPs.

Yes, 2024 was an improvement over 2015 for Farage and his party’s vote was better distributed but remember who they, and all of the other parties, were running against: a tired, divided government in its 14^th year that had presided over a parliamentary session where, for the first time, the country was worse off at the end compared to the start. Nothing works, public services are on their knees and even Nigel Farage has said that this version of Brexit has been a disaster.

The real question to be asked is why didn’t they do much better?

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Campaign Uncut – Rumours of Morgan McSweeney to Makerfield

23/05/2024, 09:17:18 PM

Introducing our daily-ish wrap, Campaign Uncut, bringing together the top 5 takeaways from the day’s action.

1. Rumour of the day: Morgan McSweeney to Makerfield

Word reaches Uncut that Keir Starmer’s most influential aide might soon be joining his boss on the green leather benches.

As a number of sitting MPs start to rethink their plans, throwing-up last minute selections, we hear that Morgan McSweeney is being linked with the Makerfield seat in Wigan, Greater Manchester.

Its a rock-solid redoubt and the former mining area has been represented by Labour MPs since the formation of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1906.

Until 2010, it was Ian McCartney’s seat. He was the minister in the last Labour government who piloted the minimum wage legislation onto the statute book. In 1997, he won 73.6% of the vote.

Since 2010, Makerfield has been represented by Yvonne Fovargue. Until she announced she was standing down yesterday..

2. Worst take of the day: Nigel Farage scared Rishi Sunak into an early election

Farage WILL hit the campaign trail for @reformparty_uk in the upcoming election. Sunak got wind of his imminent return to the frontline, including planned campaign schedule, and panicked into calling the election. THAT is the real reason for the bizarre timing.

— Isabel Oakeshott (@IsabelOakeshott) May 23, 2024

There are layers here. Under normal circumstances this post could comfortably be ridiculed as a barmy take. But this is Rishi Sunak that we’re talking about, his judgement is that bad. It’s possible that he was scared into it by Nigel Farage. In which case this still wins worst take of the day, it just happens to be true.

3. Gaffe of the day: Sunak on the Euros while visiting Wales (more…)

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Let’s face it, the moment belongs to Farage

04/01/2021, 08:51:42 AM

by Kevin Meagher

There he was on New Year’s Eve. On Twitter, where else? A simple photo, savouring his victory. A drained wine glass in one hand a well-drawn cigarette in the other. A smile like a crocodile that has just devoured a resting zebra.

25 years ago they all laughed at me.

Well, they’re not laughing now. pic.twitter.com/Lbu4kTwXFO

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) December 31, 2020

He is not bothered about the constant abuse he receives, or even the gallons of milkshake that are poured over him. Its all been worth it. Nigel Farage knows the moment belongs to him.

‘25 years ago they all laughed at me,’ he wrote, (inadvertently paraphrasing a Bob Monkhouse gag), ‘Well, they’re not laughing now.’

And, indeed, we are not. We are out of the European Union and without Farage’s constant endeavours over the past quarter of a century, there would have been no Brexit.

Boris will convert the opportunity, but it is Farage who created it in the first place. A Home Counties John the Baptist. Starting out in the political wilderness, converting an army of believers one at a time with a mixture of unshakable conviction and his reptilian charisma.

He may be a figure of loathing for the left/liberal/SJW cohorts, but he is also something they themselves want in a leader. He is conviction politician. Ideologically coherent. Authentic to voters. He leads from the front. Eternally optimistic. If only the left could offer someone with similar attributes.

You do not have to like him to concede that he has made the biggest impact on British politics since Thatcher. His influence may well be baleful, but it is pervasive. A brilliant communicator and the best campaigner since Blair, he is a worthy adversary.

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Labour Conference 2018: Time for a new direction on Brexit

24/09/2018, 09:44:22 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Labour Party conference meets amid the UK’s deepening constitutional and economic crisis. Merely by reiterating its long-established red lines, EU leaders inspired a haughty and incoherent speech from our out-of-her-depth prime minister, bringing the calamity of no deal Brexit nearer.

