Nigel Farage - The New Nasty Party

With elections to the European Parliament set to go ahead next month, attention has been lavished by our free and fearless press - and, to their shame, by broadcasters - on the new party now fronted by Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. The Brexit Party has garnered good poll ratings, and Nige and his pals must hope it will propel them back on to the Brussels gravy train that they were previously so keen to slag off.

What the press and broadcast attention has managed to miss, though, is just how nasty this new party really is. So let’s have a look at a few of those much-praised candidates to see how they measure up. We can start with one of those MEPs who have joined Nige in leaving UKIP following the appointment of Adolf von Batten as party leader.

Bill “Viagra Golliwog” Etheridge, apart from the Viagra and the Golliwogs, is more recently known as a pal of the so-called White Pendragons, who were behind the interruption of a speech by London Mayor Sadiq Khan. They told those present that they were there to effect a citizen’s arrest. And outside the venue, they had brought a scaffold. As in the kind used to hang people. He’s part of the new Farage fringe.

Also joining Mr Thirsty, and announced as an MEP hopeful this week, has been businessman Lance Forman, who had previously been a supporter of Turning Point UK, the group whose US parent had been linked with all manner of extremism. For him, the charge is one of straightforward hypocrisy: having told “I can’t think of one area in which [the EU] has helped our business”, his company’s website proclaimed the virtues of achieving PGI status for its London Cure Smoked Salmon. Awarded by the EU.

Then there is Ann Widdecombe. Who believed in shackling pregnant women prisoners while they gave birth. That Ann Widdecombe. And so we arrive at Claire Fox. Much has been made of Ms Fox joining Mr Thirsty’s latest self-enrichment endeavour, because, so the Line To Take goes, she is “from the left”. Except she isn’t.

Squeaky iffy candidates finger up the bum time

Ms Fox was one of those whose political journey began with the Revolutionary Communist Party. So was Brendan O’Neill, sucker-up to the Koch Brothers and Murdoch shill of no known shamelessness. The RCP was the bunch of clowns who lost a lawsuit against ITV News. Their speciality at the time was denying the Srebrenica massacre.

Claire Fox is not “of the left”. She’s another right-leaning libertarian and alleged free speech advocate, who allegedly once defended Gary Glitter's right to download child porn. And an extreme free marketeer. Which, far from distancing her from Farage, puts her rather adjacent to him. And so we arrive at The Great Man himself.

Nigel Farage, expenses cheat, the MEP whose European Parliament attendance record is one of the worst of all 750 or so MEPs. Nigel Farage, who wants the NHS replaced by something more in line with the wishes of his pals in the USA. Nigel Farage who has been named in Congress as the go-between who delivered that memory stick to the Ecuadorian embassy. Nigel Farage who endorsed Roy Moore. You remember Roy Moore?

This Roy Moore: “the Washington Post reported that Moore had inappropriate sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl in 1979 when he took her to his house and made her touch his genitals”. Yes, the Brexit Party really is The Real Nasty Party.

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