In his last years commentating on Formula 1, Murray Walker would very deliberately not tell viewers that the driver leading on the last lap of a race was going to win. He had cursed so many over the years by announcing the winner, only for them to suffer some kind of mishap. So it was always “he is on his last and po-tentially victorious lap”.
Squeaky you lost get over it finger up the bum time
If only those commentating on the Peterborough by-election had listened to Murray. Last weekend, and indeed well into this week, the talk had been only about how Nigel “Thirsty” Farage’s latest political vehicle, the Brexit Party, was going to secure its first MP, especially given the area voted 63% Leave in the 2016 EU referendum.
Leave area, Leave party, it was a no-brainer. Wasn’t it? Well, it might have been, until last Sunday morning, when US Ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson let slip in an interview on The Andy Marr Show™ that, in a post-Brexit trade negotiation with the USA, what he called “healthcare” would have to be on the table. “Healthcare” for most means the NHS.
Donald, where's yer hairspray?
Then, on Tuesday, in a press conference which was extensively publicised by every broadcaster - although the right-leaning press kept his remarks off their front pages on Wednesday morning - Combover Crybaby Donald Trump confirmed that the NHS would have to be “on the table” in a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal.
The Donald then tried to row back on that in a softball session with Piers Morgan, but the damage had been done. The Brexit Party’s leader was Trump’s big buddy. Voters in Peterborough now knew that voting Brexit Party meant, however indirectly, endorsing a future in which the NHS was up for grabs, perhaps to disappear for ever.
Lisa Forbes - the winner
And so when they came to vote, 63% Leave area or no, they voted Labour in sufficient numbers to ensure The Red Team’s majority actually showed an increase over the 2017 result. The Brexit Party had a plum by-election opportunity dangled in front of them, and their bestest buddy from the USA blundered in and fouled it all up.
But instead of facing up to the fact that voters were beginning to see through the non-existent policies and hollow rhetoric, the Brexit Party pulled out the race card in order to excuse its failure. The Guardian reported that “Brexit party insiders said Labour’s reliance upon a mainly Pakistani vote in inner-city wards had been the difference between the parties. ‘Some of these houses had 14 people in them registered to vote. It would be interesting to see what proportion voted Labour,’ said one”.
The racist bigot party is gracious in defeat
And there we see the true colours of the latest incarnation of the Farage Falange: blame failure on OTHERS. It was down to the FOREIGNS. People who were NOT WHITE and DON’T DRINK took YOUR DECISION away from you. For Nige and the Brexit Party, it’s explained away by saying British citizens are really PAKISTANIS. Racist SOBs.
The reality is that people have now seen what Brexit will mean for their everyday lives. They’ve seen though Nigel Farage. They don’t want what his pals are offering. And they don’t want to take a leap in the dark with a selfish rich spiv.
Thanks to Trump’s gaffe, Peterborough has seen off Mr Thirsty. Just rejoice at that news.
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9 comments:
Voters often vote differently in by-elections. They can protest vote knowing the effect on the Parliamentary arithmetic. If the Brexit Party couldn't win this one, it's as dead as Change UK (or whatever they call themselves today).
Without a manifesto, it isn't really a political party, but just Farage. The members can't even remove him.
It bodes well - now it’s time to really expose farage - just that - then either have an election or a referendum but safe in the knowledge that he has been exposed - as article says - a rich spiv
Didn't take long for them to explain their defeat with racist logic did it?
Arnold
There a no 'members', just donors/supporters/mugs.
Farage bravely ran away again.
And Farage's excuse is that Labour were knocking on doors in Peterborough for months. Oh dear, how unfair, actually campaigning for votes in a by-election. A party doing their job to ensure their candidate succeeds...who'd have thunk it?
Meanwhile Gove is disappointed that the Tories fared so badly and believes we need a strong Tory government to stop Jeremy Corbyn succeeding at a GE and 'ruining this country' *rolls eyes* You really have to ask now, could he - or indeed anyone else - do any worse to the country than the Tories have done in the last 9 years?
I'm not the first to have noticed this by a long way, but the Guardian story you mention has been quietly amended to remove the bit about houses with 14 people in them. And contrary to normal practice when they amend a story, there's no little notice to tell us what's been done and why.
Can this have anything to do with the Guardian's mean and spiteful attitude to Labour's victory? The headline on their story was "Labour scrapes past Brexit Party to hold seat" - as if the Brexit Party were already somehow in possession. They'd been running stories all week about how the Brexit Party was about to get its first MP. Polly Toynbee had already said that the Brexit Party's success meant that Labour had to come out for Remain (logic problem there). And Frances Perraudin has now recycled 14 Asian people in a house line with a silky nastiness:
""I think they were very lucky", Peterborough people react to Labour win... Iqbal enlisted the help of his cousin Shoukat Farid, a politician in Kashmir, who had been in Peterborough campaigning since 31 May. Farid said lots of Kashmiri people in the constituency knew him and he hoped he had helped to get out the Labour vote." Plus a video clip of celebrating Labour supporters, all of whom somehow turn out to be Asian.
The Oxford University 'Cherwell' clique must all be terribly upset that Labour weren't hammered, as they expected. They just go from bad to worse.
The loosely attached mask on the visage of the Brexit party is already slipping. But then, the racist Farage in 1997 seemed perfectly happy to allow ex-NF members to stand as ukip candidates. According to ukip founder Alan Sked, "He wanted ex-National Front candidates to run and I said, 'I'm not sure about that,' and he said, 'There's no need to worry about the nigger vote. The nig-nogs will never vote for us." Farage denies this naturally. But given the racist's track record and associations, I know who I believe.
God alone knows why people think the Brexit Party will not go down the same rabbit hole of bigotry under Farage when he took ukip in a far-right direction overnight.
Absolutely Andy, the Grauniad have a very spiteful attitude towards Labour these days that puts them on a par with the BBC. It's disheartening to see so many media outlets refuse to acknowledge that Labour took a greater share of the vote on a lesser turnout at this election. If you simply read/heard the headlines, you'd come away with the notion that they were lucky which, in turn, makes Farage's mob appear unlucky.
iMatt, you can go even further back than '97, to Farage's school days in '81 when a tutor baulked at him being made a prefect, arguing that he was a fascist.
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