Farage takes to the school newspaper to complain about not being made prefect
If there’s one thing an anti-elitist likes least, it’s being overlooked for a peerage from Her Majesty’s government.
What better way to stick it to the man than to join the ranks of assorted Knights, Dukes, Earls, and Viscounts?
Today’s front page temper tantrum by former UKIP leader and twice-failed parliamentary candidate Nigel Farage really ought to put to bed his party’s claim to be anti-establishment.
Have a taste of this, from The Telegraph:
“Now, leaked emails seen by The Telegraph show [Douglas] Carswell [MP] mocked Mr Farage’s chances of an honour after it was turned down, saying he should be given an award ‘for services to headline writers’.
Mr Farage said the leaked online exchange showed Mr Carswell was ‘consumed with jealousy and a desire to hurt me’ and urged Paul Nuttall, Mr Farage’s successor, to sack him.
However, Mr Carswell insisted the leaked email ‘confirms that I made every effort to make sure that UKIP got its fair share of peerages and honours’. Mr Nuttall declined to comment.”
Of course this shows UKIP up to be the shambles it always was. The ‘purple reign’ promised by Farage never materialised, and Nuttall’s failure in Stoke continues UKIP’s losing streak in successive bids for the Commons.
(Farage’s call for the sacking of UKIP’s only MP in the wake of this defeat is a curious electoral strategy.)
But notice the whiny sense of entitlement in the quotes above, the schoolboy desperation for a bauble from headmaster, the aching desire to be made prefect or head boy – and the happy resort to betrayal and tattle tale in the school newspaper when these natural rulers don’t get their way.
Could the men quoted above sound any more like careerist politicians in a media and Westminster bubble, light years from the concerns of the people on whose behalf they dare claim to speak?
The question for the rest of us is simply how this purple phantasm and shadow of the Conservative Party was able to scare the Prime Minister of a democracy into calling a referendum he knew was insane.
Adam Barnett is staff writer for Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter @AdamBarnett13
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2 Responses to “Anti-elitist UKIP leaders squabble over peerage, power and media profile”
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Martyn Wood-Bevan
Poor Nigel, being hurt by mild-mannered Douglas Carswell. It may just be me but I think that Nigel is the more likely to want to hurt someone…