ELECTION REFLECTIONS AND THE FARAGE FACTOR / MACLEOD FINANCE

Election reflections and the Farage factor

Britain is retreating into greater socialism. The political landscape will alter accordingly. But it is Nigel Farage who could go into the history books.

ALASDAIR MACLEOD

While the world appears to be shifting to the so-called right (Argentina, Italy, Netherlands, and potentially the US), Britain and France have veered into deepening socialism.

It is against this depressing background that Nigel Farage has been elected as a Member of the UK Parliament. 

As the son of a stockbroker and as a commodity trader he obviously has a free market background. 

But importantly for politics, he is an effective public speaker with a distinctive personality at a time of universal bureaucratic dullness. 

He has the potential to become considerably more important than a mere backbencher parroting official policies.

There are two factors which could make him a person of considerable influence. 

The first is his political nous, and the second his friendship with Donald Trump. 

His political nous has already been demonstrated as a Member of the European Parliament and leader of the now defunct Brexit party.

His relentless attacks on the Brussels establishment showed him to be politically fearless, but they branded him as a maverick. 

His election as an MP now places him in the heart of the British establishment. 

Already, he has been widely dismissed as being of little or no consequence by rival politicians and the mainstream media. 

But I suspect they underestimate his remarkable political acumen and his ability to influence public opinion.

Picture this: a Labour government, to paraphrase Milton Freidman in charge of the Sahara and finding that there is an increasing shortage of sand. 

It is led by a Prime Minister, the greyest of men since Clement Atlee, renationalising the railways, bankrupting private schooling, and promoting trade union influence. 

At the same time, it is unable to raise taxes fast enough to pay the bill for socialistic economic destruction. 

In opposition is a Tory party unable to argue effectively against Labour’s socialism because it is populated by semi-woke intellectually rootless MPs with little understanding of the importance of personal freedom and property rights, the true antithesis of socialism. 

They are themselves little more that socialist welfare officers.

Into this steps Farage, a maverick and personable. 

It won’t be long before the lobby journalists will be seeking his company for copy and perhaps a beer or two. 

The PR managers of the other political parties will become increasingly frustrated by the attention Farage gains at the expense of their carefully crafted campaigns. 

It won’t really matter that his speaking time in Parliament will be limited by the system. 

It is his media persona and his deployment of it which matters.

It is the second factor, Farage’s closeness to Donald Trump, which will attract the widest attention, if as currently expected Trump wins the presidential election later this year. 

We must also assume that America and the NATO alliance don’t descend into open warfare against the Asian hegemons before November when the US election is due to be held, assuming that a conflict on this scale could lead to its postponement.

It is in this context that Farage’s recent comments about Putin and Russia should be taken. 

They were denounced by politicians in all parties and by the mainstream media. 

But they reflect almost precisely the stated views of Donald Trump. 

If Trump becomes the next US President, then the leader of the tiny UK Reform Party will certainly become extremely important in Anglo-American relations and possibly in wider geopolitics as well.

So far, my speculations above should appear to most readers both logical and reasonable. 

More difficult to conjecture with are the reactions of the deep states of both the US and the UK. 

All I can say is that a Trump/Farage partnership will expose who actually is calling the geopolitical shots: the deep state or their political masters. 

And I would not rule out Farage directly or indirectly having a major influence on the future of the Conservative Party.