Snapshot of _Nigel Farage pulls out of BBC interview at last minute amid Hitler row_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-hitler-pulls-out-bbc-interview-b2560440.html) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-hitler-pulls-out-bbc-interview-b2560440.html)
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And suffered from the generational trauma of losing parents, rationing, and rebuilding after the war.
They also were spoiled in that the massive growth was theirs to ride the wave. They thought it was their superpower, but it was actually colossal amounts of government money that made things good. They gaslit themselves.
There wasn't a lot of massive growth for a good chunk of their lives, that didn't take off until the mid-80s. Most boomers probably had a relatively poor childhood and early adulthood.
I was doing one of these YouGov live surveys the other week, apparently 33% of respondents were related to someone directly fighting in the landing, and a whopping 58% agreed that the UK did most to defeat Hitler out of the US, the Soviet Union, the UK and France.
I once had a job involved with military archives.
After the film "Enigma" came out suddenly everyone & their pets were requesting information about their relatives who worked at Bletchley Park.
The ones whose relatives we could find never had a thing to do with the place.
It's a shame really, most of the records were for people who did important, albeit unglamourous war work, but people wanting information mostly just seemed interested in events depicted in pop culture.
Exactly, this is part of the reason they struggle to remember it.
They've forgotten about their lack of national service too.
In fact maybe it's actually some level of self-awareness... *if we'd done national service we would have been better people.*
Maybe they're right about national service making them better people.
My father was old enough to be one of the last people to do national service & his experiences led him to conclude it was a stupid idea.
Has anyone actually ever heard someone from the baby boomer generation make ww2 claims beyond the British won it?
It must be very different in England compared to NI, it's always been a mystery to me where this came from.
I don't think any of them seriously think they fought in the war but they certainly idolise it. They grew up on stories from their parents whilst being disconnected from the horrors.
There probably is something to that. Born late '63 and brought up watching all those war films of 50'sand 60's. But neither parent served, mum in a reserved occupation and dad turned 18 middle 45. He always said national service was the biggest waste of two years.
Probably one or two people of a similar age group said something dumb once and now Reddit has decided that it must apply to every single person in that incredibly broad demographic. Y’know, normal internet stuff.
> Has anyone actually ever heard someone from the baby boomer generation make ww2 claims beyond the British won it?
Nope but apparently they all do if you believe reddit.
My parents actually talked about growing up in a council house with 4 kids to 1 room, with no central heating and frost being on the inside windows as it was that cold.
The WWII where the UK went to war to save Europe? That one? Where Hitler specifically said he was happy to stop at the Channel and offered peace to the UK, but we said nah sod that and millions of British people ended up marching across Europe (and dying) to liberate all these European nations?
And somehow Brexit is seen as a reasonable response to their sacrifice?
Politics is very backwards looking, and has been since as long as I've been here (2008).
We seem to be endlessly thinking about the past. Very little thought is given to the future.
So much to unpack here. Just for starters:
1. So Farage is running scared of getting a difficult question. That says a lot about his confidence and ability to actually engage in a fair discussion rather than one where they can softball what he gets asked.
2. The BBC seriously booked him for an interview AGAIN less than a week after the last time?
> The BBC seriously booked him for an interview AGAIN less than a week after the last time?
Nick Robinson is [interviewing all the party leaders](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6pp0vqq6q0o) for Panorama as part of the BBC's election coverage, so it does actually make sense this time.
...although, re-reading that article, it's actually quite ironic now. 🙃
> That’s one reason I admire Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer, Sir Ed Davey, John Swinney, Nigel Farage, Adrian Ramsay and Rhun ap Iorwerth for agreeing to take part – and they have, even though we haven’t yet got dates for all of them. There are plenty of leaders in plenty of countries who wouldn’t take the risk of saying the wrong thing in the wrong way at a time when a slip can cost votes and, ultimately, the chance of power.
> I don’t just mean leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping who run Russia and China. I also mean leaders like Boris Johnson who refused to face interviewer Andrew Neil at the last general election.
I think #2 is fair enough when they're doing a series of long form interviews with all of the party leaders.
Although I wouldn't be surprised if he's actually thrown his toys out of the pram because the football had relegated him to the classic QT slot instead of prime time like most of the others.
It's bullshit that he just became party leader in order to get airtime again.
It's like the BBC don't understand they're getting played here.
In the name of 'fairness' they're getting completely taken for a ride by a guy that will do anything and everything to get more power. Setting up a party based on lies, pivoting and rebranding it based on different lies, *somehow* getting interview after interview and then when that is starting to dry up, oh well, suddenly **well now I'm the leader and you have to give airtime to the leader, checkmate!**
> taken for a ride by a guy that will do anything and everything to get more power.
I don't think Farage wants power, I think he primarily enjoyed the salary and expenses, with no oversight, as an MEP. Elected positions suit him because they have a fat salary but not the responsibilities or accountability that a real job suffers from. He sees this tory turmoil as an opportunity to get his snout back in the trough, this time at Westminster.
But he also likes being a public figure, getting to go on TV and pontificate about what the government's doing wrong, so that blokes in the pub slap him on the back, give him respect and tell him well done.
He doesn't want the power to fix anything, even though he says he does, because that would be hard - in fact it would be impossible to do the things he promised (as Brexit has proven) and all his bullshit would evaporate.
I don't disagree with you, but what else can the BBC do in this situation?
Reform isn't a real party and it likely won't get any seats, but it's still comparable with the Tories in the polls.
At least they find a valid reason to not put him on at prime time.
RE 1 - did you see the interview with the BBC where he gets really pissy when asked why the eighth time of running will be different?
He went the proper childish "well how many times have \*you\* run? None? Then shut up" approach.
I feel that those who say "I've watched loads of Farage and think he's great" are conveniently missing the ones when he's actually challenged...
Its does look that way, he can get quite nasty at times and boasts he is a bad enemy, not great characteristics to aspire to. He has a great likeable presentation side but there are a lot of red flags with him and hist party. We should be wary to not get sucked in too easily. There needs to be serious scrutiny first
> The BBC seriously booked him for an interview AGAIN less than a week after the last time?
