Lord Farage says The Economist?

Dear Editor

I was astonished to read in The Economist article last week that The Economist is calling for Nigel Farage of UKIP to be made Lord Farage. It was nearly as silly as your previous articles ruling out a National Basic Income or fixed interest rates now raised in many developed nations but not yet UK.

I think I can speak authoritatively on the merits of Farage and UKIP having stood against him in the 2015 election on my “Stop the Pollution. Stop the Corruption. Stop the Construction” platform, met and heard Farage speak, and live in East Kent, the district since 2015 with the UK’s only UKIP council.

I can assure you Farage as a Lord is an appalling idea.

But surely a peer in the Lords is someone who positively contributes to the UK in a major way for several years?

I appreciate, as pointed out in the article, that the Lords has its fair share of rogues and scoundrels such as Jeffrey Archer or Lord Grabiner of BHS and One Essex Court.

But Farage has contributed nothing to the UK except division and hatred. And that only recently. Before being beaten in Ramsgate in the 2015 election he stood in 2010 - to widespread apathy and derision as a chancer and carpetbagger, and gained less than 2% of the vote.

Hardly the result of a towering political figure – even without his other six MP defeats.

While in the 2015 election he made barely half a dozen appearances in the Thanet towns – and almost all hastily convened in secret and invitation-only to supporters.

And there were even fewer outdoor events and they were quick grip-and-grin poses with a pint and tame press phalanx in tow.

While in terms of actual policies, Farage himself admitted his 2010 manifesto was incoherent rubbish. And he refused to take questions on his 2015 manifesto and its Manston airport policy. That policy so idiotic given that the airport was on the East Kent drinking water aquifer.

I know, you couldn’t make it up.

Yet he persisted. And lost. And the UKIP council then dropped the policy within 6 weeks of the election.

Questions still remain for Farage over the Manston corporate manslaughter by owners Infratil and KCC/TDC councils removing the pollution monitors and faking the data and fines. And Thor mercury contamination with the banned factory not closing and continuing to poison its workers and neighbours.

While if Farage is known for crumbling with his repeated resignations-not-resigning farce, the rest of UKIP is as bad. Kent UKIP had characters such as Negro Roz and Golliwog Bertie and the Stolen Valour councillors all resigning and so awful as to be featured on Channel Four and the Sun. As did MEP Janice Atkinson for insulting her own constituent as “an Asian Ting-Tong” and her staff arrested for faking her expenses.

Perhaps it’s Janice who should be in the Lords with Lord Fraud Mountfield and Jeffrey Archer rather than booted out of UKIP as MEP but sidling upto the Le Pen far-right faction.

I hasten to add it’s not just a problem for Kent being contaminated by UKIP, for Lincolnshire UKIP the second UKIP council, has followed the same process of resignations and sackings.

Farage’s political legacy is laughable with only one Tory turncoat MP in Douglas Carswell who spends much of his time railing against Farage.

While with hate crime at record levels since Brexit, Stephen Woolf surely can’t be the only black man to be attacked by UKIP. It’s rather special though that the other UKIP MEP’s do it, and we have the familiar farce of Farage popping up from exile to try and excuse it.

For, Farage proved so toxic the rest of the Leave campaign refused to work with him – even before his NHS HIV comments, or posters of escalators at the White Cliffs of Dover. Or the farce of Diane James breaking his record for the fastest resignation as Leader defies comment.

The much vaunted 17M people voted for Brexit ignores the fact that 16M didn’t – nor the subsequent disaster and lack of any coherent meaning to Brexit.

Again hardly a towering political legacy for Farage.

And as the Economist points out, other brief vote gains such as Nick Griffin and BNP don’t result in Lords seats but rather arms-length opprobrium.
No, Farage doesn’t belong in the Lords.

Particularly with him scampering away from the train-crash of Brexit – but not his salary - and stirring up a stab-in-the-back ploy for his no doubt future career as a local radio shock-jock or merely grunting from the saloon bar with his bierkellar buddies or sucking upto Trump.

And even by UKIP’s own limited aims of protecting the pound he’s failed with the euro witnessing the pound fall to its lowest levels in 350 year. Not even an ideal legacy for a City trader.

And Britain under Brexit has become the laughing stock of the world with the worst foreign policy and economic disaster since Suez.

Rather as with another quisling, Lord Haw-Haw, Farage belongs in the Tower for the destruction he’s wrought on Britain.

Tim Garbutt, Ramsgate
@timg33