The message from Nigel Farage at the Leave Means Leave rally is clear: “No deal, no problem.” The message from Labour’s conference needs to be equally straight-forward: “No deal, no way.”

Brexit, as President Macron noted, “was pushed by people who predicted easy solutions.” Now the same people tell us not to worry about no deal. Surely the will of the people is not to be fooled twice.

The warning lights from Labour should be flashing brightly to avoid the kind of no deal scenario depicted in a Financial Times editorial in July:

“The UK would spill out of the EU on March 29 2019, guaranteeing chaos on all fronts. It would spell international isolation, as well as a shock to the economy and a political backlash. No competent government could contemplate such an option.”

Given this, the prime minister is wrong, pace her Friday speech, to assert that no deal is better than a bad deal. Labour must say so.

The prime minister is mistaken, too, to claim that EU leaders provided no explanation for their rejection of Chequers. It followed from their consistent position on the indivisibility of the EU’s four freedoms. We must hope that Labour, as an internationalist party, demystifies this hardy mysterious reality.

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When it comes to Brexit, Farage is in charge of both Labour and the Tories

31/07/2017, 10:09:31 PM

by Trevor Fisher

Jonathan Todd’s Remain piece (17^th July) ended with him asking for a speech by the leader at conference denouncing Brexit and vowing to lead the fight against it. But as Rob Marchant has pointed out more recently (26^th July), Corbyn has always been anti-EU and telling Marr a couple of weeks ago that his policy was, like UKIP, to take Britain out of the single market was no surprise. This was the man who voted against the Single Market in 1996 and the Maastricht treaty and the Lisbon Treaty and there is only one question to ask about the man who leads the Labour Party.

Why did the Party allow him to run Labour’s Remain campaign into the ground?

But that is history – as will be the anti-Brexit campaign if the parliamentarians cannot be removed from running it. But more of that later. At present, the key issue is why the politicians cannot make an opposition that has an effect. For Labour, Corbyn is the problem. For the Lib Dems, the puzzle is the failure to stand up for anti-Brexit. Its position in the election was for soft Brexit. Much like Labour’s Brexit for jobs. But for the real disaster position, we have to look to the Tories, and their commitment via Theresa May to the dogma that No Deal is better than a Bad Deal. For once I agree with frequent Uncut commenter, Tafia. There will be no deal. The forces that control British politics will not allow a deal since any deal is from their viewpoint a bad deal with hated foreigners.

And who are these forces? Well, as Jonathan may recall, some weeks ago I pointed out at a meeting he was at that the key element is Nigel Farage. I might have done better to swing from the ceiling singing the Hallelujah Chorus. The reaction was that Mr Yesterday had gone, so good riddance and hopefully UKIP has gone too.

But Farage has not gone, just abandoned UKIP with his backer, Arron Banks. According to the Daily Mail, he has botoxed (and a before and after showed the anxiety wrinkles completely vanished), has a new (French) girlfriend and is full of the joys of spring.

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Uncut predictions for 2017: Ukip won’t win the Copeland, Leigh or Walton by-elections

06/01/2017, 04:55:22 PM

The first test of Ukip’s electoral potency under its new leader, Paul Nuttall, comes in the Copeland by-election, following the unexpected decision of Jamie Reed to stand down from Parliament.

Despite voting for Brexit by 62/38 per cent, the West Cumbrian seat doesn’t feel a natural prospect for the kippers. Certainly when compared to parts of Lancashire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester. Remote and politically tribal, Copeland feels like a straight Labour/Tory face-off.

Having polled extremely well in the Heywood and Middleton by-election in October 2014, coming within 600 votes of beating Labour, Ukip has very publicly struggled to assemble a decent ground game and lacks campaigning apparatus and experience when it matters most.

Other by-elections in Wythenshawe and Sale East in February 2014 and Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough in May 2016 have revealed this telling weakness, with underwhelming Ukip performances in seats where they should have pressed much harder.

