15/04/2014
Quick out of the gate today is Farage,
defending himself against charges claimed to be levied by former senior UKIP officials. These involve pocketing cash paid by the European Parliament for office expenses, set against inflated costs of a building he was given, and occupies free of charge.
This was in
The Times earlier today, which ran as its front page lead story, "Farage faces investigation into 'missing' EU expenses", declaring that he faces an expenses investigation into almost £60,000 of "missing" European Union funds paid into his personal bank account.
Once again, we really don't want to know the details. But if it turns out that Farage has been lining his pockets with EU funds, this would not be a surprise. He wouldn't be the first UKIP MEP to have done so, and it is unlikely that he will be the last.
Furthermore, if Farage is now being investigated for this, it isn't the only ongoing investigation, and nor is he the only UKIP MEP being investigated. There are so many going on, as well as other criminal matters under investigation, that one assumes it is only a matter of time before the UKIP leader gets his collar felt.
What is interesting politically though is that
The Times felt confident enough to commit this story to its front-page lead, given the Farage propensity to employ the services of Carter Fuck and its clones, and the shadow of Leveson and looming government-inspired press controls. One assumes the paper would not have run the story unless it had been pretty confident about its sources.
However, while the source of the information is former office manager David Samuel-Camps, who worked for Farage until 2010, he now seems to have contradicted the paper's version of his claims, arguing that there is very little difference between his actual figures and those claimed by Farage.
Nevertheless, there is enough here to illustrate that, once again, someone close to Farage, formerly a loyal "fan", has turned against him in a very public way, being willing to talk to the newspaper in the first place. It happens to us all eventually, Samuel-Camps simply being one of a long and growing list of people who have seen the light. Sadly, there is no shortage of deluded replacements, each one thinking that, somehow, they are different.
This event nevertheless gives us an entertaining headline (do you think I should apply for a job as a real hack?), and also gives
The Times an
editorial opportunity. Under the heading, "Political Class" â with the text sent to me by a wellwisher â it tells us that, "Nigel Farage's appeal rests on him being the anti-politician in a time of political disillusion, but the truth is emerging".
Not least of that "truth" is the number of people lining up, ready and willing to dob him in, just waiting in the queue for the attention of senior plods who are working on career-change ideas for Mr Farage.
The Times, however, is simply using this current story as a platform to assert that the appeal of Nigel Farage is based on a trick. That trick, it says, is:
â¦to appear as the politician who is not a politician. Mr Farage's most common and most effective shtick is to parade himself as the representative of the ordinary person against the gilded establishment from which the political class draws its recruits. It is a fraudulent prospectus and the sleight of hand is starting to show.
Noting that "a former senior UKIP official has filed a formal complaint about Mr Farage's conduct to OLAF, the body which investigates European Union fraud", it then observes how UKIP has made a great deal of the mess that the three main political parties got into over their expenses.
Mr Farage's comment in the wake of Maria Miller's resignation was typical of his attitude, it recalls: "Yet again, this is the political class looking after its own and letting down the electorate".
Yet this is the same Mr Farage who established the Farage Family Educational Trust on the Isle of Man to allow him to mitigate his tax liability, and who is now himself being accused of enjoying the fruits of a taxpayer-funded expenses system.
Cutting to the chase, the paper's message is that TGL's actions are not becoming of a politician who has styled himself as the anti-politics candidate, somehow above and beyond the allegedly low standards of the political class. Effectively, he is
as we have been saying, just like the rest.
But, if UKIP's supporters will be quick to dismiss this as "smears" â and doubtless they have some justification - the
Independent is recording a
ComRes poll that has 51 percent of voters not believing that the Nigel Farage party offers a "realistic political vision", while 54 percent say they are not attracted by UKIP's "plain-speaking style".
In a way, this is possibly indicative of greater hurdles facing UKIP than is
The Times, although the sum of these stories, and other recent attack stories, also suggests that UKIP is being deliberately targeted. But then, that is only to be expected, although
going to war against
The Times is probably
not a good idea for a political party.
That, in itself, is no big deal. Any grown-up political party should expect some hostile publicity, and such attack pieces may simply indicate that the party is coming of age. On the other hand, the "one trick pony" aspect of the party makes it vulnerable. The attacks are mainly focused on the leader and damage to Farage is most likely to have a disproportionate effect on the party as a whole.
In this event, as long as there are disgruntled "fans", ferocious or otherwise, ready to come out of the woodwork, there will always be difficulty in controlling the agenda.
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