Bored with Brexit - it's EFTA Stupid...

Evening - hope our foray into European matters goes rather better than that of Man United last night.

The post-referendum period has been an immensely disappointing time from a philosophical perspective for a number of reasons. We've witnessed a sort of toxicity enter our discourse which, if we're absolutely honest, was on the horizon for some time but then that God awful campaign unleashed upon all of us. With many on both sides preferring to re-fight that battle amongst themselves rather than approaching the problem constructively, the entire country appears engulfed by a sort of 'caretaker manager' status as we've boiled everything down to 1) bickering about Soft Brexit/Hard Brexit/I can't believe it's not Brexit and 2) 'stuff' around identity politics. That's it.

Leaving aside the nonsense around non-binary and transgenderism, there are three reasons why I can understand the 'slow emotion replay' being fought to some extent. One is the shocking and blatantly dishonest campaigns waged by both sides, which has left a sense of 'unfinished business' with nothing truly resolved (especially when you factor in that it was 52-48 and hardly represents a 'mandate for change' at all). A good analogy would be with a very close (albeit terrible) fight in boxing which went to a split decision on the scorecards. The loser claims to have 'lost the battle but won the war' and immediately calls for a rematch. I think Remainers are ultimately wrong here, but get their point.

Then there's the attempts by numerous and various to tell 17 million people "what they voted for" as if they all voted the same way for some sole and identical reason. This has been used to drive a silly and presumptuous 'debate' about the trajectory and nature of Brexit, when in reality some will have 'Brexited' in the hope of retaining at least some economic ties with Europe. Others were no doubt willing to 'take a hit' in the name of culture, heritage and/or restricting immigration while there will of course be some who probably couldn't articulate exactly why they voted the way they did but were perhaps motivated by a desire for some form (in fact any form) of 'change' at any cost.

Probably most importantly there seemed to be a pledge on the part of the 'alternative government' that was the Leave campaign that we would all have more money in out pockets right away as a result of leaving the EU, that a deal could be struck which combined every imaginable positive of membership with precisely zero adverse effects. This struck me at the time as being a cynical and disingenuous piece of gerrymandering based on what those offering it knew to be a false premise. As a result, all roads from there were bound to lead to disappointment and disillusionment when this thing could easily have been won (albeit by a different campaign) on a more realistic understanding.

It may be that we struggle economically post-2019, but I don't necessarily see this as an argument why it's such a terrible idea. By the same logic, young people should never move out of their parents' house since for the few years immediately proceeding that decision they might have less disposable income. Similarly, the nations of Eastern Europe should have stuck with Communism in the 1990s because the period of re-adjustment proved to be one of stress, hardship and difficulty for some. In reality our biggest mistake was joining what was the EEC in the first place and no process of unraveling from it was ever going to be rapid, straightforward or painless.

It's worth remembering that greater independence, the ability to shape your own destiny to a more significant extent, is a good thing in and of itself.

With this in mind, the option of joining EFTA is one that has always struck me as the 'least worst' option and an off-the-shelf type of choice which could conceivably have been agreed (at least in principle) by now. Sure, EFTA equals compliance with most of the EU's rules, it means some sort of membership fee going forward and is not a 'perfect' solution by any stretch. However, while enabling continuity and confidence it provides us with some (albeit limited) tools for restricting immigration and disassociates us entirely from the 'ever closer union' that is now known to be the EU's ultimate goal. Set against Utopia it fails, but next to every other realistic option, it's pretty good.

The Uk would be a massive addition to the association and provide it with a significantly increased profile on the world stage. From there, we could start to appeal to those movements within other EU nations which seek a similar process to the one we're engaged in - offering to open our doors to any country wishing to substitute EFTA membership for that of the EU while promoting it internationally as a looser and more flexible alternative. In the event that seven, eight, nine takers were forming a queue to join what would essentially now be a rival body, EFTA would be in a position to basically re-negotiate an even better arrangement for itself, starting a virtuous circle (at least for us).