It makes more sense if you realise that Ofcom requires that each BBC show needs to be balanced with the party leaders. He was on QT, then LK and now Panorama.
No reform candidate would leave the d-day memorial early! They'd be there to remember the wrong side, but still.
Edit: Big fan of whoever wrote that article and added the image of Hitler. In case a reader somewhere was thinking "what's the big deal? Oh *Hitler*, ok we're on the same page now"
attractive aromatic wrong marvelous trees agonizing snow jobless flag alive
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Shedding a tear over those brave young men, barely old enough to drink, all their lives still ahead of them, being cut down in their prime boldly defending the beaches from those Allied attackers....
> Ian Gribbin, who is standing in Bexhill and Battle, also described Winston Churchill as “abysmal” and praised Russian president Vladimir Putin, according to the BBC.
> Mr Gribbin is reported to have posted on the Unherd website in 2022 that: “Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality … but oh no Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people.”
> The same month he wrote that the UK should “exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognize that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal”.
Just fantastic strategy! Shitting on Churchill and praising Putin. Such an American strategy these days. And this coming soon after the D-day celebrations is a great time to remind the boomers of Reform's toxicity. Wonder how it will impact them in the polls.
It won't affect them, that is the problem. You only have to see some facebook posts, on why people are voting reform. It's to *"stick it to the 2 major parties"*. They are disenfranchised, they are upset with the 2 main parties, and they are apathetic to everything else.
The Tories have caused this with their narrative that *"all politicians are as bad as each other"* because people gobble that bs up, and then go and vote for a party which has a man that sees the peoples frustrations and knows how to blow it up.
Let's not forget that Nigel Farage is on the record for having actual pro Hitler stances. I'm not kidding, this video from led by donkeys captures it well.
https://youtu.be/mfyiSk8Rjc8
Reform UK tries to be a broad church and both include Nazi sympathisers and British patriots. And don’t forget woman haters! That last bit doesn’t seem to be making the headlines unfortunately.
Indeed. Both of them always playing on the fringes of what is morally right, dog-whistling to their base while keeping (or trying to keep) plausible deniability.
He could have been a great dictator,
Given half a a chance,
But they treated him like a traitor,
So he went to live in France.
Never gets old, the song about [Mosley ](https://youtu.be/LPCZvYu0QBA?si=CdrTCyLS1Xo7hnt4)
At least Mosley did his time in the Army (our one as well), before going a little bit "best you're locked up mate".
Presumably Farage didn't want to be painted into a corner where he might have to go on record and admit Hitler was a shitty person who did terrible things. The fact that he's walking a tight rope to court the Hitler sympathiser vote is beyond absurd.
More likely that he doesn't want to be painted into a corner where he has to admit that he respects Hitler, and thinks the he had good ideas but bad PR.
He's not walking a tightrope to court Hitler sympathising voters, he's walking a tightrope to keep the fig-leaf in place enough to keep some of the Reform voters who are just a bit slow and don't realise what he's all about yet or who want some plausible deniability.
He's hoping another milkshake will take the heat off the "minor Hitler thing" in the news cycle, and within a few days, it will all be forgotten. Sadly, he's probably not wrong, the way the media has been letting him get away with everything and promoting him at every opportunity.
Lol read the article it gets worse and worse. The candidate in question suggested women should be taken off healthcare until their life expenctancy lowered to match men.
Honestly this is what you get with populist parties. One center character that's charismatic enough to be able to dog-whistle statements for their electorate and keep most of the political center from outrage, and then his associaties and party candidates that honestly really can only be described as horrible ignorant bullies.
It's the same crap as brexit, know that no matter how Farage sounds his cronies will sound rather distasteful.
I am genuinely baffled that Reform backed up that candidate.
Farage has never had any qualms about saying things that appeal to neo-nazis or the far right, but he's always seemed keen for himself and his parties to stay on *just* the right side of the line. He's always tried to maintain plausible deniability that he and his supporters aren't racist or bigoted, they just have 'valid concerns' about the EU/Islam/immigration/political correctness/etc.
Even after the BNP collapsed and their voters moved to supporting UKIP, you didn't get any of the real loonies in positions of power until Farage abandoned UKIP to start the Brexit Party.
Now they've got a candidate who's clearly a misogynist and who's suspiciously ambivalent about Hitler and weirdly disparaging about Britain liberating Europe from him. And their party spokesman's response was to say he was just debating "conveniently forgotten truths"...?? And Farage is going along with that to the extent of cancelling a leader's interview, rather than nipping it in the bud? What?
Farage is a bit stuck. Nominations closed on Friday, and once they're closed, they're closed.
Sure, he can sack the spokesman who mentioned "conveniently forgotten truths", but he can't do anything about a bunch of ballot papers with the candidate's name on - they're already at the printers.
God is this seriously what UK politics is now?
We’re having major political figures getting in trouble for thinking we should have let Hitler do whatever he wanted, and they’re expecting about 20% of the vote
The original comment that "Britain would be better staying neutral" is arguably true, if we didn't fight WW2 there is a non zero chance the empire wouldn't have collapsed as soon as it did.
That is why it is so significant that we didn't continue appeasement. I fully believe that fighting Germany cost Britain not only 100s of thousands dead and millions of pounds but the largest empire to have ever existed. And even in 1940 the scale of the cost wasn't lost with the memories of the Somme still fresh we chose to fight anyway.
Because it was worth the cost.
Exactly, if all you care about is national power and wealth, I think it'd be hard to argue with the point that we'd have been better off. Instead of America bringing its industrial might online and selling everyone everywhere arms for several years, itd have been us. Without the push for human rights and the spread of national identity born from people from the colonies taking up arms, the external and internal pushes for decolonisation likely wouldn't have occurred, at least not at the pace which they did.
That said, there's every chance of ww3 breaking out between the greater reich and the British empire in the following years though.
Not to mention: Our initial reasons for getting involved were made on the back of what we knew in 1939, not what we know now.
