Reply With QuoteNo real need to back then, was there. The whole thing was a done deal and what would ordinary people want to know or care about it anyway, so long as they could travel unhindered to Positano or Puerto Banús.Originally Posted by Burney
They aren't really, though. Before the whole referendum thing came along, you'd have struggled to find anyone in public life prepared to enthuse about the EU. What they actually don't like is change and not getting their way. It's a bit different to actually liking the EU.
No real need to back then, was there. The whole thing was a done deal and what would ordinary people want to know or care about it anyway, so long as they could travel unhindered to Positano or Puerto Banús.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
Oh dear. Have you all turned into sophisticated "liberal" Guardian readers overnight?
Not at all. However, Farage is yesterday's man. His usefulness ceased when we got the referendum. He is an obsolete hindrance now.
Nonsense. He talks more sense than practically anyone in UK politics. It is Britain's loss if they don't want to find an outlet for his talents.
His talent was for amiable, relatively unthreatening rabble-rousing while giving a vaguely acceptable face to UKIP that allowed it to garner enough support to threaten the tories into allowing a referendum. For that I give him credit and thanks.
However, polls consistently showed that for years as support for UKIP has gone up, support for leaving the EU across the country went down because a lot of people who didn't like the EU equally didn't want to be associated with UKIP. This is why Leave.EU getting the official designation in the referendum would have been a disaster and would almost certainly have meant it being lost. And now, as we leave the EU, he is a fairly toxic presence.
Last edited by Burney; 04-05-2017 at 09:58 AM.
Somebody's got to keep all that resentment out in the open, imo. As you suggest, for years, silence conveying approval and acceptance proved a useful tactic in the face of real, latent distrust and distaste.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
You really do sound like one of those leftie twitterati there. Farage says it as he sees it. In difficult times this is a very useful talent which should be encouraged. IF Carrington had not been as elegant in his turn of phrase as some of the non-toxic people you are thinking of, there would never have been a Falklands Wr.
We gain nothing by empty politesse which ends up sending the wrong signals. I would have Farage as our Brexit negotiator because frankly what we need is to finsih those talks as soon as they start and get on with the real work of negotiating trade deals with the rest of the world.
Oh, I think that genie's well and truly out of the bottle. Nobody feels shy talking about how much we hate the EU anymore. The days when we could be cowed by being called swivel-eyed loons and closet racists are long gone.
We're mainstream, baby.
There is a larger diplomatic picture, though, which involves not being seen as the sort of people who tear up long-standing international agreements without observing certain niceties. Everyone knows we're not going to achieve a meaningful trade deal with the EU in the foreseeable future (not least because they've never managed to agree one in their history), but we do have to do the little dance that means we aren't seen as being untrustworthy vandals. Farage would be wholly unsuited to that - not least because he isn't terribly bright.
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