Farage, Putin amd the establishment....

It is abundantly now clear that the political and media establishments are running scared of Nigel Farage. He is the ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’; he speaks like and for ordinary people. This is absolute anathema to the chattering classes who believe that the Common Man is just that; common, and so must be kept in his place by those who know better.

 

But what worries them most is that he is both a politician and one rapidly gaining popularity amongst the proles who also happen to be voters. So it  is necessary to rubbish him. The latest establishment propaganda is to present Farage as some kind of populist fascist whose hero is Putin the neo-Nazi.

 

Someone called Mathew Holehouse who describes himself as ‘political correspondent on the DT and looks (and probably is) about 16 years old has joined the totally artificial hullaballoo against Farage for saying that he admired Putin ‘as an operator’ who stitched-up the US over Syria, and for giving voice to the widely-held view that the crisis in the Ukraine was a result of EU meddling which created a bidding-war with Russia.

 

What Farage actually said was that he admired Putin as ‘an operator’ i.e. one who fixes things so that he gets his own way. Well, so he does, and that’s a fact, not an opinion. Farage had nothing more to say about him that was to his credit.

 

The chatterrati fail to understand a particular characteristic of the British. They like a larrikin. That is why every time Boris Johnson gets into yet another scrape his popularity rises. Blair continues to be liked because everyone knows that he is a bit of a scallywag.  Farage, with his scandalous and politically-incorrect love of Rothmans and real ale, comes across as ‘one of us’. It is impossible to imagine Cameron, Miliband, Clegg or any other of the metropolitan elite as ‘one of us’. Contemporary politicians are more likely to fiddle their exes or ‘come out’ than they are to commit Johnsonian gaffes or be locked out by the missus for being a naughty boy as per Nigel’s recent fall from marital grace.

 

What of Putin?

 

Putin is a 19^th Century throwback who lives in a world of fantasy. He believes that he can force former Soviet bloc countries back into the arms of Russia by political and economic destabilisation and intimidation. He has been pretty successful so far. His seizure of the Crimea got a ‘tut-tut’ from Obama and Europe. Obama is criticised for being limp-wristed, but Georgia was seized by violence using tanks and heavy kit; many people were killed, homes destroyed, people displaced. Bush never lifted a finger. As Nigel says, he is an operator.

 

And unlike Farage, there is nothing whatsoever to like about him.