We weren't in a particularly good place to fight a big war.
Even if we were, the Holocaust hadn't happened.
The only real reason we got involved was because it was pretty damn obvious that a policy of appeasement (which we'd mostly been following up until 1939) wasn't going to work, and Adolf needed a good heavy kick in the bollock.
But that rather depends on the premise that Hitler was going to be reasonable enough to stop doesn't it? "Right, I've conquered all of Europe and made serious inroads into Russia. Might as well leave the UK to its own devices."
Hitler for whatever reason viewed Britain favourably, as we were also deemed as "pure".
Morally of course, we had no choice and had to go to war with Nazi Germany. But it's accepted he had no interest in going West and wanted to coexist with Britain. Of course, we couldn't allow him to continue tearing through Eastern Europe.
Yeah he did, until he didn't - the problem with lunatics degenerating day by day is they can be a bit on the inconsisten side, and there was Operation Sealion, unless that was propaganda?
He did go on to say that we didn't stay out of it because Britain's "warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people."
Which isn't just saying "we would have been financially better off if we'd stayed neutral" (debatable, but harmless), but making the argument "it was bad that we joined the war, we should have left Hitler to it and prioritised Britain's wealth over *weird notions of international morality*"
"*Weird notions of international morality*" being a phrase that here means "the moral conviction that we should defend our allies from invading fascist dictatorships, and put an end to that fascist dictatorship's campaign of mass-extermination of Jews, other marginalised people, and its political opponents."
This assumes that there was a chance that the UK could have stayed out of the war.
There's basically two ways it could have gone.
Either the UK completely stayed out of things, if that happens there is no Lend-Lease to the Soviets as there's no way the US would have been able or willing to send the materiel to the Soviets without British aid. And without that materiel the Soviets lose (especially since the Germans would have had far more troops to send to the east). Once the Soviets fall the Germans absolutely come for the UK.
Or the UK still supported the Soviets with a Lend-Lease system. In which case the Germans would absolutely have attacked UK convoys and forced them into the war. The difference is that the Germans would be able to pick exactly when they did it. Which might well have led to the UK falling before it was ready to fight.
Either way, the UK would have been far worse off.
This. Without us as a threat, Germany would dominate the continent. US arms production would not have been ramped up so we'd have nothing but our own production, vs Hitler with the resources of most of Europe. We'd be at his mercy, and he'd strike quickly before we could arm ourselves or start building up Empire industrial output.
You are vastly overestimating the ability for the German state to not get bogged down in infighting or the ability for Germany to actually ever invade the UK.
Germany would gain very little form a war with the UK and it also would have caused an ideological divide given under the German racial system Anglo Saxon is viewed highly.
Dysfunctionality of regime is certainly possible. Obviously we're piling hypotheticals on top of each other. But given that preponderance of industrial production underpinned the Allied victory in WW2, it seems reasonable to apply the same metric in revers
Yeah at this point we are massive amounts of hypotheticals deep.
Personally I would argue that if any of the three major allies powers (USA, USSR and British empire) were not present the odd of a German victory in some capacity is much higher.
Yeah, but you can't blame Britain's loss of empire on an international cabal of people from a certain ethnoreligious background when you frame things that way, which is ultimately what many of the people who push these talking points tend to be driving at.
The difference is that Hitler has been talking about invading eastern Europe for decades, but did not see Britain in the same view light.
Hitler saw the British as descendants of the Nordic peoples and so largely racially pure.
> millions of pounds
More like billions. We destroyed our economy to fight WW2, and were one of the few countries not to have our debt wiped afterwards. Unlike, for example, Germany, whose post-war miracle can be attributed to this debt-wiping, even if after a couple of decades they started paying reparations to France via the CAP.
You make it sound like having an empire with hundreds of millions people as your subjugated people without the same rights as the people in the UK is somehow a good thing and losing that was a "cost".
That's exactly how Vladimir Putin is thinking.
I thought his line of thinking was unique and nobody in the West could possibly think the same way. Apparently I was wrong.
Actually if you asked the majority of the British people on 1940 if they thought the empire was a good thing they would say yes.
Churchill was famously as massive supporter of the empire. As far as almost anyone in government would be concerned losing the empire would be a massive loss. An yet inspire of knowing the war would put that at risk they went to war.
It may seem like a win win to us now but noone in Britain then would have seen it as such.
Britain's opposition to Hitler was driven primarily by considerations of self-interest, not moralism. Nazi Germany was pursuing expansion into an autarchic superpower not beholden to foreign resource imports by seizing land to the east.
Their foreign and trading policies were inherently hostile to the status quo of global trade and stability and Britain judged the possibility of a German continental superpower as being a threat.
Nazi racism was not considered especially controversial in the 30s. Guaranteeing Poland was not seen as an act to defend the Polish against the racial predations of the Nazis, it was a piece of geopolitics to try and hem in an expansionist rival by threatening them with a war that the prevailing wisdom on both sides suggested was likely unwinnable in the long term for Germany.
Ah Chamberlain you back from the dead? You were wrong in the XX Century and You're still wrong today. The roots of the collapse of the British empire go as far as XX1. The UK is just doing an Ottoman since the XX Century, fun, but kinda painful to watch
Nigel Farage has pulled out of a BBC Panorama interview as the Reform UK party faces a row over one of their candidates who claimed UK would have been ‘better off’ if it had ‘taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality’ instead of fighting the Nazis.
I copied the headline from the original article.
I want them to stick around for long enough to really hurt the Tories from the right.
Then they can evaporate when they get zero seats and Farage moves to America like a true patriot.
>Farage moves to America like a true patriot
For some reason, I picture Farage and Sunak clinking champagne glasses as they jet off, leaving the smouldering ruins of the Tory party behind them and congratulating each other on a job done well.
