Farage dominated headlines over summer - and crashed and burned the first week in September.
Politics and statecraft. Beware of blind alleys serving nefarious interests. Emeritus Professor, BCU. Posts in a personal capacity, as an academic and citizen.
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Farage dominated headlines over summer - and crashed and burned the first week in September.
Thank you.
We are now seeing the full international consequences of Trump's imperial America First presidency. Autocrats parading together in contempt of him, rubbing their hands with glee, as Trump abdicates leadership of Western alliances and the USA is reduced to a diminished presence on the global stage.
A presidency that goes on about threats to free speech in European countries shows absolutely no regard for civil liberties in its own backyard. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
You day'cunning and clever'. Others would suggest 'devious and sinister' as a more appropriate description.
After a summer exciting emotions through his provocative rhetoric, Farage again disappears from the country as soon as the House of Commons reconvenes. You could almost gain the impression that he's more interested in confrontational street protest than he is in parliamentary democracy.
From innocent bleating of Tory frontbenchers, you would hardly realise they were the ones in government who reduced the asylum system to disarray - and whose Rwanda policy, had it ever worked, would barely have scratched the surface of the chaos (let alone it's moral repugnance).
Trump's foreign and tariff policies are harming US interests every which way: reputationally through unpredictability; by enabling two international war criminals; damage to the domestic economy; and by incentivising opposing international alliances.
Let's see what the new political season brings. August is always the phoney war.
Matters never just take their course. Political agency has to be involved, too. But that requires smart political strategy, as well as tangible progress in dealing with the challenges that provide these guys with their openings.
Think you mean Powell. But alternative confrontational rhetoric won't in and of itself solve the electoral challenge. The issue at the centre of current controversies needs to be effectively addressed. Then opportunistic emperors like Farage are left with no clothes!
Well, yes, if little improves then all bets are off. But we are just over one year into a five-year Parliament. The 24-hour media cycle so easily distorts more measured perspectives.
No one with any sense is complacent! But at the opposite end of the scale are self-fulfilling prophecies. Historical precedents are often more insightful than endless speculation about future contingencies. It has been said that a week in politics is a long time - let alone near-on 4 years.
I guess we could go on speculating about various future scenarios all afternoon (which I've no intention of doing!). But my post was about historical comparisons. The three politicians cited have much in common.
Or alternatively, voters may recoil when it's a choice with real consequences from a UK sequel to US Trump-induced chaos!
Far bigger leads for opposition parties have imploded come a subsequent general election. Even in current circumstances, most polls show Starmer is preferred as choice for prime minister when compared with Farage. The point about the politicians cited is that they all overreach in time.
Wish I had a crystal ball four years hence.
Oh dear; we are upset.
đŸ¤”
But it's not a 'real Brexit'!! And the country is being 'invaded' despite all his efforts to the contrary!!!
Parallels are never exact; but that doesn't invalidate linking threads.
It's not magic that does the trick, but overreach.
The Mail flirted with fascism in the 1930s.
Mosley, Powell - and now Farage - ride on the crest of an inflammatory wave but eventually finish up in the dustbin of British history, in retrospect remembered as sad and despised politicians who tried to build political careers on the back of hate.
You cannot cut taxes whilst also ensuring public services are fit for purpose in an ageing society. Any politician who pretends otherwise is taking the electorate for fools. Irony of ironies: one of the ways to square that difficult circle is immigration.
Putin making Trump look like an utter fool. BBC News - Ukraine: Lives torn apart in Kyiv after Russia's heaviest bombardment for weeks - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Farage shares the same far right nationalist ideology as them.
Note how he engages with his performative theatre mainly during parliamentary recesses (though he is rarely seen in the House of Commons even when it's sitting).
Is it that difficult to join up the dots!
Of course, Farage is the one who claimed Brexit would secure our borders. Evidently not! And it's not because it wasn't a 'real' Brexit. Johnson went for the hardest possible Brexit short of creating absolute mayhem. Farage is just a purveyor of quack solutions to serious problems.