Anyway, the party is under new management and needs to show momentum in the post-Brexit and post-Farage era.

Nuttall, an MEP for the North West, knows this and will be looking for a decent showing in the Leigh and Liverpool Walton by-elections that will follow May’s election of Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram to the new metro mayoralties in, respectively, Greater Manchester and Merseyside.

Liverpool’s Labour party is well-organised for such a fight and the city was one of the few Labour heartlands to vote Remain (58/42 per cent). But it’s academic: Walton is Labour’s safest parliamentary seat in the country, with a gigantic 27,777 majority and 81 per cent of the vote.

Although Labour had a 14,096 majority in 2015, Leigh has suffered a precipitous decline from its heyday as a mining and textiles town and it’s exactly the type of working-class seat where the kippers hope they can break through.

Indeed, Nuttall is said to be mulling a run as the candidate himself.

The reason he initially decided against challenging for the Ukip leadership was because he wanted to focus on winning a parliamentary seat himself. He knows the stakes are high and a strong performance is essential to maintain Ukip as a brooding threat in Labour’s backyard, his professed electoral strategy.

But he’ll get no joy in Leigh either. There are no Ukip councillors for a start, while Burnham is popular locally and his (slightly) controversial speech castigating free movement the other week, was an early attempt to head off Ukip’s appeal on the issue. Moreover, Leigh has only had four MPs since 1923 – all Labour. The seat will remain loyal.

Expect to hear Nuttall hedging his bets about standing in Leigh until the kippers get the lie of the land.

Then, when they do, he’ll pretend he was never going for it.

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Uncut predictions for 2017: We are heading for train-wreck Brexit

02/01/2017, 07:00:39 PM

Nigel Farage is pushing for hard Brexit – a rapid severing of all ties between the UK and the EU. George Osborne prefers a soft Brexit – moving at a slower pace to minimise the risk of economic disruption, quite likely entailing an acceptance of some form of ongoing free movement of people between the UK and the EU. Philip Hammond, the man carrying the can for Farage’s push for a referendum and Osborne’s failure to persuade enough to vote Remain in it, is displaying signs of fearing train-wreck Brexit. Under this scenario, we fail to agree terms for the UK’s exit from the EU in the two-year window afforded by Article 50. Neither hard nor soft; just in limbo.

Given that this would only require one of the 28 EU member states to black ball the terms offered to the UK, privileging the capricious whims of domestic politics over economic calm and fidelity to perfidious Albion, the train wreck is not hard to spot. It is generally assumed, though, that the worst that could then happen is that the UK trades on WTO terms with the EU states, meaning that economically damaging tariffs would be paid on goods and services moving from the UK to the continent. It could, however, be worse than that. The UK is only a member of the WTO via EU membership and would, therefore, need to reapply to join the WTO; an application that could be blocked by any WTO member, including Russia, which might make mischief.

Some form of transition arrangements between the UK and EU would help avert this train wreck, which is why Hammond is supposedly sensibly keen on them.

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Nigel Farage is a winner. Liberals must learn from him

29/11/2016, 10:07:49 PM

by Samuel Dale

Today Nigel Farage may spend his time glad-handing the US president-elect and partying at the Ritz but it was not always this way.

As he stands down as Ukip leader yet again, it is worth remembering just how far he has come and the impact of his perseverance.

For two decades, Farage has travelled up and down Britain talking to voters, persuading them, standing for office, winning campaigns and losing elections.

He stood up for what he believes is right for the country and tried his best to implement it through democratic and generally respectable means.

It wasn’t always glamorous and it didn’t always feel like he was going to be successful.

I don’t understand why he is mocked for losing so many by-elections. It takes guts for anyone to put themselves on the line and stand for election whether it is Farage, Donald Trump or Ed Miliband.

Ukip has been an incredibly successful political movement. It has shifted debate in Britain significantly whether George Osborne shovelling cash to pensioners before the last election, a harsher immigration policy or leaving the EU.

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