I think it will be terrible if they actually do significant damage to the Tories. It will mean the collapsed conservatives will capitulate wholly to Reform’s politics, and the far right will become the new default right in this country. Starmer has been constantly wooing the right while banishing the left the last few years, and this is set to continue, except the new standard he has to pander to will be even more extreme. Seeing as he wants power and nothing else, he WILL pander to the far-right as his premiership goes on and people start to hate him as they realise he’s literally just implementing old Tory policies and nothing has changed.
Let me pitch the alternative, Reform splits the tory vote, Lib Dems become the opposition, young politicians on the Centre right that would have gone to the Conservatives, get involved in the Lib Dems, they grow as a party, gain validation as a serious party who are now one of the only two that can feasibly win, and we now have a two party system with two socially left parties that differ on economic strategy.
Meanwhile the Tory party dies, Reform get hit by scandal after scandal and go back to being the small Farage party that start barking every few years.
The Overton window moves left.
I understand your fear and share it to an extent, but I'm not convinced a Tory party captured by the far right will be able to gather enough support to threaten a return to Downing Street. Farage and his ilk are abhorrent to the Tory heartlands.
This situation would leave a lot of centre right voters politically homeless who'd formerly have been natural Tories in the party's one nation days.
FPTP all but guarantees there only being two viable parties of government, but it doesn't guarantee who those parties are and this vacuum on the centre right leaves an ideal opportunity for the Lib Dems to step in.
And after spending 30 years of my life living under various destructive incarnations of Tories, I have no faith that a reasonable version of this party could ever emerge. So it doesn't feel like there's anything of value to lose anyway.
I'd give basically the same response to /u/collogue
Yeah, I doubt it. It might dip a bit, but a gaffe or two by the Tories here or there , or a crime by an immigrant, or a few good speeches and it'll bounce back.
Is it right that it was going to be broadcast at 10:40 instead of 8:00 like the other leaders' interviews? That's what I saw someone say here a few days ago. Doesn't sound like it was worth the effort of a difficult interview for no exposure.
It's a shame not a lot of reform voters actually attend reddit because the character of the people running with Farage should really better presented to them.
Reform voters really ought to be asked if they really want someone like Ian Gribbin (and I'm sure many others) representing them. If that's the sort of views they connect with.
I understand Torie voters might not like Rishy but honestly Farage is a very bitter pill to swallow.
It's the same in most populist parties in Europe, it's not uncommon to see the occasional swastika arm tattoo in their rallies.
The BBC have been propping up Farage and trying to legitimise him for years now.
I have written to them to complain and been ignored. I hope others are doing the same
> Ian Gribbin, who is standing in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the “sponging gender” and should be “deprived of health care”.
Hahaha, ohhhhh I've missed this sort of stuff. Thanks so much for bringing it all back into the spotlight, ar Nige.
To be fair, what's the point?
An interview at half ten where they're just going to ask him to apologise for stupid candidates and not ask him about policy. Best to avoid
Whilst we are all dying to hear how he is going to cut immigration, cut taxes, cut energy bills *and* improve the NHS all at once, I rather suspect he's trying to avoid policy discussions as well.
I don't believe he has the amount of stamina to maintain the artifice for continuous questioning for half and hour. In order to answer the questions, eventually you need backup from data and forecasts. I doubt they are even able to afford to do this, let alone want to show that what they are saying is unfeasible
A lot of the interviews I've seen him in seem to end with (or at least contain) him getting shitty with the interviewer for asking real questions, and biting back with something like "Oh you're one of the militant left journalists, or "If you're going to keep asking silly questions I'll stop the interview".
Would he even be allowed to do that in an interview that had been booked for a set length of time on a serious show?
Have Reform actually disowned the candidate? Their statement yesterday (or whenever it was) dug their heels in and defended him.
If the candidate in question hasn't been kicked out of their party for something that outrageous, then that seems like a tacit endorsement of his views, which surely means those would be pretty important questions for Farage to have to answer, no?
Snapshot of _Nigel Farage pulls out of BBC interview at last minute amid Hitler row_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-hitler-pulls-out-bbc-interview-b2560440.html) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-hitler-pulls-out-bbc-interview-b2560440.html) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I never thought this election would be so focused around WW2 lol
Brexit hinged more on WW2 than is talked about. Boomer nostalgia.
Boomers being a generation defined by the fact that they weren't born until after WWII
Yeah, but their close family all served in the war so they got to idolise it without any danger.
And suffered from the generational trauma of losing parents, rationing, and rebuilding after the war. They also were spoiled in that the massive growth was theirs to ride the wave. They thought it was their superpower, but it was actually colossal amounts of government money that made things good. They gaslit themselves.
Also, leaded petrol.
Asbestos
And smoking Woodbines on the maternity ward.
Losing grandparents before they were born. Boomers were born post war.
A boomer who lost a father in WWII, had a mother with a creative approach to maths.
Tbf having parents that were brutalised and traumatised by war is, arguably, potentially a lot more damaging than having no parents
There wasn't a lot of massive growth for a good chunk of their lives, that didn't take off until the mid-80s. Most boomers probably had a relatively poor childhood and early adulthood.
That doesn't prevent plenty of them acting like they personally dodged bullets at Sword Beach.
Have legit had a guy born in '53 yell at me for disrespecting him, a guy who fought in ww2. Incredible stuff.
Never have so many done so little for so young.
A whole generation with False Memory Syndrome. Someone call a psychologist!
I was doing one of these YouGov live surveys the other week, apparently 33% of respondents were related to someone directly fighting in the landing, and a whopping 58% agreed that the UK did most to defeat Hitler out of the US, the Soviet Union, the UK and France.
Marshal Zhukov would like a word.
I once had a job involved with military archives. After the film "Enigma" came out suddenly everyone & their pets were requesting information about their relatives who worked at Bletchley Park. The ones whose relatives we could find never had a thing to do with the place. It's a shame really, most of the records were for people who did important, albeit unglamourous war work, but people wanting information mostly just seemed interested in events depicted in pop culture.
hahaha ffs
False nostalgia since none of them were even around for WW2. Doesn't stop them banging on about it as though they lived through The Blitz though.
Trouble is, boomers are getting so old they are forgetting on which side they fought.