Farage's extremism is no longer even thinly disguised. It's there in broad daylight, as he abandons long-standing British values.
Trump has no intellectual hinterland or understanding. Instead, he betrays the banality of locker room chuntering, laced with serious narcissistic disorders. As John Bolton observes, he will be recalled as a low point in the history of the Republic (and that's saying something).
Criticism of European countries by JD Vance et. al. for compromising freedom of speech is laughable given the intimidation of anyone who dare to show dissent from or criticise Trump. A règime riddled with hypocrisy.
Badenoch, Farage, and Jenrick are increasingly indistinguishable for their eagerness to embrace puerile Trumpian politics.
Having two leaders of the Conservative Party is becoming somewhat confusing đŸ˜•
It's not Trump mediating between Putin and Zelenskyy; it's European leaders mediating between a Putin-manipulated Trump and Zelenskyy.
Trump doesn't achieve objectives. He constantly changes the narrative to disguise the fact he's failed to do so. Putin dictated the terms at their Alaskan meeting; a humiliation for Trump.
Indeed, Trump lamentably failed in his principal objective to secure Putin's agreement to a ceasefire in Ukraine.
As usual with Trump, his meeting with Putin was more theatre than substance. But the optics were terrible. Hosting an international war criminal on American soil. That Nobel Peace Prize he desperately cherishes, to emulate Obama, won't come simply through bending the knee to a ruthless autocrat.
The hallmark of Trump's presidency is casting a veil of legitimacy over international lawlessness, whether it be on the part of Netanyahu or Putin. Are we now reaching his Nevile Chamberlain moment - especially as Trump is completely out of his depth in his bilateral meeting with Putin?
Farage/ReformUK are Trump/MAGA clones!
Trump defends like-minded politicians - who are often in trouble with the law (he's, after all, a convicted felon himself).
Infantile economics. No credible immigration policy. Disregard for on-line safety of children. Crime assertions contradicted by official statistics. An energy policy leaving us at the mercy of fossil fuel dinosaurs. A 19thC industrial policy. The fantasy world of Farage and Reform.
Trump-Putin meeting: it's not about outcomes as far as Trump is concerned, which are incidental to him, no matter what the impacts on interested parties; it's all about Trump's extreme, pathological attention-seeking behaviour. The spectacle is the spectacle, is the spectacle.
That's how little difference Trump's 'peace' efforts have made. The situation in Ukraine has deteriorated rather than improved during his presidency; the same applies in Gaza - even more tragically. BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
A wonderful cricket Test series comes to an end, albeit an anti-climax for England, losing by such a small margin, having got themselves into a winning position. What's there to look forward to for the rest of the summer: why, endless mindless babbling from Trump and Farage.
Trump's special envoy Witkoff off on yet another fool's errand to Moscow, lacking any diplomatic experience having already achieved next to nothing through his peace efforts either in Ukraine or Middle East over a long six months.
Moreover, Farage's opposition to online protection for children indicates he is, in reality, an advocate of a lawless society.
Farage's assertions completely at variance with consistent falls in overall crime, with exception of on-line fraud, substantiated in offical Crime Survey. More evidence of his cynical cultivation of national paranoia for naked political purposes.
The last time we saw hunger deliberately engineered by a state on a scale we're now witnessing in Gaza was in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s. That puts Netanyahu on a par with Stalin.
Interesting how Farage invariably engages in acts of provocation and claims that are then firmly refuted when parliamentary recesses are taking place, so he can't be held to account for his reckless behaviour.
Trump demands total immunity no matter how much he abuses the powers vested in his Office yet wants a former President, who treated the same Office with the integrity and respect it warrants, to be prosecuted!! Suppressing #EpsteinFiles
ReformUK is endeavouring to import the kind of paranoia that has taken grip in the United States, something completely alien to British values.
