Nigel Farage Private Plane Hypocrisy

As if we need to be reminded of the motley collection of charlatans, spivs, squeeze merchants and others of no known principle who have brought Britain to its latest and most precarious state, who should pop up like the proverbial bad penny but former UKIP Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, showing once more that, when it comes to a combination of hypocrisy and dishonesty, he is in a class of his own.

Squeaky charter terminal finger up the bum time

Mr Thirsty was caught by the people at Channel 4 News being flown privately from London to Strasbourg, at great expense, in the manner of those political elites about whom he has so much - usually severely adverse - to say. As so often, he brushed aside the implied criticism with the usual bonhomie, claiming that he’d paid the bill out of his own pocket, but then managed to put his foot in it in no style at all.

Farage couldn’t resist a dig at Matt Frei, who had caught him red handed. “Dear @mattfrei. Your sneering publicity yesterday led to a businessman coming forward and paying for the flight. A huge personal thank you from me, this was going to be a very expensive week until you showed up”. So he won’t be declaring that in his MEP’s expenses, then.

Nor did this convince media figures, especially those whom Nige has a habit of bodyswerving when they invite him on to their shows, like James O’Brien, who was on to the Farage U-Turn like a shot. “But you said you'd paid for it? Should be easy to provide a receipt”. So it should. And the timing did not convince.

Morten Øverbye was one of those taking a sceptical stance. “Took a private plane. Can't remember what it cost the same day as he took it. Next day claims a business man came forward to pay for the flight. My guess is the businessman already paid for the flight”. Certainly, if I’d taken a private plane and had to pay the bill myself, I’d know what it had cost. It’s like Nige’s Ecuadorian embassy amnesia revisited.

Nor does Farage’s initial claim that he had paid for the flight tally with the interview he gave the Daily Mail just over a year ago. “Nigel Farage, the former leader of Ukip, has bemoaned being ’53, separated and skint’ in an interview, adding ‘there’s no money in politics … particularly doing it the way I’ve done it - 20 years of spending more than you earn” as the Guardian reported later. But no-one should be surprised.

After all, this is the politician who Zelo Street nominated as Liar Of The Year at the end of 2016, for his claims that the EU interfered in the 2015 Portuguese assembly elections, the story that his car wheels had been “sabotaged”, saying he couldn’t go out without his security detail, and that Austria would be voting to leave the EU. All those claims were totally untrue, and merely the tip of a much larger dishonesty iceberg.

So come on Nige, show us the receipt for that private plane trip, own up as to who paid for it, and make sure you don’t try and claim in back from the European Parliament on expenses. The you might get believed. Until then, you won’t.

Nigel Farage has his pants on fire big time. No change there, then.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at

www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/zelostreet2