Ken's Second Law of Politics Helps Nigel Farage

 

Ken's First Rule of Politics states that when the people have decided that they are not gonna vote for you, any old excuse will do. Take Neil Kinnock, who to this day believes that it was his speech at a rally in Sheffield which cost him the 1992 election.

It wasn't that speech that did for him. What did for him is that he was a lightweight tosser and the British people did not want a tosser leading the country. If Sheffield had not happened some other excuse would have been trotted out to provide a justification for the change of heart.

Millions of British people take no interest in politics, which is why in Islington North there are voters who still believe that Jeremy Corbyn is the Labour candidate. That is why Sir Keir Starmer keeps trotting out his my old man's a toolmaker line: politics is a minority sport that most people are indifferent about.

So, in the week or so before an election they watch a bit of TV coverage, read the above the fold part of a newspaper or have a brief natter in the pub, and they quickly concluded that Neil Kinnock was not for them.

Ken's Second Law of Politics is that if people have decided to vote for you, then you could be caught with a smoking gun in your hand and a dead body at your feet and they will still cast a ballot for you on polling day.

This rule applies perfectly to Nigel Farage and explains why all the mudslinging directed at him does not stick. First, the media went trawling through the backgrounds of the Reform candidates and thought they had struck gold with a few comments made by some of them years before. Instead of adopting a grovelling posture, Farage just shrugged and the stories died a death. Then, the media decided that Farage was a supporter of Vlad Putin and that could be used to destroy him. He isn't, he just has no interest in a nasty border conflict in the Great Slav Wasteland anymore than I do, and he was right to say that NATO expansion eastward provoked Russia's actions. Good fun though the sidetrack into foreign policy was, it did not influence the voters one way or the other as support for Reform continues to rise.

I do not know how many votes Reform will get, probably a minimum of 15% and a maximum of about 20%. That is more then enough to help do over the existing party system, give Reform a few MPs and ensure that politics as before is dead and buried.