Speaking to BBC's Newsnight presenter, Victoria Derbyshire, on Monday, NF admitted that the country had "not actually benefited from Brexit economically" and blamed this on "useless" Tory politicians "mismanaging" the Brexit departure.
This is not to say that NF is now a Remainer. Despite Victoria Derbyshire pointing out that a recent poll shows that around one in five Leave voters saying that they now regret their choice, he still clings to his delusions. Derbyshire said:
"The OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] forecast a 4% hit to the economy over the medium-to-long-term - that's £40bn in tax revenues. Economically, the UK would have been better off staying in, wouldn't it?"Now, for us "Remoaners" who were pointing out during the referendum campaign that this would happen (and worse), we remember how our doubts were dismissed as "Project Fear". Nonetheless, NF can't quite admit to the obvious. Replying to Derbyshire, this was his response:
"Mr Farage said he "doesn't think that for a moment" - and blamed the "failure" on the Conservative government's handling of Brexit. He said: "We haven't benefited from Brexit economically when we could have done." "What Brexit has proved, I'm afraid, is that our politicians are about as useless as the commissioners in Brussels were."It's a shame that Farage does not reflect on his own uselessness, as there is much to be said on that score. John Bercow, the former Commons speaker, lambasted NF on GB News:
"Why not start by admitting first that people are poorer, wages are down, foreign direct investment has slumped, sterling has taken a permanent 10 per cent hit.The economy has been hit to the tune of about £100billion a year.”
If a right-wing channel like GB News can screen such an attack on Farage, then he is in trouble. The recent local election results bear this out. UKIP was wiped off the electoral map. Brexit has been shown to be what John Bercow has said of Farage's beliefs: "It is nonsense on stilts".
Indeed it is, but there is another aspect to the failure of Brexit that has not been noticed. Besides the admittedly dire economic impact, there are the human consequences of the referendum and the forgotten casualties in the title. I wrote on this issue back in February, 2021 and perceive the need to do so again.
Firstly, there was a rise in hate crime following the start of the referendum campaign. Reports of hate crime rose by three fifths at that time, exhibiting itself in all manner of nasty and hurtful ways. The principal targets for this surge in hate were, of course, EU nationals, living and working here in the UK. James O'Brien, of LBC, highlighted the case of a French lady psychiatrist, who had worked in the NHS for 20 years. She was subjected to pro-Brexit inspired abuse from her own patients. She was so hurt that she has returned to France.
Another case I know of was that of a Spanish nurse, married to an Englishman, with two English children, who received similar abuse from patients. She, along with her family, returned to Spain. And these were but two examples of many such incidents which have been well documented, the latest authoritative study being published in 2021.
Then there were the social consequences of the campaign, again, not being mentioned in the media. This was so bad that the New York Times wrote about it:
"Like the election of President Trump, the 2016 Brexit referendum vote crystallized divisions between cities and towns, young and old, the beneficiaries of globalization and those left behind...in the aftermath of the referendum, Relate, a counselling service, said that a fifth of the 300 relationship support practitioners surveyed had worked with clients who argued over Brexit."But the human consequences are not limited to the shameful rise in hate crime, xenophobia and the harm of social division. The EU referendum led to two violent deaths, those of Jo Cox, M.P. , and Duncan Keating. Jo Cox, as we know, was murdered by the Fascist Leave campaigner, Thomas Mair. Leave voter and pensioner, Duncan Keating died after a fight with Graham Dunn, a fellow pensioner and a Remain voter, during an argument over Brexit.
To conclude, Nigel Farage is getting off lightly, in my opinion, despite the admirable efforts of Victoria Derbyshire and John Bercow. I believe that Farage, Johnson and all the other Brexit con-artists should be held to account for the devastating adverse social and human results of their misconceived and dishonest campaign several years ago.
Farage is not a sincere but misguided individual; he is an unscrupulous self-publicist who is out for his own ends. Yes, he is genuinely anti-EU, irrationally so seeing that he cannot comprehend the failure of leaving the EU was inevitable and not - as he claimed - the consequence of government failures, although it's true that the incompetence of the present shower has made an already bad situation worse.
ReplyDeleteDespite that, when he was in a position to try to protect British interests as an elected member of the EU parliament, he did nothing. During his time as an MEP, he used the plight of British fishermen and the wasteful practice of having to throw back perfectly good fish that had exceeded the EU quotas for propaganda purposes in a UKIP political broadcast. At the same time, he was a member of the EU fisheries committee which had the power to table amendments to EU laws but attended just one meeting out of 42. Such hypocrisy was utterly contemptible, and he hasn't changed since then.
This man has never managed to win an election to a position within the UK - in short, he is consistently an electoral failure as a British politician and his current political standing does not justify the media exposure that inexplicably he still commands.