Day Kamikaze Farage got too big for his boots
DUriNG the final stages of the Pacific War in 1944-45, Japanese pilots deliberately flew their missile-laden planes into US warships.
They knew the game was up and the war lost. They just wanted to drag as many of the enemy to the grave with them as possible.
in Japan, they are known as the ‘Kamikaze’, or ‘beautiful wind’. Here, we just call them reckless idiots.
i couldn’t help but recall these deranged tactics yesterday while witnessing Nigel Farage unveil his Brexit Party’s election strategy.
Fresh from his radio show love-in with Donald Trump, he said he had an ‘offer’ for Boris Johnson and his Conservatives. Drop your Brexit deal and join us in a free trade alliance.
Together, he said, the Brexit Party and the Tories could become an ‘unstoppable electoral force’. it was like something from the Darth Vader lexicon: ‘Join me and let’s rule the galaxy together.’
Failure to comply, however, and the Brexit Party would field candidates in every constituency across England, Scotland and Wales. Of course, this would risk splitting the pro-Brexit vote and risk Brexit not happening at all.
Unfortunately for Nigel, he realises that Boris holds most of the trump cards. As Prime Minister and leader of the most successful political party in history, he is no more likely to ditch his hard-earned Brexit deal and kneel before Farage than he is to suddenly start moussing his hair into a neatly-arranged quiff.
Farage had strutted on stage accompanied by a burly security detail shortly after speeches from Brexit Party MEPs Ann Widdecombe and Claire Fox.
There were no gags, no gimmicks. Farage these days is a man reborn – or re-packaged at any rate. Gone are the beery smiles, the fags, the tomfoolery. Nige 2.0 is slimline, professional, serious. Unless Johnson agreed to this alliance, he continued, every household would become aware of the Tories’ ‘sell-out’ on Brexit.
Around him, camera shutters whirred. There was something mildly menacing about Farage’s tone.
Labour, too, he warned, had better watch out as they could no longer rely on the working-class vote. The party these days, he claimed, was ‘islington, not islwyn. Hampstead, not Huddersfield. And Dalston, not Doncaster.’ The only time Farage cut the Conservatives a break was when he rubbished Labour’s claims that Johnson was preparing a trade deal with the US to dismantle the NHS.
‘i was talking with an American friend on the phone last night,’ Farage smirked, a selfsatisfied reference to his buddy-buddying with Trump on his LBC radio show. incidentally, Fox and Widdecombe both gave decent speeches. Widders, moderately presentable in tweeds, spoke of her disillusionment with the Conservatives under Theresa May.
Fag-ash Fox – her voice is smokier than a pack of Embassy Filter – deplored the complacency of the Conservatives in believing they own Brexit. She said they should
not think they can just roll into northern, working class, Leave constituencies and expect a hero’s welcome. A reasonable point.
PArTY chairman richard Tice spoke well, too, condemning the Supreme Court’s recent politicisation over the Government’s proroguing of Parliament and the shabby behaviour of remain MPs such as Chuka
Umunna who have swapped parties over the past year more often than they’ve changed socks.
Few Conservatives would have disagreed with a word any of these three said. Someone asked Farage if he’d had any conversations with the Conservatives about an alliance. ‘I’ve been having conversations with the White House,’ he replied grandly. ‘This is a big moment.’
Indeed it is. It could be the point when the Farage ego finally got too big for its boots.