Nigel Farage - Say Sorry

“I think there are Remain camp supporters out there who are using this to try and give the impression that this isolated horrific incident is somehow linked to the arguments that have been made by myself … in this campaign, and frankly that is wrong”. So said Nigel “Thirsty” Farage during an interview on LBC radio in the aftermath of the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox. Farage was once again playing the victim. And he’s still at it.

Squeaky unhinged bigotry finger up the bum time

This morning, in the wake of an incident yesterday evening in Berlin, where a lorry was driven into a Christmas Market at Breitscheidplatz - it’s at the eastern end of the Kurfürstendamm in what used to be West Berlin, the area by the ruined Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church - with the loss of at least twelve lives, Mr Thirsty once again fetched up on LBC, ostensibly to kick Angela Merkel for the incident.

But the best-laid plans, and all that: after, as the Telegraph’s Asa Benn noted, Farage delivered his predictable “People like Mrs Merkel ought to take responsibility for what has happened” (think she has already, Nige), Mr Thirsty was challenged over the rather different response to the incident by Jo Cox’s widower Brendan.

Echoing John F Kennedy’s gesture of solidarity with the people of Berlin - “Ich bin ein Berliner” - Cox continued “Far right & Islamist extremists share same hate driven psychology, intolerance towards difference & tendency to violence. We must defeat both”. Farage would have had no problem with the “Islamist” bit, but casting the net that little bit wider, and including him and his pals, was right out.

Farage could have merely said that he did not agree with Cox’s definition of those sharing a hate driven ideology, and left it there. But then the real Farage - the bellicose, smearing, dishonest, rabble-rousing and yes, hate filed Farage - won out and he went after Cox with the smearing iron brandished. Deflecting with no subtlety at all, he whined “He would know more about extremists than me, wouldn't he?”

Why should Brendan Cox, someone who has dedicated himself to opposing extremism, “know more about extremists” that Mr Thirsty? Ah well. It was, according to The Great Man, because he supported Hope Not Hate. This is an anti-extremist organisation, as its name suggests, but in the looking glass world of Nigel Farage, it is itself extreme. Farage went as far as to claim that Hope Not Hate pursues “violent and undemocratic means”, which is both a malicious smear and approximately 1000% wrong.

Justifying his distinctly off-colour excursion, Farage pleaded, as Benn has observed, that Cox “‘continues to be active in the political arena’, Farage says, & he can't avoid responding ‘given organisations he supports’”. Can’t avoid being an insensitive and tactless victim-playing bigot, more like. Some observers had by now had enough: Graham Linehan responded to Farage blustering “Terrible news from Berlin but no surprise. Events like these will be the Merkel legacy” by simply asking “Is the death of Jo Cox your legacy?”

Farage, after all, was the one who callously ignored Jo Cox’s death in the aftermath of the referendum result, by telling anyone who would listen that he had achieved his objective without a shot being fired. Nigel Farage, you’re an absolute shower. Say sorry.