I watched the Question Time election special last night. Having previously given half hour slots to the leaders of Labour, the Tories, SNP and LibDems, Farage had demanded the same from the BBC. So they gave him what he wanted, and made him share the slot with Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Greens.
Ramsay went first. He was coherent, charming, and engaged with the audience. He tried, more than any other politician I have heard in this election, to answer the questions put to him. He dealt as well as could be hoped by his party with questions on their rogue candidates. The nuclear defence question was turned to his advantage. It was clear he had won the audience.
This was his biggest test, and he passed it. I thought Carla Denyer, his co-leader was the better of these two in the media, but Ramsay proved he could hold his own.
And then the audience were let loose on Farage, and they did not spare him. Almost every question accused him of racism. His dislike of migrants was called out time and again. He was made to look like the bigot he is. And when other issues were raised, it was scornfully. One questioner even compared him to Adrian Ramsay, saying the Green offered hope and Farage only offered fear. He had no clue how to respond. It was as if he had been laid bare in public view.
It was some of the best Friday night television I had watched for some time. I said so on Twitter. The reaction, and number of reads, suggests that people agreed.
So, where was Fiona Bruce? Sticking the boot in, as far as I could see. She's clearly not forgiving Farage for the damage he is doing to the Tories.
Rarely has a man looked so reviled on television.
It was good to see that so many have truly rumbled him.
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Well, well, so QT was a corker last night. The Greens did well and the odious Farage got a good kicking. I must admit we were too busy watching Glastonbury.
Anyway Richard, what you say about Ramsay validates our 2 postal votes for the Greens. Who haven’t got a hope of being elected here but frankly, what the ****. It’s not their or our fault that we have such a crap voting system. As Andrew Dickie pointed out in a magnificent post a couple of days ago, Blair’s cynical and cowardly refusal to reform the voting system in the fit new labour term was a disaster. How else did we get 14 disastrous years of the tories?
And unlike labour the Greens have PR, reversing Brexit and taking the climate emergency seriously as core policies.
Thanks
I went on to Glastonbury…but not long enough so there might be some catch up to do
The cheerfulness of Glasto is a much-needed contrast to the current awfulness, there’s no doubt about it.
I have already seen true believers attributing Farage’s reception to BBC woke lefty bias and claiming that members of the audience had been paid to ask hostile questions.
I am also seeing that
Apparently he was the absolute master too: a total triumph
A clear indicator of the fascism Richard has posted about today. Like the Trump fanatics who refuse to believe he tried to steal the election or has committed criminal offences, they insist Farage is a ‘victim’ or won when he obviously lost.
Like Farage himself who is trying to claim the Reform activist caught red-handed using racist abuse about Sunak (l feel sorry for Sunak for the first time ever!) is a C4 plant.
Agreed
Hi Richard,Not absolutely to do with this post but a question in regard to Farage. Evidently Farage is absolutely connected to the extreme economics of LizTruss / IEA / Tufton St and further the US Heritage Foundation / Turning Point and the like. Have you or anyone you know done an article on this. The links between Farage and Truss needs to be exposed.
There are many of these
I don’t need to do more
It’s axiomatic that when a fascist doesn’t get his or her way they publicly declare things were rigged against them. This reminds me of young children. I wonder why!
nigel farrago, eh?
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/farrago
I really enjoy your economic insights, but struggle with your political ones.
Your economic videos are actually highly informative and, as far as I can tell, factually verifiable whereas your political opinions are just that and are obviously skewed which I think harms your credibility with regard to what you do actually know.
Just sayin’.
My economics and politics are inseparable
I didn’t make the claim that economics and politics weren’t inseparable.
That, to me, is obvious.
I was pointing out that it’s a shame that you’re using it to push your own political agenda.
Bit more showing and a bit less telling that’s all.
Your excellent presentation of economics, I believe, speaks for itself and you’re more likely to find a wider audience – if indeed that is your aim – if you try and keep your personal politics out of it.
But you still don’t get it
The economics and politics are inseparable
I DO get it. Believe me.
What we’re so often led to believe are ‘economic’ decisions are, in fact, purely ‘political’ ones.
Many of those choices are, essentially, built upon a long propagated specious economic narrative that is widely believed (though false) and thus easily exploited.
The point I’m trying to make to you is that politics isn’t solely about economics.
The economics, to my mind, speaks for itself but politics is as much about hearts as it is minds and attempting to demonize those with whom you disagree is, I believe, counterproductive.
So what parts of my politics do you object to?
You have not said
Please be precise
Mr Harris,
I think you have bought the claim that politics can be abstracted from economics to the point that economic managerialism can function without the presence of any political assumptions this is false. It is a theory peddled largely by neoliberal ideologists; whose presuppositions are taken as a starting point for analysis. It begs the question. Economics, when first ‘professionalised’ as an academic discipline was titled ‘Political Economy’ in the universities. The sophistry of abandoning the first word was largely result of an attempt of twentieth century economists to deceive themselves, and everybody else, that in pursuing a narrow, mathmeticised economics (but, disastrously, only with the theory, and no usable experimental method); could match the preposterous claim that economics as the physics of the social sciences. It was hubris, but later used as the basis for an effective neoliberal strategy to eliminate the politics from economics (with built in neoliberal presuppositions), and reduce the application of economics in political debate to functional managerialism.
This has left economics as an ineffective, non-predictive, statistically inadequate (read Ziliak & McCloskey on the poor use of statistics) theoretical abstraction, with a wretched performance in forecasting (because their method provides no adequate basis for scitnific prediction), and probably the least effective of all academic disciplines.
Thanks
I’m simply trying to point out that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
I have shared your astute and well phrased economic observations with others, for example.
Right wing friends from whom my ostensibly left wing politics differs.
I think you’re providing a vital service. Letting ‘the world’ finally see behind a curtain that most either won’t get to see or who perhaps might refuse to look because it doesn’t suit their own agendas.
If you make your own motivation appear too self-serving and obvious then you’re going to automatically alienate those of a different current political persuasion who might otherwise be curious.
Their politics has likely been forged and ingrained by decades of this fallacious ‘harsh-but-fair’ neoliberal economic narrative remember, so they’re not going to let go of it THAT easily.
To quote Mark Twain – a bit of a fave of mine –
‘It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled’.
Remember not every person who might choose to vote Reform is necessarily a right wing racist bigot to their core any more than every Green voter is a soft and cuddly well meaning vegan SJW.
You’re trolling
Or gishing
Goodbye
To my way of thinking, economics cannot be a science in the strict sense of the word, although I have no objection to scientific methods being used by economists where appropriate.
There are scientists and philosophers of science who think we may never be able to understand completely how the world works at the quantum level. Nevertheless however confusing we may find the behaviour of an electron, say, to be, it has no hidden agenda and it does not take part in the scientific discussion of its behaviour in an attempt to realise that agenda. Moreover the scientists cannot for ever project his/her opinion of how an electron behave onto the particle. In the end he/she has to defer to its actual observed behaviour.
Economics does deal with entities that have hidden agendas and which, themselves take part in the economic debate. This means that any description of how an economy works must be, at least to some extent, subjective and must, at least to some extent, depend on how one thinks it ought to work. In other words, it is irreducibility political in nature.
Spot on
Mr Harris,
Here is the problem. Politics and economics interact at a fundamental level. Political decisions change the shape of people’s economic lives. That is a fact. The idea that politics and economics are wholly separate atoms suspended in a void, is simply false.
Very true
Farage is a Mini-me Trump. His approach is straight out of the Trump playbook. All the publicity – I mean ALL of it – will help his movement to grow.