Editor: the first two paragraphs set the stage for this act of political shaming of Farage: for his lack of conformity to the received wisdom that Putin is the ‘author’ of the War in Ukraine. Its ‘as if’ 2014 and the machinations of Victoria Nuland, Jeffery Pyatt, NATO, The EU, the Azov Battalion, Right Sector and Svoboda in its later political iterations, has been subject to a convenient erasure. And the fact that Zanny Minton Beddoes is a Neo-Con. Her appearance on The Daily Show of Feb 12, 2024 cements her status on the Neo-Con spectrum! Also the fact that ‘Comedy’ of the Jon Stewart variety, is wedded to a political conformity within a very narrow range of respectable political chatter!
Zanny Minton Beddoes was also a member of Jeffrey Sachs team in 1993. Her animosity toward Russia is of a perennial variety. The Reader need only look:
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Shock Therapist
By Peter Passell
June 27, 1993
…
Sachs’s message of urgency is not universally accepted. Plenty of Western as well as Russian economists contend that a more gradual approach is not only possible but necessary. “Economic reform is a political process,” says Padma Desai at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. “First, you must build consensus.”
And even his sympathizers acknowledge that Sachs’s high profile and world-class impatience could generate a backlash in a nation still adjusting to the reality that it is no longer a superpower. “There’s a real dilemma here,” says Stanley Fischer, an international economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You have to make a lot of noise to get the attention of the West. But the more noise you make, the more you make it seem that the reform program is a Western program. And that could be the kiss of death.”
Still, Sachs’s brand of “shock therapy” has worked elsewhere. And there is good reason to believe that Russia’s future will turn on how well its leaders learn the catechism of change that he has worked so hard to promulgate.
…
Editor: Mr. Sachs has tried to re-invent himself in the political present, I’ll call it unconvincing! Japhy Wilson’s book provides a necessary history :
When The Reader considers the framing I offer, as revelatory to the public chastising of Farage, by a powerful news magazine: stepped in a self-proclaimed ‘Liberalism’,‘Free Markets’, and the other adaptations, tinctured in Hayekian faith in The Wisdom Of The Market , as political/moral singularity. Yet Reader look to the Economic Collapse of 2006-2008, that was the direct result of that ‘Liberalism’ and misplaced faith in ‘Free Market’ nostrums!
Mr. Farage crime is in not reiterating The Party Line on Putin. Farage is the leader of Reform UK since June 2024, his statement reveals that both New Labour and the Tories are dismal failures
Our country has so much potential, but both Labour and the Conservatives have broken promise after promise for the last 30 years.
You are worse off, both financially and culturally. Wages are stagnant, we have a housing crisis, our young people struggle to get on the property ladder, we have rising crime, energy bills are some of the highest in Europe, the NHS isn’t working, both legal and illegal immigration are at record levels and woke ideology has captured our public institutions and schools.
The Conservatives have failed and Labour will fail too. A vote for either is a vote for more incompetence, dishonesty and failure.
We are ruled by an out of touch political class who have turned their backs on our country.
Reform is the alternative.
Only Reform will stand up for British culture, identity and values. We will freeze immigration and stop the boats. Restore law and order. Repair our broken public services. Cut taxes to make work pay. End government waste. Slash energy bills. Unlock real economic growth.
Only Reform will take back control over our borders, our money and our laws. Only Reform will secure Britain’s future as a free, proud and rich nation.
On june 21st Nigel Farage acknowledged that the war in Ukraine was the fault of Vladimir Putin, but told the bbc that Russia’s president had been “provoked” by nato and the European Union. The leader of Reform uk, the populist party snapping at the heels of the governing Conservatives in pre-election polling and threatening to push them into third place, was echoing Mr Putin’s own arguments. The Russian leader is focused mostly on nato, which provides the hard security that makes the eu safe. He complains that the alliance’s expansion into central and eastern Europe after the cold war made Russia’s position intolerable. Some Western scholars concur.
Mr Farage and Mr Putin have the argument upside down. Countries join nato not to antagonise Russia, but because they are threatened by it. To understand how the arguments have shifted, you need to look back to the unstable politics of Europe in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
…
Editor: The Critical Reader might ask what % of the voting population does Farage represent? Politico provides an oblique answer:
Headline: The Nigel Farage effect is real
Sub-headline: Conservatives lose out while Farage’s Reform UK is projected to win 5 seats in latest in-depth model.
Nigel Farage’s entry into the U.K. election race seems to have finally put his Reform party on the map.
Pollster YouGov released its latest in-depth seat projections Wednesday as the July 4 vote looms. It’s the company’s first MRP model projection since Farage, now at the helm of Reform UK, announced he would be running in the election after all in early June.
Things have gone from bad to worse for the Conservatives, with the model projecting the party’s lowest seat total in its history. Coming in at just 108 of the total 650 up for grabs, the party is 257 seats down on its triumph under Boris Johnson in 2019.
Nigel Farage’s entry into the U.K. election race seems to have finally put his Reform party on the map.
Pollster YouGov released its latest in-depth seat projections Wednesday as the July 4 vote looms. It’s the company’s first MRP model projection since Farage, now at the helm of Reform UK, announced he would be running in the election after all in early June.
Things have gone from bad to worse for the Conservatives, with the model projecting the party’s lowest seat total in its history. Coming in at just 108 of the total 650 up for grabs, the party is 257 seats down on its triumph under Boris Johnson in 2019.
With at least 5 seats hanging in the balance, The Economist is making political war on Farage. The Reader might wonder, if any of the potential voters in this election will read this diatribe? Upper-Crust Tories and New Labour voters, might but Farage’s constancy is working-class, or those on the political margins!
I’ve presented what I think is relevant to the questions that animates this political polemic, without creating too much boredom?
Rootless cosmopolitan,down at heels intellectual;would be writer.
'Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.'
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary
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