How to govern well

@ArishMell Farage copies ideas from the American right and assumes they will translate directly to the UK . . a strange idea for a supposed nationalist.

He has now headed three different political parties, which is why I am not especially worried at this stage about him getting into government. He simply lacks the discipline and political substance. Reform's success in the local elections is an opportunity for them to demonstrate competence and ability to govern. Thus far they have failed miserably, not least because their councillors have no experience of public service or working with their communities. They simply assumed they could rock up, shout at a few foreigners, and get rewarded for it. They need to put in the hard yards first.

@SunshineGirl Not only inexperienced in the public services, but reading Reform's web-site suggests it does not want them.

I have had some experience of Farage's style as I had been a member of UKIP, which was often portrayed deliberately but wrongly by its opponents as "Right-wing" at best and even xenophobic or racist at worst. Actually it attract defectors from all the main Parties, as well as many business people and "lay" ones like myself - including people of various ethnic backgrounds.

At one point a former senior EU Accountant - Mrs. Marta Andreassen - was appointed UKIP's auditor and later stood as an MP candidate, but left after falling out with Mr. Farage. She had abandoned working for the EU after its Commissioners, including Neil Kinnock, actively forbade any auditors from investigating and informing the European Parliament (hence the public who pays for it) why it was never possible to balance the EU's books.


Crucially though, throughout all that fun, UKIP's own Rules expressly forbade membership to hard-liners Left and Right ( Communist, BNP, etc.)


Farage despises the BBC, because he was rarely capable of replying to probing questions with cogent, reasoned arguments - so he blamed the BBC. His abrasive style did not help. To be fair that was mainly in News programmes like Today. He was more thoughtful and credible in discussion panels like Any Questions. (His lack of debating coherence is, I believe, shared by some US politicians...)

I became embarassed by, and disillusioned with, Farage as leader, then he was succeeded by Gerard Batten. .

A new leader, a new start? Yes, for a while. Batten seemed reasonable and intelligent. Then he foolishly employed Stephen Yaxley-Lennon as "special advisor". Yes - the ex-BNP member calling himself "Tommy Robinson". He could not have joined the Party by its own rules, and it was never clear even in the UKIP magazine, what he was "advising" whom about what. I do not recall Batten himself telling us.

UKIP was also trying to create its own post-EU Manifesto, to escape its "single-matter" charge; and it contained some ideas with which I disagreed very strongly. Reform's manifesto is coy on this but seems to hint wanting to destroy the BBC, an idea first floated by UKIP.

So far, all very Faragist.

So I terminated my UKIP membership.

Now we have Jeremy Corbyn and a couple of other disaffected Labour members wanting to form a new Party, presumably deeply Socialist, but as it has not yet formed we cannot judge it fairly, by its own manifesto.

I do not agree with everything both Labour and Conservative do or stand for, and believe both have made glaring mistakes sometimes continued by their successors (including selling the State body for which I once worked), but even when I disagree at least I think them on the whole sincere and genuinely well-meaning, if nothing else.


I think the basic fault with all three established Parties is that instead of being honest and brave enough to ask themselves openly why they are losing voters to these ingenues of Right and Left, they hide behind attacking them. The Labour, Liberal-Democrat and Conservative Parties between them do have very good people in both Houses of Parliament, but done down in the publicity around the inept ones. So these three Parties really need do some serious navel-gazing and make themselves credible as well as poll-pretty to outdo the so-called "populists" like Reform and whatever Corbyn invents.

@Crazywaterspring Well you will never get rich on a councillor's £12K pa allowance. It sorts the wheat from the chaff.

@Nick1 😬

@JoyfulSilence He is a personal friend of the Orange One. If his constituents in Clacton-on-Sea ever want to see their MP, all they have to do is switch on their TVs and watch the crowd at one of Trump's rallies.

@SunshineGirl Worse than I thought....

@SunshineGirl

Two hundred years ago, was it Clickety Clackton-on-the-Sea?

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