Even in Lib Dem Bournemouth, Farage makes the weather
Two important speeches took place yesterday, attracting, I suspect, very different sized audiences.
At the United Nations in New York, US President Donald Trump disregarded the 15 minute slot he’d been allocated to embark on a rambling, contentious, provocative and interesting speech to the assembled nations.
Meanwhile, in Bournemouth, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, attempted an ambitious round of political gymnastics to try and lure former Tory and Labour voters to join his crusade against what he sees as the UK’s very own Donald Trump, Nigel Farage.
Let’s take the US President first, and consider his remarks in New York.
Predictably, the BBC was appalled by his speech. Their liveblog coverage reported that delegates “gasped” when the President criticised the consensus on climate change while others were left “squirming in their seats” when he criticised the UN itself. As the BBC paraphrased, Trump seems to view the UN as “an outdated relic.” Well, isn’t it? Trump warned European leaders that “open borders” risked destroying their countries while he maintained that recognising Palestine as a state “rewards terrorism.” Well, doesn’t it?
With his teleprompter broken, Trump shot from the hip, at one point accusing Sadiq Khan of bringing Sharia law to London. This was an absurd and unfounded attack on the Mayor of London. But it was the world according to Trump; contradictory, self-aggrandising, at times ludicrous yet peppered with lucid and valid observations.
In sleepy Bournemouth, meanwhile, Ed Davey was warning that Nigel Farage would be “Britain’s Trump” – at one point, the Lib Dem leader even claimed that Reform would bring in US-style gun laws, risking US-style school shootings. This particular claim is up there with Trump’s suggestion that Khan is presiding over Sharia law in London, but the Lib Dems don’t often get the full attention of the media (hence their leader’s ridiculous visual stunts) so perhaps making things up was deemed worthwhile in pursuit of airtime.
Much more effective was Davey’s enthusiasm for a Britain of “Male Voice Choirs, county shows, school fairs, fish and chips, village greens and cricket pavilions.” That’s certainly the kind of canvas-painting that disaffected Tories would like to see more of.
And yet somehow Trump’s maximalist rhetoric and Davey’s laboured oratory both served – indirectly and directly – to point voters at Nigel Farage, or to at least remind those paying attention that the Reform leader is currently making the weather in British politics.