HOW about we crowd-fund a channel crossing for Nigel Farage, a one-way ticket to France in a leaky, dangerous dinghy lying low in the water and liable at any moment to tipping?
It would be a relief to be rid of him. The man’s a pestilent boil on the bum of British life.
I’ll broaden this out in a moment and step away from the shouty smirk on little legs (he’s five ft six and a bit, even shorter than me).
Before moving on, let’s just consider how Farage – sans Brexit Party, sans cushy rent-a-gob job at LBC – has taken to pretending he is a journalist ‘investigating’ the arrival of refugees on Twitter with ‘headlines’ boasting: “EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE OF BEACH LANDING BY MIGRANTS.”
Without leaving my desk in the study, I can exclusively reveal that what this means is Farage stands on the beach and points his camera. Then fires off a tweet-rant.
Look, journalism has much to put up with nowadays, jobs going all over the inky shop, papers cutting back, TV companies emptying newsrooms. The last thing this trade needs now is a right-wing agitator pretending to be a journalist.
Farage is not a journalist, but he should be investigated by real ones. Who’s paying for these films; who else is behind the belligerent one-man band other than Farage on one-note trumpet and monotonous drum?
A sad truth in all this is that Farage has 1.6 million followers on Twitter – far more than many newspapers – so he has an audience for his noisy barrage of toxic tweets.
When tweeting about refugees/migrants trying to cross the channel, Farage pretends that he alone is valiantly ‘reporting’ on this matter. This isn’t remotely true as the crossings are widely reported elsewhere.
But as he has proved before, Farage is skilled at muck-spraying an issue until proper politicians – you know, the ones we actually elect – follow his lead.
Home Secretary Priti Patel is reported to want to send in the navy to repel the migrants.
Last week she told MPs this would be permitted under international maritime law. Not so according to the Ministry of Defence source who told PA Media the idea was “completely potty”.
Barrister Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, described the plea to the navy as ‘hysterical’, ‘irresponsible’ and ‘unlawful’, adding that “no civilised country” could consider such action.
In a bizarre twist, Patel announced she has appointed Dan O’Mahoney as the UK’s Clandestine Channel Threat Commander. I can exclusively report today that soon she’ll be appointing an admiral to guard against the clandestine threat posed by mermaids.
Less satirically, although only just, Patel tweeted about taking back control of our borders – and said we needed the French to help us do that.
To which the French, possibly with a shrug, said: “Mais oui – but it’ll cost you £30m…”
There’s Brexit in a rotten, cracked nutshell: we are taking back control of our borders, but monsieur, I know we told you to piss off, but can you give us a hand?
Back to the channel where, thanks to the weather, an unusually high number of crossings have been attempted. Dangerous dinghy after dangerous dinghy contain people willing to risk their lives to smuggle themselves among us; women and children, pregnant women and children, men and women, people desperate enough to try anything to reach Britain.
People – not refugees, not migrants; people who see Britain as a fair-minded country of opportunity (and let’s pray it still is).
To those people I say, please come in. And ignore that man bellowing on the beach. He’s the worst of us. The rest of us aren’t that bad, or not most days.