A lot of people had great hope for Blair. Then many were disappointed in him.
Maybe many will
feel the same about racist Farage. I know you seem to be saying he’s not. Just a bit xenophobic. Fine if that is how you see it.
How will I feel? Probably a bit like June 2016. Will I bang on about it? Unlikely as I haven’t really done that anyway. Just an occasional head above the parapet moment on here.
I’ve had the same views about Farage for a long time. He is a charlatan who pretends he is like the man in the pub when he seems to be bank rolled by a bloke whose views and business dealings aren’t that amazing.
See, maybe I am a simple man and I don’t understand the nuances, but I have no problem with voting for Farage’s party for the European Elections.
For me it is a protest vote at the way our politicians have handled Brexit and also a protest vote at the EU and their flavour of democracy and the fact that MEPs have no real power and have no need of policies!!
Maybe I am validating his thinking but I know for sure that when it comes to voting for our Government I will steer well clear of the Brexit party because they are a one trick party!
Like I said earlier in the thread people are conflating the EU elections with normal council/general elections. The 2 things are wildly different.
It is so difficult these days. Does one continue to be a decent person, walking the straight line, or should we all follow the lead of the way society is going and just become selfish opportunists like Farage etc.
My concern remains in that a vote for this bigot is in effect empowering those who hang their racist shit on his coat tails. It says to the racists that ‘35-40’% of the voters ‘agree’ with them … its how this shit starts. And how anyone can not see Farage true colours when he generates a poster of a brown faces and ‘breaking point’ is beyond me. He may be married to a foreign lady, but she is not brown or black, but very white and teutonic…
Farage is a manipulative, evil shit and and I simply cant see how anyone can justify voting for him on the grounds of protest - its why we are in this mess… many folks ‘protesting’ against austerity and blaming the EU, much to the joy of the very rich elite they were protesting against… He is now playing on this ‘protest’ position, as he knows he can attract those dissatisfied with Mays handling of Brexit… but his real aim to be triumphant about his own position… He wants a position that he believes will give him a mandate to insert himself into the brexit process (he is on record as saying as so).
So there are two reasons why I could never justify a vote for Farage:
He is a bigot, xenophobe and in my opinion a racist based on his actions
Its what he wants to empower him and enable input into teh Brexit process for his own gain…
This country has a proud tradition of throwing food at politicians on the stump, it’s been going on for 50 years at least. Back in the day those on the receiving end accepted it as part of the job, or as in the case of John Prescott entering into the spirit of things, showing his admirable British working class streetwise credentials and getting stuck in. Unlike the snowflake Farage, whining about ‘an affront to democracy’, calling for arrests and other such nonsense. The current crop are a bunch of pussies.
I have to say the picture of Mandelson on the receiving end of some custard is uplifting to the spirit.
If the Tories were expecting a thrashing on Thursday, they can expect even more now. Listening to Radio4 right now. There are a lot of upset Tory MPs. The result is not going to be a surprise.
Here’s a good way to look at it(and decide spoiling is the better option).
Stolen from another btl commentator somewhere else.
Latest YouGov poll (data collected 8-17 May) for Thursday’s EU election in GB:
Brexit Party 34%
LibDem 17%
Lab 15%
Green 11%
Con 9%
Change UK 4%
UKIP 3%
SNP 3%
Plaid 1%
which gives
openly far right 37% (Brexit Party + UKIP)
centrist 21% (LibDems + Change UK)
left 15% (Labour)
traditional right 9% (Tories)
“beyond left and right” far right 11% (Greens)
regional nationalism 4% (SNP + Plaid)
or, amalgamating further:
RIGHT, FAR RIGHT, NATIONALIST 61%
CENTRIST 21%
LEFT 15%
Any vote for Farage is a vote for the far right and anyone that thinks Thursdays vote isn’t relevant to this country, i ask one question. See if you can guess who’s the bookies favourite to win the Hartlepool by election in a couple of weeks?
This vote will have far more implications for the future than people are admitting to themselves, so i have to applaud the game the far right and their Corporation of London(and various international crooks) backers have played.
May’s got to be in on it as well. She’s boosted their vote share with one sentence. No one’s that thick surely?
Also, I’ve heard it all before, and the Remain side of the argument has done it all before.
A vote for the UKIP of today is definitely a vote for the far right. A vote for the Brexit Party in an otherwise pointless European Election is a statement of dissatisfaction in the failure of the major parties to deliver the result.
May’s intervention today, like pretty much everything else going on at the moment, seems purpose built to bolster Brexit Party support.
Farage has refused to rule out joining the alliance of far right part parties in the European parliament. Matteo Salvini’s extreme - right League Party, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly National Front), the anti Islam Danish Peoples Party and Germany’s AfD party, with more expected to follow. Just so that anyone thinking of voting for Farage’s party is under no illusion what they will be voting for.
Spoiling is the same as not voting, a wasted vote that achieves nothing except maintaining the status quo as the established parties will get in.
If you want to register your dissatisfaction the best way is to get an anti-EU party in, IMHO of course.
Sometimes your vagueness can be slightly off-putting I’ve done a search and I can’t see any upcoming by-elections in the Hartlepool area soon. At I guess I would suggest that the Brexit party candidate is favourite to win
And again, what power do these parties actually hold in the European Parliament? They don’t decide policy, they don’t define the direction the EU is going, they simply rubber-stamp the Council’s ideas.
This is the ultimate opportunity for a protest vote because whoever we send over their isn’t going to make much of a difference to us in the grand scheme of things
I use the postal vote system and I have voted for The Brexit party, not because I am far right (the Ayatollah would contend that I am never right), not because I like the man, but because I can hopefully create a situation that gets shot of May.
The very worst case is that if those wankers keep us in the EU, I can sit and laugh that I have inflicted Farage on the EU for another 4 years
And how much power will these politicians have in the toothless European Parliament?
What policies will they propose?
The only power MEPs have is rubberstamping or rejecting EU Commission policy. The worst they can do is grind the business of the European Parliament to a halt, and to achieve that, they’ll need to poll the kind of numbers that’d put the very existence of the EU into question.
OK, I understand your point the spoiled ballots are counted but they are not counted towards the selection of candidates.
For example in the Example ward, with 6 MEP slots, there are 40% spoiled papers, 40% for Party A and 20% for Party B. In these Euro elections Party A still gets to fill 2/3 of the available slots (4 MEPs) and Party B 1/3 (2 MEPs).
So basically the same as not voting
If people protest voted then in the above example Anti-EU get 40% of the vote and can fill 2/5 of the available slots (2.4 MEPs ), Party A 2.4 MEPs and Party B 1.2 MEPs (I gess the figures get rounded some how but that’s not important here)
I’ve done a search and I can’t see any upcoming by-elections in the Hartlepool area soon. At I guess I would suggest that the Brexit party candidate is favourite to win 
), Party A 2.4 MEPs and Party B 1.2 MEPs (I gess the figures get rounded some how but that’s not important here)