Last month the Ukip leader wanted to welcome Syrian refugees, now he's ridiculing the party's rank-and-file: the general election manoeuvring has begun
As he loftily distances himself from those he dismisses as the "Walter Mittys'' in Ukip's activist ranks, Nigel Farage is getting more interesting. I think he is succumbing to the allure of prospective office, what the late Frank Johnson (Simon Hoggart's only equal in the ranks of recent parliamentary sketchwriters) once called "the black stocking-tops of power." Farage likes what he has so far only glimpsed from his bar stool.
Perhaps he has also been daydreaming of that moment in the small hours of Friday 8 May 2015 when another inconclusive general election result raises the possibility of a minority government or another combination of parties in coalition. He cheekily talks of Ukip holding the balance of power at Westminster and doing a deal with a Tory party led by a Gove or a Boris Johnson amid jubilation among the oligarchs of Fleet St. I think that is a likely fantasy too, as I will explain later.
He dislikes David Cameron and George Osborne – a feeling which is mutual. No deal there then if the Tories fall short of a majority despite the best efforts of the Two Eds and Vince Cable, who was also being 'interesting" about economic strategy on Tuesday – perhaps for similar reasons.
But it is Dave who is now polite about Tory-to-Ukip voters – he was on Radio 4's Today programme on Monday – whom he once called "fruitcakes", whereas Nigel now calls the same people Walter Mittys.
What is going on? Today's Mitty jibe is not the first time Farage has made such a comparison. He's too smart not to know some of his candidates, councillors and activists are always going to be a problem. Remember the ridicule councillor David Silvester drew down on Ukip for suggesting that recent floods were a judgment of God on gay marriage?
The difference is that today's "Wrong kind of people are in Ukip" headline is the lead story in the Times – the kind of metropolitan newspaper that until recently looked down its nose on Ukip as the kind of lower middle-class activist base barely tolerated as a necessary component of the Tory party. That verdict was mean then and mean now. (And the Guardian was just as bad.)
All parties contain fruitcakes and Walter Mittys, but in my experience Ukip's are jollier ones than some of the thin-lipped, authoritarian puritans full of ideological zeal whom you find in most parties. Would I trust most of them to run anything more complicated than a small business? No. But most don't want to. They just want to quit Europe and go back to their all-white favourite pub, close the curtains and have a few drinks.
But Farage, the London metals-trader (City-type, not Del Boy) who gave it all up to become an MEP in 1999, has always been more ambitious than that. Like that other panacea politician Alex Salmond – whom he also despises ("where's Scottish independence inside the EU?" he asks) but resembles – he's a smart populist who makes it up as he goes along and refuses to be embarrassed for long when he hits himself in the face with a custard pie.
Only last month he said that of course Britain should take its share of Syrian refugees. It's economic migrants, from eastern Europe and far beyond, we should control more effectively after years of letting in too many. It offended some Ukip-types, but they may no longer be his primary audience as Ukip's share of opinion polls consolidates. This was a high-minded appeal to fairness and the wider view of our common humanity.
Only last week he dismissed the eccentricity of Ukip's 2010 election manifesto – he couldn't remember most of it and disowned it. His manifesto for the important EU elections this May? Not ready yet, he explained. He's not going to be pinned down. He's right about that too. Ukip's manifesto launch in 2010 was a riotous shambles, as most Ukip launches are. Fruitcakery apart, it's hard to be too alarmed by a protest party that can make you laugh so easily.
But Farage's efforts to make the party look and sound more respectable than it is carries risks. He says today that up to one third of Ukip's support now comes from hacked-off ex-Labour voters. I believe him. He also tells the Times that bankers' bonuses – we can't and shouldn't interfere, nor should Brussels – aren't the problem, overpaid public sector workers and (wait for it) think-tank staff are.
It's hardly the best note to appeal to voters fed up with the Two Eds, is it? Or even those lower middle-class small business-types who have deserted the Tories for Ukip because they feel let down by Cameron (who was sucking up to them this week again). The more Farage tries to sound respectable the less brightly his "sod the lot of them" appeal shines.
It's a risk he might overcome, he's smart, but a risk all the same. Like all small parties, including the Rennard-riven Lib Dems, Ukip is prone to factional splits, often personality-driven rivalries dressed up as principle. It's had its share and I must admit I'm currently without a good dissident source there.
In any case, we always end up in the same place when looking at the coming election, uncertain though its outcome remains. Unless Ukip makes a major breakthrough on May 7 2015 – the EU elections that it might win don't really count, which is why Ukip does so well in them – its success is certain to damage the Tories more than Labour. Sensible Tory voters know that. Most will draw back from the knowledge that a defeated Tory MP contributes to an Ed Miliband premiership which they don't want.
So perhaps Farage isn't looking to cut a deal with a post-Cameron regime in 2015, but to harry, humiliate and horrify the Cameroons even more successfully than Ukip and its fellow-travellers on the Tory backbenches ("useful idiots" was Lenin's description of such people) are already doing.
Cameron's appeasement strategy has failed so far. Might he be forced out of weakness to sue for peace? The hope must be some sort of understanding, some sort of pact at local level that would give both rival right-wing parties some synergy.
After all, it's more or less what has been tried before; the "coupon election" of November 1918 being the most successful Lib-Con deal, though it all ended in tears in 1922 and fatally split the old Liberal party. It was tried by the Liberals and breakaway SDP in the 1980s (with only modest success) and by Eurosceptic Tories and plutocrat Jimmy (father of Zac) Goldsmith's Referendum party in the 90s (ditto).
