Making Plans For Nigel?

It was before social media, but in my time, I have been a shopping centre Santa. I am despondent at the present shortage. Whatever else there may have been, there was not that under Tony Blair, whose era is being restored from the resumption of Alan Milburn's privatisation of the NHS in his own direct pecuniary interest, to the appointment of Jonathan Powell as National Security Adviser, effectively adding the United Kingdom to the list of clients of the Tony Blair Institute, which already had staff seconded all over this Government, and which is funded by the US State Department and by Saudi Arabia.

Thankfully, there will be no such restoration elsewhere, and indeed it is difficult to see how much longer that American funding might last. There is to be nothing in the Second Trump Administration for Mike Pompeo, who plotted to have Julian Assange murdered in a shooting on a public street in London, and who promised an Israel Lobby event in New York that he would use American force to prevent Jeremy Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Perhaps Pompeo should send his CV to Keir Starmer, whether directly or, for greater effect, via the Tony Blair Institute?

It would be negligent not to make use of Nigel Farage's unparalleled access to Donald Trump. What if Trump were to say that he would deal with Britain only through Farage? That is the kind of thing that he does. Would His Majesty's Government then refuse to deal with the United States? For the exploding heads on the right wing of the Labour Party, that would almost be worth it. But not quite.

Britain and the United States trade well without a formal agreement, but none such would ever receive Congressional approval while Northern Ireland still existed, and in any case what worker or consumer on either side of the Atlantic would want a trade agreement negotiated by this Government? British exemption from the Trump Administration's tariffs would also be wildly unlikely. There is no "Special Relationship", a purely British conceit of which no American has ever heard. But if Farage stood an outside chance of securing such a provision, and if that itself were considered especially desirable, then what would be the Government's excuse for not letting him try?

As much as anything else, would it not love to see him fail? Rather than laying a wreath in Clacton today, Farage was standing on someone or other's balcony to look at the proceedings at the Cenotaph, like one of those jilted lovers who hide in the bushes at weddings. Richard Tice has been tweeting about the "Shameful stich up" whereby Farage had not been invited to lay a wreath there, despite knowing perfectly well what the rules were. Does the Green Party complain? Do the six MPs who were elected at Independents? And who did lay an MP's wreath in Clacton? Did anyone? Farage is also notorious for not holding surgeries, but the same is true of poor little pet lambs of the Labour intake, who have never been told anything except how clever they were, and who cannot cope with anything else. Away with the lot of them.