I admire such refreshing courage so much, I’d vote for Nick – provided I could lose whatever intellectual and moral sense God gave me.
Nigel Farage and his deputy, Nick declared, rarely vote in the European Parliament, and even when they’re there, they “don’t stand up for British interests”.
Of course Nick himself has missed four out of five votes in the Commons, as Mr Farage countered immediately.
Now I can only guess why Nigel is a bit laid-back when it comes to casting his vote within a body that has no moral, intellectual, historical and – I’d suggest – legal right to exist.
Why Nick misses voting in a body that has all those rights galore I know for sure. He likes to play tennis (badly) at my club, where he’s often seen on weekday afternoons.
But this is neither here nor there. What I find fascinating is that Nick obviously sees himself – and his comic-book party – as a tireless fighter for British interests.
Frankly, I don’t know what he’d be doing differently if his aim were to destroy this country as a sovereign nation. As you know, the LibDems under Nick’s industrious leadership are dedicated to the noble task of turning Britain into a province (or rather several separate provinces) of the EU.
To wit: time after time, in between hitting inept tennis shots, Nick expresses a longing for joining the euro, this at a time when even a reasonably informed child knows that such a move would destroy the British economy instantly and probably irrevocably. Nick obviously thinks such a development would be in British interests, yet some may beg to differ.
But then Nick does say odd things at times, which is painful to see in a fellow tennis player. For example, he says he’s proud of his Russian ancestry, hoping his audience would be unfamiliar with the nature of his Russian lineage.
In fact it derives from the family of Moura Budberg, née Zakrevsky, who immediately after the Bolshevik revolution acted as the honey in numerous traps set by the OGPU to blackmail foreign visitors and keep an eye on Soviet dignitaries.
Practising the world’s oldest profession within the ranks of the world’s most diabolical organisation, Clegg’s ancestor had affairs with the British envoy Bruce Lockhart, the writers Maxim Gorky and H.G. Wells, and God knows who else.
I’m sure Nick knows all this and, if pressed, he’d agree that there isn’t much to be proud of. It’s just that his internationalist heart demands a claim to an international family background.
He isn’t proud of descending from the family of a secret-police whore. He’s proud of being an internationalist.
Nigel Farage is proud of other things. That’s why he treats the European Parliament with the contempt it deserves. “Our objective as MEPs is not to keep voting endlessly for more EU legislation and to take power away from Westminster,” he told the BBC.
Nigel Farage isn’t an MEP because he believes in European federalism. He’s an MEP because he wants to undermine the EU from inside. He’s Britain’s scout behind enemy lines, which is doubtless how he sees himself.
That explains why his voting record is only 50 percent. By contrast, Nick treats the British Parliament with the contempt it doesn’t deserve. That’s why his voting record in Westminster is a mere 22 percent. So whose scout is he, and how does he think the lines are drawn?
When the two go head to head in their televised debate, Nigel will wipe the floor with Nick. If he doesn’t, I’ll never buy him a pint.