Playing 'the long game' here just might lead to what many Brexiters really want, which is not simply British withdrawal but the collapse of the European Union itself. This, I suspect, is why the Conservative Party, a distinctly pro-EU organ which gave us the Single European Act, Maastricht and the non-vote on Lisbon, will not even countenance going down the EFTA road. Meanwhile, the boneheads and village idiots on the UKIP wing of the argument are too trapped in their state of Little Englander myopia to see this bigger picture. Having enjoyed the chase much more than the catch, their lack of imagination has created the terrain for a strong 'take us back in' movement to emerge.

This is why I've ultimately stopped talking about the subject, as not only am I far from sure we will actually end up leaving, but even if we do Brexiters were too busy winning the vote and then celebrating to even attempt to win the argument, let alone establish realistic and achievable aims once it had been won. A motivated, driven and well-resourced campaign to stop this from happening will simply morph into one to take us back in given 2-3 years to re-tune and wait for the inevitable post-Brexit difficulty - nor am I in any doubt that they will get their day, their referendum to re-enter with Schengen, the Euro and everything else. How that will work out is anyone's guess.

Smug Brexiters have really taken their eye off the ball here.

Anyway, apologies for the gloom but there is a reason why this 'Brexiter' of two decades has gone rather quiet. I'll say it again, pursuing a referendum rather than destroying the pyrite sceptics of the Conservative Party was the wrong, wrong way to go.

On a brighter note, I wrote the words 'slow emotion replay' earlier for a reason. Will leave you with some music and catch you next time - thanks for reading.

Conspiracy Theories, Britain First and Henry Bolton

Afternoon - apologies for the delay between posts, have had other things to deal with.

I'll start with a minor confession - on occasion I have advocated positions and beliefs on certain historical events that might be deemed to have entered the realm of 'conspiracy theory', at least to some. Now I'm firmly at the 'sane end' of the spectrum when it comes to stuff like this and don't, for instance, believe that the moon landings were fake, Elvis never died or the earth is flat. Off the top of my head here are some that I definitely DO believe - JFK wasn't taken out by a lone wolf called Lee Harvey Oswald, the McCanns are aware of far more than they are letting on and almost certainly know exactly what happened to their daughter (RIP). Princess Diana was murdered.

For the avoidance of doubt, what I've just stated is merely the expression of an opinion based on the available evidence, just in case any lawyers were sharpening their pencils and seeing pound signs flash through their brain. What some regard as 'conspiracy theory' is simply the rejection of the 'official' narrative around a particular event, usually after a forensic of that basic storyline appears not to tally with the facts. Unlike those who seem to regard purporting such theories as a curious vocation, I don't arrive at such conclusions either lightly or automatically. The immediate subscription to 'alternative' explanations of events and incidents is of course sheep-like in its own way.

Two stories in the news last week had something of a 'conspiracy theory' feel to them. One concerned Britain First, the rabid bunch of nationalist headbangers led by Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen. I've always thought there was something not quite 'on the level' about Britain First - having been a prominent member of a minor political party myself I'm acutely aware of how nightmarish it can be simply getting some external acknowledgement of your existence. On the contrary, Golding was immediately promoted by the mainstream media as 'the new Nick Griffin' and given a sizeable profile overnight, despite consistently dismal performances in elections. This is highly suspicious.

A key indicator worth bearing in mind is that for all their Facebook exploits and relative 'success' within the social media sphere, Britain First have never had so much as 1,000 current active members. That's about half of what the Libertarian Party had at its peak, yet many of you will probably not be aware that LPUK even existed. This isn't sour grapes at all, for LPUK ultimately deserved its descent from obscurity of the relative variety to that of a more absolute one (we can tell that story another day). What I'm getting at is that all the documentaries, TV appearances and retweets from the president were fiat political currency, backed by precisely nothing.

Golding and Fransen have apparently been jailed for 'hate crimes', which is unfortunate in itself. By the sounds of it they were engaging in an ugly form of vigilantism which compromised a major police investigation into suspects who it would appear were guilty. They also harassed wholly innocent people, calling them 'rapists', provoking a horrendous backlash and forcing them to move house. This rattles off quite a few recognised criminal offences in one go, namely defamation, slander, sub-judice, incitement, perverting the course of justice. Take your pick and do the pair of absolute tossers for all of the above as far as I'm concerned. They're scum of the lowest order.

