Nigel Farage - Liar Of The Year

It is that moment of the year when Time magazine chooses its Person Of The Year, and this time the award will go to one of eleven shortlisted candidates. Some of those nominated are predictable: both Democrat and Republican candidates for the US Presidency, for example. Others are equally predictable, if less savoury, such as Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Squeaky gong shortlist finger up the bum time

And then, inexplicably, there is Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, gobshite, sponger off the European taxpayer, pro-am lush, serially failed Parliamentary candidate, former Oberscheissenführer of the saloon bar propper-uppers at UKIP, and serial liar of no known principle, other than the continuing promotion of Himself Personally Now.

The citation is as mirth-inducing as might be expected: “As head of the U.K. Independence Party, Farage was a face of the successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, positioning the referendum as the start of a global populist wave against the political establishment”. That will come as news to the Vote Leave people, who really were the face of the campaign for Britain to leave the EU. Farage had a bit part.

But all is not lost for the people at Time: here on Zelo Street, we have a title they could award Mr Thirsty, and for which there would be little competition, other than perhaps from London’s formerly very occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson or his pal Iain Duncan Cough, and that is Liar Of The Year. What might the citation contain?

Oh, I dunno, how about this from the BBC: “In the European Parliament, UKIP's leader, Nigel Farage, described Portugal's president calling on the leader of the right-of-centre party to attempt to form a government as the ‘modern day implementation of the Brezhnev Doctrine’”. As Zelo Street told at the time, this was a rank pack of lies (a similarly untrue claim, of EU interference in the Portuguese elections, was made by Louise Mensch).

There’s more: an ashen-faced (but sadly, not tight-lipped) Farage told the more easily persuaded part of the press that his car wheels had been “sabotaged in an assassination attempt”. This was bullshit. There was a known problem with the model of car he drove, and the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency website had a recall notice out for it.

And more: after Gina Miller, who had helped bring the Article 50 challenge which is now the subject of Supreme Court deliberations, and who had put Farage in his place on The Andy Marr Show (tm), revealed she was taking security precautions on the advice of the Police, Mr Thirsty whined that he could not go out without his own security detail. But no Police advice was ponied up, so that looked like another pack of lies.

Then, most recently and indeed most deliciously, Farage went on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) and told Sean Hannity that not only would far-right candidate Norbert Hofer win the Austrian Presidential election last Sunday, he “will be calling for Austria to have a referendum on their membership with the European Union”.

Hofer, in a country where EU membership has overwhelming approval, would be doing no such thing. He lost and suggested Farage desist from interfering in Austrian politics.

So there you are, Time magazine people: Nigel Farage, your Liar Of The Year 2016.