Del Boy Defends Fellow Spiv

The revelation, which I noted yesterday, the Nigel “Thirsty” Farage had set up an offshore trust in the Isle Of Man (but not used it, honest) was always going to have the potential to tip his reputation from that plain speaking man of the people dispensing good honest wisdom at the local pub into the impression of forthright spivvery. Put simply, UKIP could look like a seriously dodgy motah as a result.

So someone had to make that futile gesture, as Peter Cook once put it, and in the belief that he was raising the tone of the war in so doing, James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole has gone over the top (as usual) to defend his hero and now party leader from all those rotten lefties, and also from folks of no fixed political persuasion who can identify a spiv at forty paces.

Del Boy is aghast at the thought that Farage should have to answer to mere journalists for his actions: “what business is it of ours? First, he was doing nothing illegal. Second, such a move is entirely consistent with Ukip's stance on taxation (ie that we need less, not more). Third, what end could possibly be more admirable than striving to give your children and grandchildren the best education money can buy?”

Well, if we’re paying for the SOB to use the European Parliament (EP) as a makeshift dormitory and expense generator, I have to tell Delingpole that it is very much our business. Moreover, I personally couldn’t give a flying foxtrot about UKIP’s “stance” on what kind of taxation they would like at some point in the future, especially when they are unlikely to lower it with their list of spending commitments.

And whether or not money buys a better education, well, all Del Boy’s own reassuringly pricy sojourn through that system has bought him is an inability to figure anything out without someone else doing the heavy lifting first (hence “interpreter of interpretations”), coupled with an almost permanent auto-sneer mode to his utterances, and an addiction to defamatory abuse.

But the protestations continue: “Farage, for example, had he continued with his career as a City trader would be minted by now”. He could also have gone bust, and that doesn’t excuse his behaviour. And here’s a belter: “If he were paid on hours worked and on performance bonus, Farage would be earning way more than his relatively modest MEP's salary”.

Yeah, right. If Farage really was paid on performance, he’d get sweet bugger all, because that’s what he spends all his time at the EP doing. Plus the BBC and the Climate Change Bill have nothing to do with the discussion. And spare us the description of Farage as “honest, outspoken and fearless”. He’s shifty. He flannels and evades. And all of that makes him a Grade A spiv.

And if it’s all the same to Del Boy, whatever spivs are selling, I’m not buying.