Screed.

 I don't understand Nigel Farage. I don't understand him as a thing. I don't know why he's there. Why is he always there? Why is he on the television? Why do I see him grinning and holding a pint aloft. Why's he dressed for field sports? I don't know how he's a man of the people. Or why he's endlessly invited back to Question Time, to sneer and jeer and hector. Why he's applauded for poisoning the national well. What the people who slap his back and buy him pints think they're doing. Why he's able to walk away from a plane crash like a Uruguayan rugby player, ready to devour the sick and the dying. Why is he so bullet-proof? He has milkshakes thrown into his face and he's able to spin it to his advantage - conspiracy theories appear suggesting he's the Machiavellian super-villain who's set the whole thing up - whereas Ed Milliband's entire political career has been scuppered by his inability to eat a bacon sandwich elegantly. 

Over the last two weeks, Farage has stated he won't be standing for the Reform party because he wants to go to America and campaign for Trump. Trump is then found guilty of 34 felony charges. Suddenly, Farage is not only running for a seat in Clacton but is now the leader of the Reform Party, somehow. He is immediately coated in milkshake on arrival in Clacton. He partners up with Northern Ireland's right wing loonies the TUV, and appears on TV talking over other political parties at the election debates despite being leader for a couple of days. He's also on Question Time again, his 36th appearance, joint second of all time, despite never being an MP. He then ditches the TUV, saying he now "endorses" two of the griftier DUP candidates: Sammy Wilson and Ian Paisley Junior. No stain on their characters*. I'm mean, it's breathtaking, really. The demonic energy. Sheer commitment to chaos and outrage, his desperation to ruin to country he professes to love. Everyone now agrees the Brexit he fought so hard for, and was the face of, was absolutely ruinous. And he's still here. And apparently - despite the occasional bit of lactose intolerance - still popular. He may even win in Clacton. Eighth time's the charm. 

He thinks climate change is a scam, he's not in favour of same sex marriage and backed that rancid old milking stool Ann Widdicombe when she hoped science would one day find a solution for the homosexual problem. He likes the idea of guns being more easily available, and wants to be able to smoke where he likes. I don't know what he thinks about blood-sports, but look at him. You know he loves the idea rubbing some shivering fur-ball's blood into a child's face, cackling, white froth forming at the corners of his mouth, his eyes all but healed over. 

He's stood as an MP seven times and never been elected. The last time he failed to get in was in South Thanet which, if you've ever been there...I mean...HOW did he not get elected in Thanet? 

He came third in "I'm a Celebrity" behind a boxer I haven't heard of and a man I haven't heard of who may have been on "Made in Chelsea". He can't even win that, despite being paid one and a half million quid, the highest fee for anyone in the history of the show. 

His first wife was the Irish nurse who nursed him back to health - he nearly lost a leg in a pissed altercation with traffic. They have two children and divorced nine years later. His next wife was German (like his great- great grandparents) and he had a couple more children with her before separating. His next romance was with a French waitress sixteen years his junior. She's now a right/far right politician with Debout de France. Clearly this velvet collared sock puppet doesn't like the English girls. 

He has one testicle. Now, it would be shameful and wrong to ask which other right wing populist that might remind you of. But I believe Himmler had something similar. 

I mean, I am English. I do sort understand why he's there. The English have a fatal weakness for idiots. For buffoons. Look at the careers of Boris Johnson or Norman Wisdom. He seems like a laugh. He's a legend. He'd be a good bloke down the pub - he'd get his round in. He's got more common sense than the rest of them put together. He's just saying what we're all thinking. Sound as a pound, not neuro as a Euro. 

But why is he that popular? 

Farage's politics is the politics of selfishness, of pull the ladder up, of not in my back yard, of well, it stands to reason, of I know my rights, of well, it's not natural is it, of my Granddad was in a war (and now he's in a home), of I'm not racialist, but...of Excuse me, think you'll find there's a queue. 

He's the poster boy for the nation's limitations, its narrowness, its fear, it's clinging to tradition because that's all it can think to do. He's a man in a mohair coat selling you limited edition gold coins with Agincourt on one side and Churchill bumming Winnie the Pooh on the other. His tortoise face grinning through a fine constellation of milkshake, a pint of something brown and sulfurous in one hand, the other waving a traditional salute to the French archers who bore his name. 

I still don't understand Nigel Farage. He's rich, yeah, but he's not as rich as Sunak, and Sunak is pilloried wherever he goes. But that's his secret, perhaps. He's not in the government. He's never been an MP. He can do what he wants, he has no responsibilities, he can flit about, parlay a gay gavotte, dance a little sidestep and there's no one to answer to. I hope he gets in in Clacton. It'll destroy his career. **

*Many, many stains. Like Mr Creosote's hankie. 

** It won't. He'll do nothing for Clacton though. Don't expect him to ever actually be there.