While I've no doubt whatsoever that they're some form of 'controlled opposition', the key question might be that regarding the extent to which they are aware of it. Given that they're demonstrably 40 watt and thick as mince it's quite possible that whoever has been backing and financing these shitheads has decided that they've served their purpose, withdrawn their 'privileges' and thrown them to the wolves without either working out what is going on. How many similarly criminal activities have they participated in previously and gone wholly unpunished? So the question has to be asked, why are they suddenly having the book thrown at them now?

Perhaps somebody else (like Anne Marie Waters) will be 'pushed' instead?

However, it's also possible that this is part of a stunt to promote Britain First and hail its leaders as 'martyrs' who were willing to 'sacrifice themselves' for the cause. If they get out of 'prison' in a few months and start presenting themselves in such a fashion then you can see how Toddler Rightists out there might be inclined to support and/or join them on the basis that "my enemy's enemy is therefore my friend". The inverted commas there are for a straightforward enough reason, namely because in this scenario it's not inconceivable that Golding and Fransen haven't actually gone to prison at all. They might simply go off-grid to a 'safehouse' somewhere and re-surface upon 'release'.

Meanwhile Henry 'Badger Strangler' Bolton (no relation to Michael, be assured I've checked) is back with OneNation, the political party whose USP is ostensibly that it's pro-Brexit while remaining on the right side of the psychiatrist's door. Now I found the whole Jo Marney story rather tedious and thought it somewhat suspicious that the personal (albeit moronic) tweets and Facebook messages of a private individual before she apparently met Bolton were given the airplay and media coverage that they were. There's no disputing that the self-styled 'traditionalist' Miss Marney is a strange girl who badly needs to stop huffing paint for the sake of her brain cells, but why the fuss?

As for OneNation, I find its presentation as some sort of 'magic formula' (namely pro-Brexit but not racist or xenophobic) to be somewhat insulting to the millions of reasonable people who voted to leave the EU. Scepticism towards the European Union aligned with sensible and fair-minded approaches towards 'difference' of all kinds along with subjects like immigration is not some sort of geopoitical Bermuda Triangle, but a perfectly sane and highly achievable position that UKIP once threatened to occupy before it descended into full-blown village idiot territory. That Bolton seems to be packaging this as a 'masterstroke' on his own part should set alarm bells off immediately.

It will fail dismally for two obvious reasons. Firstly, he has already explained that his new vehicle will be a sort of 'pick and mix' outfit, lifting bits from 'the left' on certain issues and pieces from 'the right' on others. That can't possibly work as a) policy areas invariably bleed into each other, with your solution to one problem basically determining your answer to the next question in advance and b) you've absolutely no chance of getting thousands of people to pull in the same direction in the absence of at least some sense of agreed core principles, even if you don't have an ideology as such. 'Believing in Britain' is just saying everything while saying nothing, magnolia politics by numbers.

But of course the biggest reason that all roads lead to oblivion in this case is Henry Bolton himself - with that we're back to the questions regarding Jo Marney, her Facebook history and the suspicious 'leaking' of her mad, alcohol-fuelled musings into the public domain. This is what I'll refer to as 'the David Icke effect' going forward. Now Icke has actually made intelligent and factually correct comments on many issues over the years but of course the nonsense about 'lizard people' ultimately discredits him and, well, that's his own fault really. Unfortunately, it also leads to the sane, sensible and even provable positions he has taken in the past being launched into the 'lunatic' category.

Similarly, the concept of  a non-batshit replacement for UKIP is a highly logical and indeed necessary one within the system we have. It's just more than a tad suspicious that a highly discredited chancer like Bolton (who let's not forget appeared relatively recently and from absolutely nowhere) is ostensibly going to lead it down a cul-de-sac and quite possibly create the perception that support for further British independence is some sort of refuge for cranks, pub racists and soccer hooligans. Look, if you want to ruin an organisation, infiltrate it and get 'wrong uns' to join. Similarly, if you're seeking to discredit a line of thought, do the whole "agree with David Icke?" thing with it. Simples.

