His actions in the last few days clearly demonstrate that Mr Farage has lost the plot. Not only does he continue to assail every ideal held dear by us progressive people, but in fact he doesn’t seem to grasp the very nature of modern politics, its ultimate raison d’être.
So what is the purpose of politics? More specifically, why do people enter this field? What are they trying to achieve?
Do they wish to dedicate their lives to serving their country? Do they hope to make things better for all of us? Do they aspire to promote liberty, justice and prosperity?
If you picked any one of these possibilities, you’re as hopelessly clueless and naïve as Mr Farage. For the true, ultimate purpose of politics, its desired and only end is OFFICE. Spelled just so, in all caps.
OFFICE! That’s why so many able and other young men, along with an appropriate quota of women, enter politics. For it’s not knowledge but OFFICE that is power. First obtaining and then hanging on to OFFICE for as long as possible isn’t the means of politics. It’s the end.
Nigel Farage achieved this end earlier this week when he was as good as offered a cabinet post by the Tories. The qualifier is necessary here for procedural reasons only. For Mr Farage wasn’t given a written contract, handed a pen and asked to sign. It’s just that Michael Fabricant, the Conservative Party’s vice chairman and its hair most apparent, floated the idea by Dave.
If you think it was just two comrades-at-arms chatting in a Commons restaurant over something red and reassuringly expensive, think again. It could have been done quietly, but it wasn’t. The gist of the discussion was immediately leaked to the press, which was then effectively used as the middleman asked to convey the deal to Mr Farage and gauge his reaction.
The deal was too good to turn down. Farage was to call off his UKIP hounds in every constituency where a Tory candidate had a remote chance of winning. As a reward he would fulfil his mission in life by securing OFFICE. As a little extra, he would get his silly referendum on Europe, so his ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’, in Dave’s moderate phrase, could choke on it.
Had such a deal been in place at the last election, the Tories would have picked up an extra 20 seats, enough to form a government on their own. The absence of such a deal in the next election will probably cost the Tories even more, what with UKIP well on its way to becoming Britain’s third party.
So Nigel Farage was offered OFFICE. A simple nod of his head and his life would have been fulfilled. All he had to do was toe the line, meaning he’d have to keep his mouth shut when told to. He would also no doubt have had to accept any meaningless wording of the referendum’s big question, but so what?
Naturally ‘the fruitcakes’, which is what true conservatives are called these days, would have felt betrayed. There would have been much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. But in the end they too would have shut up for they would have had nowhere else to go but into Dave’s welcoming embrace.
This wouldn’t have been a high price to pay. It would have been no price at all. For Nigel Farage was offered OFFICE!
And – are you ready for this? – he turned it down. How he dares call himself a politician is beyond any sensible person who understands what politics is all about. It’s not any set of principles. It’s not bono publico. It’s OFFICE. Mr Farage is clearly unfit for his job.
He didn’t just betray the essence of politics, he also was rude about it. ‘We could have a proper discussion,’ he said, ‘[only] if Cameron went… It’s very difficult for us to believe anything David Cameron says…’ You’d better believe every shifty word, Nigel, or kiss any chance of OFFICE good-bye.
Not only did Mr Farage spit into the hand ready to feed his ambitions, but he also had the bad taste to explain why.
‘We believe that Britain should [have] a government,’ he wrote in The Telegraph, ‘accountable to the British people and none other.’ What a quaint, outdated, ‘loonie’ idea that is.
Moreover, it’s one clearly designed to mollify those despicable fat cats, who care about profits only and possess none of the real politicians’ altruistic, disinterested craving for OFFICE. Farage went on to prove just that: ‘In taxation terms, we have long called for those on the minimum wage to be taken out of the taxation system entirely.’
Well, maybe he proved something different, but just as ‘fruitcake’. Next thing you know he’ll be advocating a reduction in overall taxation. Call for the men in white coats.
And then Farage really showed his anti-progressive, ‘closet racist’ colours by saying, ‘In education, our support for… grammar schools… is something that is driven by a belief in equality of opportunity rather than some mirage of the perfect educational establishment.’
Equality of opportunity means that the capable and industrious, regardless of their background, will come out ahead of the stupid and indolent. If that’s not ‘closet racist’, I don’t know what is. It’s not equality of opportunity we want but equality of outcome and if that means everyone will be equally ignorant, then so be it. Even better, for an ignorant electorate will unflinchingly continue to vote for the likes of Dave or Ed.
And for such ‘loonie’ reasons Farage turned down OFFICE? And then an opportunity to make an eight-figure income, just like Tony, Dave’s idol and role model? Why, probe him, and he’ll probably mouth something about principles, honesty, patriotism and other such incidentals. Just goes to show how little he understands politics.
Indeed, Nigel Farage doesn’t just challenge the Tories. He and his party challenge our whole political class, the spivocracy that is ruining Britain. Clearly a man like that has no place in British politics. He’ll never be fit for OFFICE.