But it never stops them trying. Watch that Farage. Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.
As he loftily distances himself from those he dismisses as the "Walter Mittys'' in Ukip's activist ranks, Nigel Farage is getting more interesting. I think he is succumbing to the allure of prospective office, what the late Frank Johnson (Simon Hoggart's only equal in the ranks of recent parliamentary sketchwriters) once called "the black stocking-tops of power." Farage likes what he has so far only glimpsed from his bar stool.
Perhaps he has also been daydreaming of that moment in the small hours of Friday 8 May 2015 when another inconclusive general election result raises the possibility of a minority government or another combination of parties in coalition. He cheekily talks of Ukip holding the balance of power at Westminster and doing a deal with a Tory party led by a Gove or a Boris Johnson amid jubilation among the oligarchs of Fleet St. I think that is a likely fantasy too, as I will explain later.
He dislikes David Cameron and George Osborne – a feeling which is mutual. No deal there then if the Tories fall short of a majority despite the best efforts of the Two Eds and Vince Cable, who was also being 'interesting" about economic strategy on Tuesday – perhaps for similar reasons.
But it is Dave who is now polite about Tory-to-Ukip voters – he was on Radio 4's Today programme on Monday – whom he once called "fruitcakes", whereas Nigel now calls the same people Walter Mittys.
What is going on? Today's Mitty jibe is not the first time Farage has made such a comparison. He's too smart not to know some of his candidates, councillors and activists are always going to be a problem. Remember the ridicule councillor David Silvester drew down on Ukip for suggesting that recent floods were a judgment of God on gay marriage?
The difference is that today's "Wrong kind of people are in Ukip" headline is the lead story in the Times – the kind of metropolitan newspaper that until recently looked down its nose on Ukip as the kind of lower middle-class activist base barely tolerated as a necessary component of the Tory party. That verdict was mean then and mean now. (And the Guardian was just as bad.)
All parties contain fruitcakes and Walter Mittys, but in my experience Ukip's are jollier ones than some of the thin-lipped, authoritarian puritans full of ideological zeal whom you find in most parties. Would I trust most of them to run anything more complicated than a small business? No. But most don't want to. They just want to quit Europe and go back to their all-white favourite pub, close the curtains and have a few drinks.
But Farage, the London metals-trader (City-type, not Del Boy) who gave it all up to become an MEP in 1999, has always been more ambitious than that. Like that other panacea politician Alex Salmond – whom he also despises ("where's Scottish independence inside the EU?" he asks) but resembles – he's a smart populist who makes it up as he goes along and refuses to be embarrassed for long when he hits himself in the face with a custard pie.
Only last month he said that of course Britain should take its share of Syrian refugees. It's economic migrants, from eastern Europe and far beyond, we should control more effectively after years of letting in too many. It offended some Ukip-types, but they may no longer be his primary audience as Ukip's share of opinion polls consolidates. This was a high-minded appeal to fairness and the wider view of our common humanity.
Only last week he dismissed the eccentricity of Ukip's 2010 election manifesto – he couldn't remember most of it and disowned it. His manifesto for the important EU elections this May? Not ready yet, he explained. He's not going to be pinned down. He's right about that too. Ukip's manifesto launch in 2010 was a riotous shambles, as most Ukip launches are. Fruitcakery apart, it's hard to be too alarmed by a protest party that can make you laugh so easily.
But Farage's efforts to make the party look and sound more respectable than it is carries risks. He says today that up to one third of Ukip's support now comes from hacked-off ex-Labour voters. I believe him. He also tells the Times that bankers' bonuses – we can't and shouldn't interfere, nor should Brussels – aren't the problem, overpaid public sector workers and (wait for it) think-tank staff are.
It's hardly the best note to appeal to voters fed up with the Two Eds, is it? Or even those lower middle-class small business-types who have deserted the Tories for Ukip because they feel let down by Cameron (who was sucking up to them this week again). The more Farage tries to sound respectable the less brightly his "sod the lot of them" appeal shines.
It's a risk he might overcome, he's smart, but a risk all the same. Like all small parties, including the Rennard-riven Lib Dems, Ukip is prone to factional splits, often personality-driven rivalries dressed up as principle. It's had its share and I must admit I'm currently without a good dissident source there.
In any case, we always end up in the same place when looking at the coming election, uncertain though its outcome remains. Unless Ukip makes a major breakthrough on May 7 2015 – the EU elections that it might win don't really count, which is why Ukip does so well in them – its success is certain to damage the Tories more than Labour. Sensible Tory voters know that. Most will draw back from the knowledge that a defeated Tory MP contributes to an Ed Miliband premiership which they don't want.
So perhaps Farage isn't looking to cut a deal with a post-Cameron regime in 2015, but to harry, humiliate and horrify the Cameroons even more successfully than Ukip and its fellow-travellers on the Tory backbenches ("useful idiots" was Lenin's description of such people) are already doing.
Cameron's appeasement strategy has failed so far. Might he be forced out of weakness to sue for peace? The hope must be some sort of understanding, some sort of pact at local level that would give both rival right-wing parties some synergy.
After all, it's more or less what has been tried before; the "coupon election" of November 1918 being the most successful Lib-Con deal, though it all ended in tears in 1922 and fatally split the old Liberal party. It was tried by the Liberals and breakaway SDP in the 1980s (with only modest success) and by Eurosceptic Tories and plutocrat Jimmy (father of Zac) Goldsmith's Referendum party in the 90s (ditto).
But it never stops them trying. Watch that Farage. Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.