Henry Bolton is quite possibly an egomaniac with weaknesses who was in the right place at the right time and got incredibly lucky. It may also be the case that he has been 'pushed' by external forces and that UKIP's leadership election (while not necessarily rigged like Morrissey claimed) was at least 'managed' to a significant extent. He could very conceivably be 'controlled opposition' who doesn't even realise it, having deluded himself into believing he did it all through talent and hard work. Given his background resembles Swiss cheese and he had an apparently damascene conversion from LibDem to staunch Brexiter, a hefty dose of scepticism regarding his authenticity is fair enough.

Plenty within the ranks of UKIP thought something very similar and cited such reasons as those for voting to get rid of him.

Anyway I'm off to watch Fahrenheit 9/11 again - thanks for stopping by.

I'll leave you with some music and catch you all midweek.

The Uk Independence Party (UKIP) - an Obituary

Evening all of you.

I think we can safely close the book, read UKIP the last rites and bury them. Last week was a pretty terrible one even by the standards of their last couple of years, and its hardly like they were coming into it from a position of strength. Since 2015 we've had four leaders (and the current incumbent is teetering on the precipice), an 18-day reign of error, people claiming to have been at Hillsborough and played professional football when they didn't and MEPs deciding to settle their political differences by going for a proverbial straightener on the cobbles. Anyone who thinks they have a future is either sorely deluded or badly needs to lay off the solvents. UKIP are done.

Someone I respect referred to UKIP as a racist party on social media recently and I've been reflecting on that intermittently during the day. Five years ago I would probably have told anyone calling UKIP racist to shut up and stop flinging mud at people they disagree with, but in the last two or three years I would have to concede that it's a far less black and white issue (apologies for the pun). They saw an opening in the short-term grab that is the squalid anti-immigration market, and not without a degree of success. However, this became what we might refer to as the UKIP paradox - namely the reasons for any good results they achieved also became the cause of their rather rapid demise.

It would be churlish to dispute that UKIP definitely had their moments. In 2014 they became the first party other than Labour or the Tories to win a nationwide poll for a century when they won the European election. They then polled 13% of the vote at the 2015 General, although our rather archaic voting system meant this only translated to a single MP (the Liberal Democrats and SNP both got significantly more seats off many fewer votes). There were numerous occasions on which they were a whisker away from securing stunning by-election triumphs, but narrowly finished second - a problem emphasised in 2015 when they finished second in no less than 120 constituencies.

However, there's much to be said for that old saying "if your auntie had bollocks she'd be your uncle" - the reality is that despite whatever relative success they had and despite the noise and hype around them, UKIP managed to win a parliamentary seat from a standing start on precisely ZERO occasions. Of the three instances in which they 'flipped' an MP (namely Bob Spink, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless) only Carswell remained a UKIP Member of Parliament after the election that followed. Nigel 'man of the people' Farage stood for election to Parliament on no fewer than seven occasions and lost every time, most notably in the South Thanet constituency in 2015.

There were two main issues with UKIP as an organisation, both of which we've covered as potential pitfalls for any political group in the past. One was rabid anti-intellectualism, its rather primitive commitment to an angry nativist form of 'common sense politics' which certainly tapped into a zeitgeist of the first half of this decade, but is also liable to render any party a 'poison brand' in the eyes of large swathes of the population. Moreover, it became nigh on impossible to describe what UKIP-ism is, meaning that anger replaced ideas, serving as a very clear 'not welcome' sign to anyone identifying as young, forward-thinking and definitely a product of the modern world.

This feeds into my second point. When talking to my good mate Chris Coey last week I stumbled across something of a shared talent, namely the ability to pick up the 'political vibe' coming off somebody who is speaking about a subject. Let's be clear, there wasn't always a nasty vibe coming off UKIP and its representatives, but in its latter years the arsenic levels gradually rose until you expected to look at your fingernails and find they'd changed colour. They had quite consciously and deliberately become a 'nasty party' - even if they weren't a "shut the door, we're full" outfit, they sounded like one, and their low-rent brand of populism turned out not to be all that popular.

