So: seeing himself increasingly caught up in a thorny thicket of unwanted and very awkward controversy, Nigel Farage has Taken The Initiative. Well, an initiative.
Long-time readers will know that I place great store on proactive, creative initiative-taking. It's not as common a trait as you'd expect or hope, and that includes most of our "leaders", the vast majority of whom are governed strictly by whatever rulebook and conventions they were brought up with. It's a pretty poor show when Peter Mandelson is the prime example of a relentlessness initiative-taker - always aware of the very many levers that are within grasp, and using them imaginatively. Elon Musk is another.
In its rarity and political importance, initiative-taking shares aspects in common with the ability to strategise. Again, you'll know my views on this and the example I often cite, George "Boy Genius" Osborne. Clearly, the man is a natural strategiser - of the inveterate student-politics kind; and we could add Dominic Cummings and Morgan McSweeney to the short list of UK political thinkers - but that's not enough. What's needed, of course, is good strategy, and Osborne wasn't great at that (never ideal in a Chancellor of the Exchequer). Any old strategy taken from some well-thumbed playbook isn't always enough; and military history is replete with fatally bad strategisers.
And so it is with initiative: Farage needed a good one, and it's not at all clear this is it. What do we reckon?
ND
8 comments:
If there is anything in play that might be a risk for Farage, I think we can rely on the other party leaders to fuck it up. If not, I think we can rely on the other party leaders to fuck it up.
Farage apparently didn't stop to think the other main parties might not want to play his game, so he'll be facing off against Binface, Monster Raving Loonies, and any local indies.
It's going to be a circus.
He also appears to have a similar lack of wisdom as ex-Prince Andrew when it comes to accepting monies from people. Someone who laundered money for drugs gangs? Not a great look for anyone complaining about our policing and courts.
The interest in crypto and some of the council antics have cooled me on Reform, his True Believers still.excuse behaviour they'd skewer anyone else for though.
CH
Has there ever been a proper investigation of that plane crash that nearly killed him a few years ago? If not should he demand one?
Should I persuade some pals to stand as "Independent Labour" and "Independent Conservative"? That'd give people an incentive to turn out and vote against them.
Or even "Starmerite Labour". Heh, heh.
That would be funny - "I stand for the policies of Kier Starmer"
"What are they?"
"Err.. I dunno, apart from blindly supporting Israel"
I’m giving it a B-
Where it’s strong is in a reassertion of the voters at the centre of politics. Politicians often hide from the voters and it always looks both obvious and bad. Whatever else we can say, Farage is putting his fate in the hands of the people. No PR spin, no message grids, no taking heads on TV fan get in the way of that (fairly pure, honest) relationship between the electors and the elected.
It also short-circuits anything the parliamentary standards committee can do to try to defenestrate Farage procedurally like they succeeded in doing with Johnson. What if they force a recall petition? Making the voters vote again when they’d just (assuming here they did) elected Farage shows these sorts of attempts at back-room stitch-ups as the silly, contrived and self-serving mechanisms they are.
But while it is doing something — and something had to be done for Farage given the givens — it still doesn’t alter the fundamental misjudgment of accepting the gifts in the first place. It was grabby and shabby and totally avoidable.
and Burnhamite Labour and Corbynite Labour.
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