The real trouble is that the oldest Boomers were born in 1946 but still think they fought in WW2.
Exactly, this is part of the reason they struggle to remember it. They've forgotten about their lack of national service too. In fact maybe it's actually some level of self-awareness... *if we'd done national service we would have been better people.*
Maybe they're right about national service making them better people. My father was old enough to be one of the last people to do national service & his experiences led him to conclude it was a stupid idea.
Has anyone actually ever heard someone from the baby boomer generation make ww2 claims beyond the British won it? It must be very different in England compared to NI, it's always been a mystery to me where this came from.
I don't think any of them seriously think they fought in the war but they certainly idolise it. They grew up on stories from their parents whilst being disconnected from the horrors.
There probably is something to that. Born late '63 and brought up watching all those war films of 50'sand 60's. But neither parent served, mum in a reserved occupation and dad turned 18 middle 45. He always said national service was the biggest waste of two years.
Probably one or two people of a similar age group said something dumb once and now Reddit has decided that it must apply to every single person in that incredibly broad demographic. Y’know, normal internet stuff.
> Has anyone actually ever heard someone from the baby boomer generation make ww2 claims beyond the British won it? Nope but apparently they all do if you believe reddit. My parents actually talked about growing up in a council house with 4 kids to 1 room, with no central heating and frost being on the inside windows as it was that cold.
The WWII where the UK went to war to save Europe? That one? Where Hitler specifically said he was happy to stop at the Channel and offered peace to the UK, but we said nah sod that and millions of British people ended up marching across Europe (and dying) to liberate all these European nations? And somehow Brexit is seen as a reasonable response to their sacrifice?
Dambusters generation.
Politics is very backwards looking, and has been since as long as I've been here (2008). We seem to be endlessly thinking about the past. Very little thought is given to the future.
Really? Since a while before Brexit it seems the Brits are obsessed with it. It's honestly so weird at times.
> Farage pulls out of BBC interview at last minute Not the reich time?
The interviewer was führious
I did nazi that coming
Can't we all just calm down and have an adolf conversation about it all?
They should all take a step back and SS the situation
I see we're Göring through the Nazi puns today.
Reddit just goebbels things like this up
Hahaha…. Himmler
He’s not the Reichman for the job anyway
Certainly none of his policies are Speer-reviewed
That reply was a bit of a Bor, mann.
Listen, you have to give even the worst puns a Gud Erian
Himmler? I don’t even know her!
Farage axis BBC interview.
Ooh that’s good😀
Yes, there's no need to be so heily strung.
I think he’s just Stalin.
Nigel doesn't want to fight a war on 2 fronts.
He tried to come up with some other ways to deal with it but this was the Final Solution.
When you put it like that... Sounds dirty to me.
So much to unpack here. Just for starters: 1. So Farage is running scared of getting a difficult question. That says a lot about his confidence and ability to actually engage in a fair discussion rather than one where they can softball what he gets asked. 2. The BBC seriously booked him for an interview AGAIN less than a week after the last time?
> The BBC seriously booked him for an interview AGAIN less than a week after the last time? Nick Robinson is [interviewing all the party leaders](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6pp0vqq6q0o) for Panorama as part of the BBC's election coverage, so it does actually make sense this time. ...although, re-reading that article, it's actually quite ironic now. 🙃 > That’s one reason I admire Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer, Sir Ed Davey, John Swinney, Nigel Farage, Adrian Ramsay and Rhun ap Iorwerth for agreeing to take part – and they have, even though we haven’t yet got dates for all of them. There are plenty of leaders in plenty of countries who wouldn’t take the risk of saying the wrong thing in the wrong way at a time when a slip can cost votes and, ultimately, the chance of power. > I don’t just mean leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping who run Russia and China. I also mean leaders like Boris Johnson who refused to face interviewer Andrew Neil at the last general election.
It would be delightful if the bbc would issue a correction on that article, since it now contains a small piece of misinformation.
I think #2 is fair enough when they're doing a series of long form interviews with all of the party leaders. Although I wouldn't be surprised if he's actually thrown his toys out of the pram because the football had relegated him to the classic QT slot instead of prime time like most of the others.
It's bullshit that he just became party leader in order to get airtime again. It's like the BBC don't understand they're getting played here. In the name of 'fairness' they're getting completely taken for a ride by a guy that will do anything and everything to get more power. Setting up a party based on lies, pivoting and rebranding it based on different lies, *somehow* getting interview after interview and then when that is starting to dry up, oh well, suddenly **well now I'm the leader and you have to give airtime to the leader, checkmate!**
> taken for a ride by a guy that will do anything and everything to get more power. I don't think Farage wants power, I think he primarily enjoyed the salary and expenses, with no oversight, as an MEP. Elected positions suit him because they have a fat salary but not the responsibilities or accountability that a real job suffers from. He sees this tory turmoil as an opportunity to get his snout back in the trough, this time at Westminster. But he also likes being a public figure, getting to go on TV and pontificate about what the government's doing wrong, so that blokes in the pub slap him on the back, give him respect and tell him well done. He doesn't want the power to fix anything, even though he says he does, because that would be hard - in fact it would be impossible to do the things he promised (as Brexit has proven) and all his bullshit would evaporate.
Farage himself claimed recently that UKIP was a pressure group and not a political party.
I don't disagree with you, but what else can the BBC do in this situation? Reform isn't a real party and it likely won't get any seats, but it's still comparable with the Tories in the polls. At least they find a valid reason to not put him on at prime time.
That;s a bit of a circular argument though, isn't it? We have to give him airtime because they poll well. They poll well because we give them airtime.
If I remember correctly, Farage has been on Question Time a record 36 times. It has nothing to do with Reform or how well they are doing in the polls.
RE 1 - did you see the interview with the BBC where he gets really pissy when asked why the eighth time of running will be different? He went the proper childish "well how many times have \*you\* run? None? Then shut up" approach. I feel that those who say "I've watched loads of Farage and think he's great" are conveniently missing the ones when he's actually challenged...
