Farage

 

The Conservative Party is breaking up, possibly disintegrating.  None of them seem to know what Conservative should mean and there’s no unifying idea.
I blame Thatcher for this.  She sowed the seeds that led to the dysfunction of society, taking the Con Party with it.
But it’s a long story and not for now.  This is gonna be long enough.

The current collapse I credit to Cameron.
Cameron, when asked why he wanted to be Prime Minister replied “Because I think I’d be rather good at it.”  i.e. “it’s what a chap does”. 
His education omitted common sense.  It was absent in his circle, they didn’t need it.

He didn’t think much of Farage and was dismissive of UKIP "fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists".  Rather than toss part of his electorate a bone, he chose to insult them.
He seemed to think his modern, liberal conservatism would attract more support.

In 2009, Nigel Farage became (again) leader of UKIP.  A flamboyant figure with a flair for publicity, he was forthright and plain spoken.  He held many traditional conservative values.   Much of what he said appealed to a widening constituency.

In 2010 Cameron won the Election.  But only just and, as PM, the economic reality hit him.
We had to have Austerity.  (there were other options.)
The population, who had seen wages decline in the previous decade, were now to be poorer.  The system was to be supported by grinding them down.

By 2014, UKIP were a threat to the established political order.  They had more votes in the EU elections than any other party and hence more MEPs.
The writing was clearly on the wall.
In five years Farage had turned UKIP into an electoral force.

In his election manifesto of 2015, Cameron pledged to hold a Referendum on EU membership.  This to disarm UKIP and close the splits in his Party.  If he’d had any political nous, he’d’ve come up with something that unobtrusively kicked the can down the road.


The Referendum, in 2016, didn’t turn out the way Cameron had campaigned.

Nigel Farage had wrought a constitutional change in the UK, from outside Parliament and within the law.

David Cameron had neither the grace nor the common sense to put him in the Lords for this.
It would’ve been a recognition of the achievement and put him politically out of harms way.
He would most likely have gone off to make millions on speaking tours in the States and hanging round with his Trump cohort chums.

Instead Cameron went off in a huff.  Leaving behind a mess of his own making.  He’d forbidden his Civil Servants from making contingency plans in the event of Leave winning.


The subsequent debacle was years of Parliament obstructing Brexit.  Three quarters of MPs had campaigned for Remain. They were sore losers.

Farage quit UKIP after the Ref and the party faded away.  But the anarchy in the Govt left him grumbling freelance on the outside, attracting an increasing constituency.

In the chaos of Governments we’ve had since, there were three PM resignation honours lists.  None of those PMs had the wit to stuff Farage out of the way in the Lords.  A symptom of their lack of wit of how to be a PM.

In 2018 Farage was one of the founders of the Brexit Party, which became Reform UK.  Following the recent dissolution of Parliament he became the leader of Reform.  They are standing in 608 seats.
At least the tories will have someone to vote for.  Unlike the rest of us.