Any political party which discards imaginative and well thought out policies for white noise and a series of loud grunts about foreigners is going to have an element of 'stuck record' about it before too long and end up with a distinctly limited shelf life. In their 'peak years' I can only ever remember UKIP having three policies that were confirmed, namely 1) leave the EU, 2) stop or at least significantly reduce immigration and 3) ban the burka (I know).  They had once been a small-state, free market type party but abandoned that to chase votes in the North. They flirted with being pro-civil liberties for a period but discovered there were negative votes in that and piped down.

As a result, the only thing capable of keeping UKIP together was not a shared philosophy or view of the world, but a cultish demagogue who ruled with a cocktail of wide boy charisma and an iron fist. Step forward Nigel 'pretty straight kinda guy' Farage. Taking over after UKIP's Kilroy-inspired Euro election success in 2004, he remained at the helm for almost all of the next decade, aside from a brief period when he stood aside to contest the speaker's Parliamentary seat in 2010 (as you already know, he lost). Numerous ex-colleagues complained about our Nige being boorish, a bully, a misogynist etc, with one, Martha Andreasen, famously referring to him as 'just like Stalin'. Lovely.

But then again, just as Iraq just might have needed Saddam Hussein and Libya needed Colonel Gaddafi, perhaps an egomegalomaniac like Farage was the only type of leader under whom a disorganised rabble like UKIP could have thrived. It's certainly true that nobody who has followed him has managed to hold things together for long, although an alternative view is that Farage deliberately turned UKIP into what it became, frightening off independent and original thinkers, precisely to render it a sort of 'cult' and nurture dependency. One way or another, he was certainly the reason for many committed members of UKIP choosing to end their association.

One, quite incredibly, was Dr Alan Sked, who had founded UKIP in 1993 as something altogether removed from what it became. His vision of the party was of a moderate centre-right outfit that was anti-EU membership but had policies in all of the other major areas. He expelled Farage from UKIP in the late 1990s, partly over Nigel's wish to bring ex-National Front members into the organisation, partly over a disputed claim about Farage using racist language and also a tendency to turn up for official business (i.e. work) in what could be politely described as a 'relaxed mood' - a legal challenge was mounted, Sked couldn't afford to fight Farage's people and so it was he who had to go.

Dr Sked later distanced himself completely from the "Frankenstein's Monster" he had inadvertently created.

Alas it didn't have to be that way, and this is the point I've deliberately left until late. So many people credit UKIP with 'getting us the EU referendum' through threats of Tory defections and Dave panicking. This is true to an extent but also assumes that had UKIP not been there to serve the purpose they did, precisely nothing else would have been. This is a denial of the sort of political gravity that most of us understand, namely that political parties stay in business because a market for someone or something like them continues to exist. Who's to say that something far more well-run and professional couldn't and shouldn't have occupied that space instead?

Which means...maybe, just maybe Brexit happened despite UKIP and not because of them. This is something I think you'll hear on this site, possibly EU Referendum and precisely nowhere else but I've always been uncomfortable with the slice of the credit that has been casually handed to the Kippers and believed that it may have been somewhat overstated. While Farage himself cut something of a background figure during the campaign, where was any other member of the party at this critical moment that they had apparently worked themselves into the ground to engineer? Either AWOL or deemed irrelevant and worse than useless - either way it's a reason to think again.

Probably the most damning aspect to consider about UKIP is that despite having had Euro MEPs for 17 years at the time of the referendum, they were still no closer to nailing down a process by which we could unravel ourselves from the EU. This begs the question:- apart from trousering money from the 'EU gravy train' they claimed to despise and wandering round the South of France getting shitfaced, what exactly were those UKIP MEPs doing? Throw in the small matter of two of those MEPs (Tom Wise and Ashley Mote) going to prison for crimes of theft or dishonesty and it's worth asking if these were really 'men of the people' or an opportunistic bunch of political bogus roofers.

A tribalist's dream, to say that UKIP were light on substance is a mite generous if anything.

Anyway RIP and I appreciate it's unkind to speak ill of the dead, but hopefully you'll appreciate that history needs to be recorded accurately. The truth is the truth.

I'll leave you with the best song I could think of and thank you for reading once again. Catch up with you next time.