This Is Who We Are

 People are angry. They should be angry. The Tories are dire, and Labour have proven themselves worse than useless, toe-punting at the woodwork in front of an open goal again and again. God, how incredibly shit is Keir Starmer? Stuttering and mumbling and getting the optics wrong every single time. I would make a better Prime Minister. I would have made a better Prime Minister than any Prime Minister we've had in the last ten years and that's a lot of Prime Ministers and, I can't stress this enough, I would be a terrible Prime Minister. Yet, I'd be the best. No contest. 

I know a lot of people get their news and views from their WhatsApp group hyper-bubble. Social media is a vehicle for right wing cranks and serves the agenda of billionaire sociopaths. I understand the unholy power of "a legend", the dangerous weakness the British people have for someone who might be a "laugh down the pub". But I still don't know why Reform are going to win the next general election and Farage, if one of his endless scandals doesn't unseat him, will be the next Prime Minister. But it's going to happen. Nigel Farage, objectively a liar, a grifter, a serial fraud, a racist, an opportunist, seen less often in Clacton than the letter Q, and his party, which isn't a party, it's a company of which he is the CEO, will be the next Prime Minister. 

"You fucking idiots ha ha ha..."

What are the policies of Reform? What do they hope to achieve? They will dismantle the BBC. They will dismantle the NHS. And they will fuck it up for brown people escaping wars. And I'm going assume they're going to go after Muslims in some way too, because that's what their base - the man in the Clapham Wetherspoons - wants them to do. 

I happen to think the NHS is the greatest thing the British people have ever done. Winning a just war is great and all, having an Empire...less so. There was that World Cup, years before I was born. But a tax-derived, free at the point of entry health service for everyone is just magnificent, magnificent in a way that Nigel Farage, a narrow, ugly man, cannot understand. It requires empathy. Something former Reform fan, Elon Musk, considers "the fundamental weakness of Western civilisation". Neither man gets it, as it requires helping other people and not just helping yourself. 

Perhaps my second favourite British thing is the BBC. It's far from perfect. I find their news programmes unwatchably right focused, the bias worn heavily and fussily, like one of Nick Rhodes' cravats. But the BBC does an astonishing amount of disparate work and it always has done. It's the custodian of British culture - again, it's not perfect in this role either, having wiped thousands of hours of irreplaceable footage - but it has recorded the nation for nearly a century, placing a mirror up to us to check whether we're still breathing, and recorded every facet of the nation, and it continues to do so. In the previous post I slagged off a show called "Lost and Found in the Lakes", because it was nondescript nonsense, but that's not the only thing the BBC does. It does the mad shit too. 

People think it's a busted flush. They say "Netflix spends billions on content every year, the BBC can't possibly compete." Netflix can't compete. Netflix is a dull, pristine cinema complex with 100 screens and nothing on. The BBC is a local paper. Its about you and what happens to you. It covers the big stories but remembers the human interest, the funnies, the man bites dog stories, the knobbly knees contests, it has editorials and Agony Aunts, it has a pull out arts section, there's sport at the back and Lynne from George and Lynne's tits. Netflix says nothing to you about your life. It's there to be passively consumed, pastel coloured monoliths of vacuousness, peopled by sock puppets with Hollywood smiles. It has the nutritional value of a cheese football and Netflix wouldn't know what a cheese football is. The BBC would be all over that shit. The BBC has Chris Packham gleefully describing the destruction of a ferret's corpse in a forest glade, it has posh people from St Andrews feigning surprise that the antique they knew was worth a lot of money is, in fact, worth a lot of money. It has the worlds longest running soap opera and its on the radio. It has glam rock, punk and Peter Grimes. It has music for Centrist dads and Amazon delivery drivers. All human life teems on the BBC like maggots eviscerating a ferret's corpse that resembles a furry squeezed toothpaste tube. Netflix is an endlessly reflexive ersatz mall. It shows things that look like film and TV but, in the final analysis, mine, aren't. It's insect entertainment: outwardly strong and beautiful but there's nothing inside. Clap your hands around Netflix and all that's left are wing casings and dust. 

It's ludicrous that Farage should hate the BBC. He's never off Question Time. The glazed gammons with their twinkling clove eyes, froth with passion every time he's on. He is their totem, their Jeremy Clarkson of hearts. I'm surprised he's not garlanded with yellowing briefs every time his frog face appears. The gammons have such a little blue-pill-scaffolded hard on for the man. I bet their wives get hell, one way or the other, every time he's on. 

It's a right wing canard: like the NHS, the BBC is a remnant of a world with bigger thinking. Both institutions came into their own when the Second World War was a fresh wound, its horrors a recent memory. Now the war is a commemorative plate, a showy declaration of nationalism. If you're on telly in October and you're not wearing a poppy you'll never be on telly again. It's the law. You'll be the guy they burn on November the fifth. And not in effigy either. 

Today its reported Nigel Farage breached MPs' rules 17 times by failing to register financial interests totalling £384,000. Will he resign? No, of course he wont. He doesn't care. The right wing press don't care. He said "he had been extremely let down by a senior member of staff". It wasn't even his fault. Next. 

There are loads of stories about Farage. His career is that of sustained boorishness and the sort of schadenfreude he wishes there was an English word for. Perhaps there's one story from dozens that illustrates the sort of man he is. In 2008, when he was an openly hostile Euro MP, Prince Charles, now the actual King of England, spoke to the European Parliament about climate change, something he had profound concerns about. Charles received a standing ovation from every member of Parliament except one. One man stayed seated, arms folded, face like thunder. It was English super-patriot Nigel Farage. He later harumphed that the King's advisors were "naïve and foolish at best."  

That's Nigel. He loves his country as long as it doesn't compromise his business interests. Nigel's loyalties are to Trump, Putin and lining his camel hair pockets. Those matey pints don't pay for themselves. They're a business expense. Deductable. 

Reform, like UKIP before them, used to be the protest vote. People were pissed off with the stalemate of two party politics. Fair enough. They're both shit. It's true. But why these cunts? This knackers yard for the most venal and abysmal remnants of the Conservative party? How many retired colonels wanting to shoot house breakers in the back are there in this country? Why not the Greens? Why can't that be your protest? Constructive politics that wants to change things. No, politics must get nastier and nastier, more hateful, constantly angry. Anger is truth. Crushing your enemies the only proof of victory. They have to suffer. 

This is who we are.