I HAVE no idea what caused my heart attack, although a block of cheddar cheese has been called to the witness stand. It is also possible that Nigel Farage might share the blame.

A friend whose heart misfired long before mine offered an arterial tip. Avoid getting worked up about politics, he said.

Sage words, but not easy to follow when you’ve been agitating about politics for decades. And while it may be silly to waste time despising Farage, it’s an old habit.

Like a nasty virus, that man goes away and comes back just when you are feeling better. Like a bad case of indigestion, he lurks in the British stomach, resistant to all political antacid, throbbing like an ulcer.

Like a buzzing, biting mosquito with pin-striped legs…

This is your heart speaking. That’s enough tasteless metaphors about one unpleasant man… just try to think about something healthy instead…

Yes, but.

As you and my heart both know, Farage this week announced that he is to fight the general election. The one he didn’t have time for five minutes ago as he was planning to be in the US crawling to Donald Trump before that election.

Now he has taken over Reform UK, pushing aside fellow rich posho Richard Tice, and has imposed himself as the candidate for Clacton, a seat he thinks will be a push-over.

Despite worrying for my heart, I feel obliged to point out yet again that Farage is a rich man pretending to know what’s best for the common man or woman, when really he couldn’t care less about anything common.

He heads a political party that isn’t a political party at all, but a company/shit-stirring pressure group. Like his hero Trump, he knows how to tap into people’s dissatisfaction but offers no solutions, just endless, self-serving aggravation (hence this is the “Immigration Election”, according to his party’s objectionable slogan).

In a post on X/Twitter, Reform UK says: “Hard-working people in Clacton and across the UK have been ignored for far too long… They have been betrayed by the political establishment.”

It adds that Nigel Farage “will put them back on the map”.

No, he won’t. He is only interested in putting himself on the map.

Anyway, perhaps his arrogant presumption will be proved wrong.

Today he was on the Essex coast spouting on that young people know nothing about D-Day. In a great clip from Novara Media on X/Twitter, one hard-working voter from Clacton puts him right: “Nigel Farage is just an idiot” – an opinion I am sure we can all get behind.

A hard-working woman whose daughter is studying history at school points out that her girl seems to do nothing but learn about the Second World War.

As is so often the case, the few military men and women who remain from that war speak with quiet regret and reverence, if they speak at all. While right-wing grifters who weren’t even born then never shut up about the war.

In another Novara clip, a lively hard-working woman says: “Nigel Farage is a total snake, he just wants a seat in power, and he has nothing to do with Clacton.”

Good people of Clacton, you know what to do.

Farage has stood for election to the House of Commons seven times and failed on every occasion. Let’s wish him all the best for making it eight.

As for Rishi Sunak’s repeated lies about Labour’s tax plans in that ITV ‘debate’ the other night, Sir Keir Starmer’s reluctance to stick up for himself was puzzling.

Afterwards Labour revealed it had a letter from Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler saying that the Conservative Party had been told not to quote the figures Sunak used. Gotcha (sort of).

From the clips I saw, Sunak was in the wrong, Starmer seemed more empathetic and genuine, but it was all a bit tedious, wasn’t it?

 

STICKING to a heart theme, I have been signed off by the cardiac nurses. And graduated with sweaty honours from the six-week cardiac rehab course in the gym at York Hospital.

I may rattle with more pills than a carrier bag from Boots, but I am playing badminton and squash again, exactly to the low standard achieved before.

And the cardiac physio says running is now OK, so long as I follow the Couch to 5K plan. A step backwards for someone who once ran half-marathons, but sensible advice. Think I’ll give it a go.