Bye-Bye Nigel

Wednesday 6th July

In a few weeks we may have seen the biggest clear-out of party leaders ever.  And there hasn’t even been a General Election, where the stupid unwritten convention is that a defeated party leader has to resign next day (this started incidentally with John Major, before that Wilson and Callaghan and Kinnock carried on even though they had lost elections, giving the party a little time to absorb the shock of the defeat and to decide what to do about it next time).  I can understand why Cameron bowed out, he was almost the sole prominent Remain campaigner, he had called the Referendum in the first place and he was going to stand down before the next election anyway.  But now his tenure in office is permanently tarnished and History will recall that he was the man who took the UK out of Europe (and although technically untrue, it was his reckless Political gamble to outflank both UKIP and his own rabid anti-European M.P.s which caused our exit).

Jeremy Corbyn is more interesting.  Okay, he ran a pretty lacklustre campaign, but he was NOT the reason that Labour voters chose Leave rather than Remain, although there is some evidence that around 60% voted Remain; it was the Conservatives who voted overwhelmingly to Leave.  Anyway there have been rumblings in the party for a while that Jeremy was just not the man to enthuse the public, let alone traditional Labour voters.  And the resignations from his Shadow Cabinet were staged in order to have a vote of no-confidence in Jeremy.  The more centre and soft-left and even right-wing Labour M.P.s have never bought into Jeremy’s agenda, even if it is supported by most of the membership.  Jeremy has really done little wrong, but in these days of Media dominance it is perceived that image is important.  Blair at times appeared to be more Style than Substance, but he did win three Elections and increased spending on Schools and Hospitals substantially.  Of course , the Left cannot ever forgive him for Iraq, which incidentally might have been even worse had we not joined America in that disgraceful and possibly illegal War.  The Chilcot Report on the war is about to be published by the way, and Jeremy will surely have something to say, but whether this will satisfy his M.P. critics I very much doubt.

And now Nigel Farage, the bête noir of UK Politics has resigned (for the third time, hahaha).  This man was an absolute spiv, an out and out liar and a closet racist, who appealed to people’s worst instincts.  Many liked his ‘Man of the People’ image, the pint and the fag, but in reality he was wealthy and privileged.  But he was a good speaker, always quick with the witty phrase and unashamed when he upset whole sections of society.  His party must now try to find a successor, no-one on the horizon has any charisma, and Nigel had run UKIP as such a one-man band that they may struggle to achieve the giddy heights at the last election where they took 15% of the vote, though failed to break through the first past the post system.  So, bye-bye Nigel.  Just like Boris, you have screwed us up royally and now quietly shuffle off the stage and leave others to clean up the mess.