Wherever there is a lobby for exploitative, extractive sectors of the economy, there you will find Reform accordingly positioned - increasingly along with Badenoch's Conservative Party.
Trump, Murdoch, and Epstein - now there's an explosive cocktail, if ever there was one!!
Trump: Moscow's Man in the White House. Maps multiple connections over a long period. But still no definitive explanation for a pattern of behaviour consistently favourable to Putin. Maybe there is none - instead, just many disparate compromising threads @channel4tv.bsky.social
Putin has virtually wiped out an entire generation of young Russian men (with thousands of North Koreans thrown in for sacrifice, too). All in pursuit of neo-imperial dreams. This is what autocrats do - as they hide away in bunkers at the slightest threat to their own longevity.
Not a single principle in Trump's bones. Everything is transactional. Even support for Ukraine in its existential fight against tyranny.
Strange how radical-right politicians posing as defenders of 'Christianity, country and family' have more often than not lived lives that make a mockery of the values associated with related institutions. Political as opposed to financial fraudsters.
There is a type of politician nowadays treating politics primarily as a root to personal enrichment. UK had a taste of it with Boris Johnson. We see it in unadulturated form with Farage, helping himself to both the highest earnings outside Parliament and gifts worth most value.
Deadly flash floods in Texas; third UK summer heatwave. Misguided souls, who think they can carry on regardless, suffering with their property; alas, in some cases with their very lives. Politicians in the same category, failing to provide leadership on climate change, deserve to be excoriated.
Plans for neighbourhood health centres; funding for best start family hubs; legislation for local empowerment. Importance of rebuilding foundations of community fabric, a welcome and necessary thread, beginning to run through Labour Government's policy priorities.
Perspective over 24-hour news cycle!
Witnessed many Premierships over the years. They all go through periods of immense speculation about terminal plots within their own ranks. Strange thing is regicide only usually takes a toll on Tory PMs. Closest Labour came to it was Blair in 2007 - after ten years in Office.
All political parties contain some bad apples. But it is endemic in the kind of people attracted to advance themselves through Reform UK. We are receiving evidence of that week in, week out.
All within a matter of weeks - and hardly suggestive of a Government without clear direction and strategic purpose.
Sentencing review to tackle a criminal justice system close to collapse; strategic defence and security reviews to address growing external threats; strategy to renew country's infrastructure and invest in clean energy; an industrial strategy; and now strategic plan for NHS reform. (1)
It's a form of reality detachment, not least in order to protect vested interests.
After the second heatwave in a matter of weeks, one can only marvel at the idiocy of politicians like Badenoch, Farage and Trump in attacking Net Zero. Blinkered doesn't even begin to capture their scrambled state of mind or willingness to do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry.
Implausible arguments from Conservative benches that they can save £12bn on the welfare bill without anyone suffering unduly, this after all the arbitrary cuts over which they presided during their austerity years and cruel system of welfare sanctions they applied.
If there's one course correction needed by Starmer's Government, it's to stop pandering to 'red wall' voters, treating them as the single most important target group. 'Blue Labour' is a dead end. The goal must be a pitch that has broad appeal across different demographic groups.
Anyone vaguely acquainted with Starmer's values knew that the phrase 'island of strangers' was never intended to imply any similarity with Enoch Powell's inflammatory views. No two politicians could be less alike temperamentally and in their beliefs about what constitutes a 'good society'.
Let's face it, had there been a right-wing government, cuts in social support would have been brutal, irrespective of the impacts, as was often the case during the Tory austerity years.
The farce that is Reform governance. Project this onto the national stage and gasp for breath. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Trump rejects the findings of his own intelligence defence community challenging exaggerated claims over the impact of his bombing raid on Iranian nuclear facilities. Par for the course. Believing his own propaganda rather than following the evidence.
Having facilitated Netanyahu's long-standing wild ambitions, Trump now faces the opposite imperative of reining in someone who serially breaches agreed ceasefires.
