We hear so often of how the mighty are fallen. But what of those who were never really all that mighty, but who are also fallen? The latter category contains some particularly sad individuals, amongst whom are most of those who followed Nigel “Thirsty” Farage as leaders of the now joke party that is UKIP. Paul “bad Bootle meff” Nuttall and Henry Bolton (Henry who?) were bad enough, but then came Gerard Batten.
I em not a racialist but, und zis is a big but ...
Batten took a party that was in decline, and finished it off. His was the most disastrous of tenures: turning a populist but not too bigoted movement into one hell-bent on rabid Islamophobia and in denial of its crude racism. Teaming up with Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, merely made matters worse. Batten, whisper it quietly, was not known as Adolf von Batten for nothing.
Sadly for him, Mr Thirsty went off and brought us the Brexit Party, which put Batten’s political career out of its misery. More sadly, though, Batten continued to entertain the fantasy that he enjoyed any influence at all, which he did not. An attempt to sneak back as UKIP deputy leader under new head man Dick Braine ended in farce.
Still, on he went with the pretence, typified by “Who will pay the UK's share of EU budget after Brexit? This is the main reason they didn’t want us to leave? Germany won’t want to pay more & the parasite nations won’t want to pay at all. And we shouldn’t pay another penny”. What’s it to you, Adolf? If you don’t care about the EU, why keep sniping about it?
And if that was bad, here’s a real wacko endorsement from Batten, as he tells his followers “Climate change hoax COLLAPSES as new science finds human activity has virtually zero impact on global temperatures”. His endorsement is of Natural News dot Com, which Wikipedia, with some understatement, calls “a conspiracy theory and fake news website”.
How about a little Islamophobia? You got it. “The founder of the Mohammedan cult was himself a bandit who took a 20% cut from the booty stolen by members of his gang. Using criminality to raise funds is regarded as legitimate by cult members”. Wibble, wibble, he’s a hatstand. Then it was back to endorsing the Express’ wacko Europhobia.
“The EU will never give up. It will do everything it can to impede us leaving. They work on the principle that the peoples’ views don’t matter & governments change. So if they hang on long enough they can reverse Brexit. No compromise. No surrender”. Take a fake story and rant until you vanish up your own arse? Batten’s your man.
There was still, though, his presence in UKIP to link him, however tenuously, with the real world. Not any more: The Great Man has now told anyone not yet asleep that “It is great sadness & regret that I have resigned my membership of UKIP with immediate effect. I will write about this in more detail elsewhere & publish a link on twitter.My thanks to all those who have suppprted me over the years. Best wishes for 2020 & beyond!”
Yeah, right. Adolf von Batten has spent the recent past pissing his own credibility, and that of UKIP, up the wall. Now he’s out of piss, and wind is all that remains.
Bye bye Batten. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
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