So says the Guardian's correpondent Z Williams. I've missed her. I think that she has finally recovered from all the humiliation -- Brexit, Trump, Boris, Corbyn -- and has once more found a worthy target, in good old reliable N Farage.I think the liberal press has missed him so he is being reintroduced as a useful scapegoat for things like opposing illegal immigration and for flirting with a new party -- Reform.
Williams might have realized she needs a personal target for her distancing wrath and contempt. So the first step is to reverse the old Guradin view of Farage as just a total prat and loser who can now safely be ignored:
There's no point railing against Farage. You have to present an alternative
A mixture of reason and scorn didn’t defeat the Brexit party, and it won’t with Reform UK either
Williams first met him when he was that essential media standby, a harmless dissenter, a token of "balance"
[He] was considered clubbable, easy on the ear, a reliable and likable controversialist, and maintained a media presence on that basis.
If only he had stayed that way! However, she, like everyone else in her circle underestimated him and
how far he would go to harness any underlying rage he perceived, and how well-grounded his perception was.
How to explain his prominence? First this:
So even though there is no obvious logical connection between opposing Brussels and rejecting lockdown to quell a virus – the aim of his new Reform UK party – there is an emotional one.
Then, immediately below, this:
It was remarked by allies of Farage last month that he had identified a section of 2019 Conservative voters, perhaps even a third of them, who were already dissatisfied on three counts. These are described by Patrick O’Flynn in the Spectator as “an apparent failure to stand up for British history and culture; opposition among libertarian-inclined people to lockdown measures and the continuing chaotic immigration system”.
A hint of actual interests in there, then as well as just the emotional? Of course, these views can only ever be based on emotion for Gardinaistas. Even so, there are hints of a class closure process, but it is rapidly qualified to fit the usual Graun worldview. A "mixture of reason and scorn" is to follow:
The more they are held in contempt by reasonable opinion, the more legitimate their rage against the elites. It’s a jiu-jitsu move which, again, makes total emotional sense.
It makes good political sense too, and Williams has helped out again by lecturing us. But there are limits, for goodness sake, and even the BBC has let her down:
cruelty, once it finds its political expression, cannot be fought on its own terms. If you get to the point where a five-year-old and an eight-year-old can drown in the English Channel, and a vigilante vowing to patrol the seas for migrants – for clarity: not to help them, but to hinder – is represented on BBC news as a voice of salt-of-the-earth Brits, the infinite preciousness of every human life is not going to cut it in this debate.
I love all that infinite preciousness hypocrisy. Five and eight year olds can die on a daily basis elsewhere, but only those that get on the news and help with our cultural politics are infinitely precious. what a pity there are no photos of small corpses or weeping relatives. No doubt the people smugglers are motivated entirely by a similar lofty morality, and have never shown any cruelty.
There is something other than sentimental moralising to finish:
The consequence of underestimating Nigel Farage originally has been a mad compensatory scramble to understand him and his movement, recognise the grievance, represent its concerns, pay due respect to its authenticity...It is in the nature of reasonable, adult discourse to seek common ground and build on it. But consensus is not what the Farage spirit seeks. As soon as you’ve found it, he’ll be haring off to the next demand, that all EU citizens be sent home, or that gunboats line the Channel, or whatever fresh hell it might be.
We saw lots of that reasonable adult discourse in the Graun in recent years of course. Some of it is recorded in this blog. We have another example here in Williams' calm rational discussion of illegal immigration and the lockdown, ended with a silly sneering sentence,neither calm nor rational.
The job of vanquishing Farage, this time, is neither in hand-wringing about his callousness [as she has just done], nor in celebrating [how about justifying?] a lockdown that nobody is looking forward to, but in building a plan for what comes next... The Conservatives, as a party of vision or direction, are a spent force [that's handy, given their Parliamentary majority] they will be buffeted by whichever wind is the strongest.
We have to vanquish Farage personally. Let's explore his character flaws again! Let's attribute all sorts of motives and plans to him! If only we could find somone to allege he had molested them or was indiscreet in a tweet!
Meanwhile, the only alternative is -- Keir Starmer? Binning Corbyn was necessary after all? Let's get the right sort of chap this time. The new petite bourgeoisie (journo faction) are back doing what they love: building, organizing (serving on committees), consolidating their worldviews (recycling the old truths), and claiming a privilege in doing so.
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