Once as tragedy; once as Farage

UKIP's head honcho believes Cameron has called Parliament back today to take the vote on bombing Iraq (rather than yesterday or last month) to draw media attention away from the UKIP party conference - which opens today, appropriately enough in Doncaster Racecourse. 

Apparently 33 percent of the population regarded Farage as 'weird', which is some solace to Labour as only 31 percent thought Miliband 'weird'. Unfortunately for both Miliband and Cameron, Farage scores highest as the politician who 'comes across most like me' in the same poll. And that is one of Mr Farage's most important qualities. Despite being a rich banker with funds in a tax haven, who does TV adverts for Paddy Hill, Farage has that chameleon quality where many utterly disgusted or disassociated with Westminster politics in England can find in him their own reflection in his 'hale fellow, well met' persona and his amusement with mainstream politics and politicians. His amusement is really cynicism. His cheery bonhomie covers his contempt even hatred for the 'common man' as he would have it, and a deep, not to say furious commitment to complete the Thatcherite revolution. 

It is obvious why such a personality (just like London's 'cheery' Boris) would sound like chalk screeching on a blackboard to Scottish voters - especially those who voted yes in the recent referendum. Their withdrawal from Westminster has a positive, humanitarian and progressive project to define their political choices. Farage appears to them as he is, a rich man taking the piss. To dispossessed and long term ex Labour voters, and even the swathes of Labour voters in northern England and the sea-side towns who have continued up to now to turn out for Labour, a vote for Farage may in reality be an exercise in their own sense of worthlessness and alienation, but it will feel like it is they who are now taking the piss out of Westminster and all of the mainstream political leaders in the British establishment. 

This is Farage's access to elements of mass and class psychology today. He acts for many as the lightning rod for feelings of invisibility, of lack of representIon, of despair. His conference policies will mean little except in their ability to increase fear of foreigners. The tax policies for middle earners will make few inroads among public sector workers who have a real fight on their hands battling austerity. His opposition to today's decision by Parliament to bomb Iraq will not attract a single anti-war activist vote. 'England for the English; hurrah! Thank God we can now say it out loud! And Farage himself, dead weird he is, like me. He'll get right up their noses.' 

Labour has no answer to any of this. It endorses the second (more brutal) half of austerity. It wants British jobs for British workers. It fancies sending messages of death to the Middle East. And Miliband may be weird, but in the wrong way. What the Scottish referendum showed is that when leaders call the people together to fight the establishment, to really move, in action, to take them on for specific and concrete and life changing aims, the sky (way beyond UKIP's dismal dance in the gutter) really is the limit.