Trump sees the world in simplistic terms and therefore comes up with simplistic solutions, which aren't solutions but just compound said problems.
Apart from anything else, Trump's language is just so damn infantile - making it impossible to take anything he says at face value.
A previous champion of Thatcherite free market economics and current supporter of Trump whose tariff policies threaten further damage, Farage has the gall to pose as a champion of communities devastated by de-industrialisation. www.theguardian.com/business/202...
The real 'civilisational struggle' of our times is between those who value some decency/honour in public life and those interested only in their own power and wealth. Netanyahu, Putin, and Trump are all on the wrong side of that era-defining dividing line (as indeed Farage would be).
Trump is always setting future deadlines for others (over trade tariffs; for Putin; and now towards the Iranian règime). They then come and go without anything of real significance happening. Is 'paper tiger' a suitable epithet for him?
Trump has been played by Putin; he's now being played by Netanyahu. Irony is that they cut across one another. Iran is a strategic partner of Putin's, helping to supply his arsenal of weapons to use against Ukraine. Oh, what a tangled web Trump weaves...!
Trump posed as someone who could bring calm to international conflicts. If he now gets drawn into yet another Middle East quagmire, not only would he become warmonger in chief, it would contradict everything he campaigned on.
Like Trump, Farage and Reform have no understanding of government administration. They think it's about issuing the executive political edicts causing such chaos in Washington. They will do the same to Whitehall should Farage get anywhere near Office. Local authorities the sacrificial lambs first!
There's no policy process with Trump; no weighing of pros and cons. Just whims of one man. A consequential combination of policy incoherence and unbridled hubris starting to take its toll on the Trump règime, as events he thought he could dictate instead spiral out of control.
Trump's polarised and gun-infested America sinks to ever greater levels of depravity. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
From his own public statements, it is clear that Trump gratuitously revels in state violence against those he perceives to be vulnerable, whether that be internally or externally.
Not only have Trump's negotiators in international conflict zones achieved next to nothing, as those conflicts escalate Trump is being left helplessly on the sidelines.
Brian Wilson: what a sad, sad loss. A musical genius.
One of the best recent articles I have read on where we are with the Trump Presidency, foolishness of tech oligarchs - and also in dabbling in UK with Trump's Reform clones. Chaos reigns. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The narrative around Wednesday's spending review, little doubt, will be on government departments that have lost out. The real story is that, by the end of this parliament, public spending - in aggregate - will have returned to where it was in 2010; not continuation but ending of austerity!
It doesn't get more ridiculous than this. Back to the future. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
And all so predictable!
Trade policy chaos; constitutional disarray; foreign policy failure; and now civil disorder in Trump's America. BBC News - www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv... Los Angeles protests live: Trump orders California National Guard be deployed after clashes over immigration raids - BBC News
"Promises based on fear, mainly the fear of other people, are the usual theme of populist movements, and they mark the beginning of dictatorships and wars - for 'other people' are you." Source Pope Francis, The Autobiography
Afraid all the action once again is on X with the Trump-Musk breach. A little matter, too, of Reform losing its Chair; a row between Shadow Chancellor and Truss; and an unexpected by-election victory for Labour in Scotland!
Rarely has a presidency been in such disarray so early in a new term of office.
Caprice of Trump's tariff policies defies description; flagship legislation on taxation and spending scathingly critiqued by his richest donor; despite posing as a peacemaker he's enabling continuation of brutal wars; and with US-Israeli aid operation in Gaza an utter fiasco.
Putin was going to sweep into Ukraine in 3 days. We're now in the 4th year of war. Trump was going to solve the crisis in 24 hours. We're now in the 5th month of his presidency - and nothing has changed except for the worse. Two delusional leaders surrounded by sycophants.
Abominable and shocking. In the court of public opinion Netanyahu's government has turned Israel into a pariah state. BBC News - www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv... Doctor describes 'total carnage' as 27 reported killed by Israeli fire at Gaza aid centre - live updates - BBC News