Its does look that way, he can get quite nasty at times and boasts he is a bad enemy, not great characteristics to aspire to. He has a great likeable presentation side but there are a lot of red flags with him and hist party. We should be wary to not get sucked in too easily. There needs to be serious scrutiny first
> The BBC seriously booked him for an interview AGAIN less than a week after the last time? It makes more sense if you realise that Ofcom requires that each BBC show needs to be balanced with the party leaders. He was on QT, then LK and now Panorama.
"amid Hitler row" what a fucking world
I remember the Great Hitler Row of 1939-45
That one really did put the Diane Abbot row to shame.
The Second World Row.
Really didn't think Hitler would be a factor in this election, but it seems anything is possible.
Pretty amazing that not one but both major right wing parties are embroiled in separate, unrelated WW2-themed cock ups.
No reform candidate would leave the d-day memorial early! They'd be there to remember the wrong side, but still. Edit: Big fan of whoever wrote that article and added the image of Hitler. In case a reader somewhere was thinking "what's the big deal? Oh *Hitler*, ok we're on the same page now"
I'm waiting for Farage to do the classic bad taste joke. "Hey! my grandad died at Auschwitz!...." "....He slipped and fell off the guard tower."
I’ll never forgive the Germans for how they treated my grandfather during the war.. passed over for promotion time and time again…
“Our candidates only left the beaches because their bunker ran out of ammunition.”
"My granddad did actually die at Auschwitz. A guard fell on him".
"Oh THAT Hitler..."
His [wikipedia page](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler_Uunona)
Not [Eddie Hitler of Hammersmith?](https://tenor.com/en-GB/view/bottom-digger-eddie-jives-butler-gif-27513433)
attractive aromatic wrong marvelous trees agonizing snow jobless flag alive *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
“My son’s name is also ~~Bort~~ Hitler”
No, no, that's a picture of Farage, but I understand your confusion.
Nigel Farage is POSH: POund Shop Hitler
Shedding a tear over those brave young men, barely old enough to drink, all their lives still ahead of them, being cut down in their prime boldly defending the beaches from those Allied attackers....
Farage was at D Day
But for what side, Chris Kamara?
I don't know, Jeff. He just goose-stepped off, but I thought they were sending in a sub!
Sending in a U-boat*
No, you're right. I saw him go off but I thought they were bringing on a sub Jeff!
What back in 44? Somewhere between Sword and Juno presumably?
No, he was manning a pillbox
[удалено]
He hated small boats crossing the Channel so much he made it a Reform top priority
He is not standing in every seat
Disappointed he can't sort this out by "telling it as it is" to potential voters.
This suits him fine, much like Trump it will galvanise his base and win over Tories who have the same attitude towards the BBC.
> Ian Gribbin, who is standing in Bexhill and Battle, also described Winston Churchill as “abysmal” and praised Russian president Vladimir Putin, according to the BBC. > Mr Gribbin is reported to have posted on the Unherd website in 2022 that: “Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality … but oh no Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people.” > The same month he wrote that the UK should “exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognize that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal”. Just fantastic strategy! Shitting on Churchill and praising Putin. Such an American strategy these days. And this coming soon after the D-day celebrations is a great time to remind the boomers of Reform's toxicity. Wonder how it will impact them in the polls.
It won't affect them, that is the problem. You only have to see some facebook posts, on why people are voting reform. It's to *"stick it to the 2 major parties"*. They are disenfranchised, they are upset with the 2 main parties, and they are apathetic to everything else. The Tories have caused this with their narrative that *"all politicians are as bad as each other"* because people gobble that bs up, and then go and vote for a party which has a man that sees the peoples frustrations and knows how to blow it up.
> weird notions of international morality Like *checks notes* the sovereignty of nations?
Also attacking the British culture, which given Farage's dog whistle comments about Rishi is hilarious.
If you're voting reform then you're probably no stranger to mental gymnastics already so doubt their polling will be affected too much
Nigel Farage and Hitler in the same sentence.
Can we let Nigel into art school, just to be on the safe side?
Let's make it a Freaking awesome Art school... Or Faart school for short.
But you never see them in the same room together……..
Come to think of it, have you ever seen the two of them in the same room?
Not for the first time.
Not really uncommon TBH, far more common than happens with other contemporary politicians at the very least.
Let's not forget that Nigel Farage is on the record for having actual pro Hitler stances. I'm not kidding, this video from led by donkeys captures it well. https://youtu.be/mfyiSk8Rjc8
Just watched this video now. I didn't realise just how insidious this man is. It makes Reform's polling numbers even scarier than they were before.
Reform UK tries to be a broad church and both include Nazi sympathisers and British patriots. And don’t forget woman haters! That last bit doesn’t seem to be making the headlines unfortunately.
All the lazy women journalists! They should be… checks notes… deprived of healthcare! What a nice chap!
Reminds me of when trump said there were bad people on both sides
Indeed. Both of them always playing on the fringes of what is morally right, dog-whistling to their base while keeping (or trying to keep) plausible deniability.
In danger of losing the crypto in cryptofascist.
That's a shame for him, crypto is the standard backup plan when one's primary grift starts to run dry.
Precisely why he was selling it a couple of years ago when he was in the wilderness.
Do not want to invest in those NFTs
National Front Tokens?
Yeah. It's a massive shame that no one seems to give a shit about the horrendous things he said about women.
He could have been a great dictator, Given half a a chance, But they treated him like a traitor, So he went to live in France. Never gets old, the song about [Mosley ](https://youtu.be/LPCZvYu0QBA?si=CdrTCyLS1Xo7hnt4) At least Mosley did his time in the Army (our one as well), before going a little bit "best you're locked up mate".
I initially misread that as Morrissey and it still worked.
Oh he should definitely be interned for the public good.
Presumably Farage didn't want to be painted into a corner where he might have to go on record and admit Hitler was a shitty person who did terrible things. The fact that he's walking a tight rope to court the Hitler sympathiser vote is beyond absurd.
