Farage Fouls Up Austrian Election

Last week, buoyed by the success of his new bestest friend Combover Crybaby Donald Trump, Nigel “Thirsty” Farage was once more in the USA, where he was given a platform to expound his views by Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse). Here, he pontificated on upcoming elections in a number of EU member states, most notably that for the presidency of Austria, to be held last weekend.

Squeaky more dishonesty finger up the bum time

Mr Thirsty told Sean Hannity that “On Sunday this week, the Austrians are re-running their presidential election … The president of Austria being the head of state - not with much executive power, but still very important - and I would put my money on the Freedom Party's Mr. [Norbert] Hofer winning that election”. Hofer “will be calling for Austria to have a referendum on their membership with the European Union”.

There was, as Captain Blackadder might have observed, only one thing wrong with this idea - it was bollocks. Public opinion in Austria is overwhelmingly in favour of continuing the country’s EU membership - and Hofer was not intending to call for a referendum on it (the Mail made the same mistake yesterday in its report on the Austrian vote). The opinion polls in Austria had predicted the election was too close to call.

But by yesterday, perhaps influenced by Farage’s latest excursion across the dishonesty line, voters across Austria decisively rejected Hofer and instead returned Independent candidate Alexander van der Bellen, formerly of the Greens. His majority, as little as 30,000 in the original poll earlier this year, was now in the hundreds of thousands. Hofer wasted no time in passing severely adverse comment on Farage.

One of his team told anyone who would listen to say of Farage’s latest pack of lies “That didn’t help us, that hindered us” Hofer himself put it more bluntly: “I would ask Mr Farage not to interfere in Austria’s internal affairs”. What was it that Mr Thirsty was always banging on about with Brussels? Would that have been something about not interfering in the UK’s internal affairs? So he’s a hypocrite as well as a liar.

It got worse: Hofer’s party, the FPÖ, is regarded as being on the far right. Indeed, it was founded by ex-Nazis. Farage would not like to be likened to racists and Nazis, but he has backed the FPÖ’s candidate shamelessly, only for the party to very openly say he shouldn’t have bothered. As Adam Bienkov put it, “That feeling when you're too toxic even for the Austrian far right”. That would be Mr Thirsty.

Portsmouth councillor John Ferrett rubbed a little salt in the wound, observing “Farage is considered too right wing by party formed by SS officers but please remember UKIP are not racists”. Now Farage has again been exposed as a liar: he lied about the assassination attempt that never was, he lied about not being wanted in the UK (so he would move to the USA), and he lied about needing security every time he went out in public.

Now he’s lied about the Austrian elections, and it’s come back to bite him. Perhaps now the UK media will think twice about giving him so much exposure.