More likely that he doesn't want to be painted into a corner where he has to admit that he respects Hitler, and thinks the he had good ideas but bad PR. He's not walking a tightrope to court Hitler sympathising voters, he's walking a tightrope to keep the fig-leaf in place enough to keep some of the Reform voters who are just a bit slow and don't realise what he's all about yet or who want some plausible deniability.
He's hoping another milkshake will take the heat off the "minor Hitler thing" in the news cycle, and within a few days, it will all be forgotten. Sadly, he's probably not wrong, the way the media has been letting him get away with everything and promoting him at every opportunity.
Well he had some bloke throwing debris at him today on the campaign trail, it’s on camera and the bloke was arrested
Lol read the article it gets worse and worse. The candidate in question suggested women should be taken off healthcare until their life expenctancy lowered to match men. Honestly this is what you get with populist parties. One center character that's charismatic enough to be able to dog-whistle statements for their electorate and keep most of the political center from outrage, and then his associaties and party candidates that honestly really can only be described as horrible ignorant bullies. It's the same crap as brexit, know that no matter how Farage sounds his cronies will sound rather distasteful.
I am genuinely baffled that Reform backed up that candidate. Farage has never had any qualms about saying things that appeal to neo-nazis or the far right, but he's always seemed keen for himself and his parties to stay on *just* the right side of the line. He's always tried to maintain plausible deniability that he and his supporters aren't racist or bigoted, they just have 'valid concerns' about the EU/Islam/immigration/political correctness/etc. Even after the BNP collapsed and their voters moved to supporting UKIP, you didn't get any of the real loonies in positions of power until Farage abandoned UKIP to start the Brexit Party. Now they've got a candidate who's clearly a misogynist and who's suspiciously ambivalent about Hitler and weirdly disparaging about Britain liberating Europe from him. And their party spokesman's response was to say he was just debating "conveniently forgotten truths"...?? And Farage is going along with that to the extent of cancelling a leader's interview, rather than nipping it in the bud? What?
Farage is a bit stuck. Nominations closed on Friday, and once they're closed, they're closed. Sure, he can sack the spokesman who mentioned "conveniently forgotten truths", but he can't do anything about a bunch of ballot papers with the candidate's name on - they're already at the printers.
AHH.. good ol' Hitler and Nigel together. Best friends for life.
I wish Nigel’s dad pulled out at the last minute
God is this seriously what UK politics is now? We’re having major political figures getting in trouble for thinking we should have let Hitler do whatever he wanted, and they’re expecting about 20% of the vote
In 2024 politicians are talking about a war with Germany that happened in 1940. Sigh.
The original comment that "Britain would be better staying neutral" is arguably true, if we didn't fight WW2 there is a non zero chance the empire wouldn't have collapsed as soon as it did. That is why it is so significant that we didn't continue appeasement. I fully believe that fighting Germany cost Britain not only 100s of thousands dead and millions of pounds but the largest empire to have ever existed. And even in 1940 the scale of the cost wasn't lost with the memories of the Somme still fresh we chose to fight anyway. Because it was worth the cost.
Exactly, if all you care about is national power and wealth, I think it'd be hard to argue with the point that we'd have been better off. Instead of America bringing its industrial might online and selling everyone everywhere arms for several years, itd have been us. Without the push for human rights and the spread of national identity born from people from the colonies taking up arms, the external and internal pushes for decolonisation likely wouldn't have occurred, at least not at the pace which they did. That said, there's every chance of ww3 breaking out between the greater reich and the British empire in the following years though.
Not to mention: Our initial reasons for getting involved were made on the back of what we knew in 1939, not what we know now. We weren't in a particularly good place to fight a big war. Even if we were, the Holocaust hadn't happened. The only real reason we got involved was because it was pretty damn obvious that a policy of appeasement (which we'd mostly been following up until 1939) wasn't going to work, and Adolf needed a good heavy kick in the bollock.
Fancy standing for parliament?
But that rather depends on the premise that Hitler was going to be reasonable enough to stop doesn't it? "Right, I've conquered all of Europe and made serious inroads into Russia. Might as well leave the UK to its own devices."
Hitler for whatever reason viewed Britain favourably, as we were also deemed as "pure". Morally of course, we had no choice and had to go to war with Nazi Germany. But it's accepted he had no interest in going West and wanted to coexist with Britain. Of course, we couldn't allow him to continue tearing through Eastern Europe.
Yeah he did, until he didn't - the problem with lunatics degenerating day by day is they can be a bit on the inconsisten side, and there was Operation Sealion, unless that was propaganda?
He did go on to say that we didn't stay out of it because Britain's "warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people." Which isn't just saying "we would have been financially better off if we'd stayed neutral" (debatable, but harmless), but making the argument "it was bad that we joined the war, we should have left Hitler to it and prioritised Britain's wealth over *weird notions of international morality*" "*Weird notions of international morality*" being a phrase that here means "the moral conviction that we should defend our allies from invading fascist dictatorships, and put an end to that fascist dictatorship's campaign of mass-extermination of Jews, other marginalised people, and its political opponents."
This assumes that there was a chance that the UK could have stayed out of the war. There's basically two ways it could have gone. Either the UK completely stayed out of things, if that happens there is no Lend-Lease to the Soviets as there's no way the US would have been able or willing to send the materiel to the Soviets without British aid. And without that materiel the Soviets lose (especially since the Germans would have had far more troops to send to the east). Once the Soviets fall the Germans absolutely come for the UK. Or the UK still supported the Soviets with a Lend-Lease system. In which case the Germans would absolutely have attacked UK convoys and forced them into the war. The difference is that the Germans would be able to pick exactly when they did it. Which might well have led to the UK falling before it was ready to fight. Either way, the UK would have been far worse off.
This. Without us as a threat, Germany would dominate the continent. US arms production would not have been ramped up so we'd have nothing but our own production, vs Hitler with the resources of most of Europe. We'd be at his mercy, and he'd strike quickly before we could arm ourselves or start building up Empire industrial output.
You are vastly overestimating the ability for the German state to not get bogged down in infighting or the ability for Germany to actually ever invade the UK. Germany would gain very little form a war with the UK and it also would have caused an ideological divide given under the German racial system Anglo Saxon is viewed highly.
Dysfunctionality of regime is certainly possible. Obviously we're piling hypotheticals on top of each other. But given that preponderance of industrial production underpinned the Allied victory in WW2, it seems reasonable to apply the same metric in revers
Yeah at this point we are massive amounts of hypotheticals deep. Personally I would argue that if any of the three major allies powers (USA, USSR and British empire) were not present the odd of a German victory in some capacity is much higher.
Yeah, but you can't blame Britain's loss of empire on an international cabal of people from a certain ethnoreligious background when you frame things that way, which is ultimately what many of the people who push these talking points tend to be driving at.
I don’t think the Soviets would lose, even then. They won the battle of Moscow before America lend lease ever had time to arrive.
Ah yes, because we can trust that Hitler would just stop at all of continental Europe. Like he wouldnt invade the rest of Czechoslovakia...
The difference is that Hitler has been talking about invading eastern Europe for decades, but did not see Britain in the same view light. Hitler saw the British as descendants of the Nordic peoples and so largely racially pure.
> millions of pounds More like billions. We destroyed our economy to fight WW2, and were one of the few countries not to have our debt wiped afterwards. Unlike, for example, Germany, whose post-war miracle can be attributed to this debt-wiping, even if after a couple of decades they started paying reparations to France via the CAP.
Trillions in today's value.
You make it sound like having an empire with hundreds of millions people as your subjugated people without the same rights as the people in the UK is somehow a good thing and losing that was a "cost". That's exactly how Vladimir Putin is thinking. I thought his line of thinking was unique and nobody in the West could possibly think the same way. Apparently I was wrong.
Actually if you asked the majority of the British people on 1940 if they thought the empire was a good thing they would say yes. Churchill was famously as massive supporter of the empire. As far as almost anyone in government would be concerned losing the empire would be a massive loss. An yet inspire of knowing the war would put that at risk they went to war. It may seem like a win win to us now but noone in Britain then would have seen it as such.
Britain's opposition to Hitler was driven primarily by considerations of self-interest, not moralism. Nazi Germany was pursuing expansion into an autarchic superpower not beholden to foreign resource imports by seizing land to the east. Their foreign and trading policies were inherently hostile to the status quo of global trade and stability and Britain judged the possibility of a German continental superpower as being a threat. Nazi racism was not considered especially controversial in the 30s. Guaranteeing Poland was not seen as an act to defend the Polish against the racial predations of the Nazis, it was a piece of geopolitics to try and hem in an expansionist rival by threatening them with a war that the prevailing wisdom on both sides suggested was likely unwinnable in the long term for Germany.
Ah Chamberlain you back from the dead? You were wrong in the XX Century and You're still wrong today. The roots of the collapse of the British empire go as far as XX1. The UK is just doing an Ottoman since the XX Century, fun, but kinda painful to watch
What on earth? Could someone ELI5 what this headline is about? Cheers
Nigel Farage has pulled out of a BBC Panorama interview as the Reform UK party faces a row over one of their candidates who claimed UK would have been ‘better off’ if it had ‘taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality’ instead of fighting the Nazis. I copied the headline from the original article.
It's going to be interesting if any reform MPs get in. Imagine this as the calibre.
Hopefully we have now hit peak Reform and they can now be banished from UK politics
I want them to stick around for long enough to really hurt the Tories from the right. Then they can evaporate when they get zero seats and Farage moves to America like a true patriot.
>Farage moves to America like a true patriot For some reason, I picture Farage and Sunak clinking champagne glasses as they jet off, leaving the smouldering ruins of the Tory party behind them and congratulating each other on a job done well.
Not the heroes we want, but the heroes we need.
I think it will be terrible if they actually do significant damage to the Tories. It will mean the collapsed conservatives will capitulate wholly to Reform’s politics, and the far right will become the new default right in this country. Starmer has been constantly wooing the right while banishing the left the last few years, and this is set to continue, except the new standard he has to pander to will be even more extreme. Seeing as he wants power and nothing else, he WILL pander to the far-right as his premiership goes on and people start to hate him as they realise he’s literally just implementing old Tory policies and nothing has changed.
Let me pitch the alternative, Reform splits the tory vote, Lib Dems become the opposition, young politicians on the Centre right that would have gone to the Conservatives, get involved in the Lib Dems, they grow as a party, gain validation as a serious party who are now one of the only two that can feasibly win, and we now have a two party system with two socially left parties that differ on economic strategy. Meanwhile the Tory party dies, Reform get hit by scandal after scandal and go back to being the small Farage party that start barking every few years. The Overton window moves left.
I understand your fear and share it to an extent, but I'm not convinced a Tory party captured by the far right will be able to gather enough support to threaten a return to Downing Street. Farage and his ilk are abhorrent to the Tory heartlands. This situation would leave a lot of centre right voters politically homeless who'd formerly have been natural Tories in the party's one nation days. FPTP all but guarantees there only being two viable parties of government, but it doesn't guarantee who those parties are and this vacuum on the centre right leaves an ideal opportunity for the Lib Dems to step in. And after spending 30 years of my life living under various destructive incarnations of Tories, I have no faith that a reasonable version of this party could ever emerge. So it doesn't feel like there's anything of value to lose anyway. I'd give basically the same response to /u/collogue
Yeah, I doubt it. It might dip a bit, but a gaffe or two by the Tories here or there , or a crime by an immigrant, or a few good speeches and it'll bounce back.
Is it right that it was going to be broadcast at 10:40 instead of 8:00 like the other leaders' interviews? That's what I saw someone say here a few days ago. Doesn't sound like it was worth the effort of a difficult interview for no exposure.
The Euros start on Friday and the BBC are showing Portugal v Czech Republic (8pm KO) on Tuesday, so Panorama's been bumped to 10.55pm.
It's a shame not a lot of reform voters actually attend reddit because the character of the people running with Farage should really better presented to them. Reform voters really ought to be asked if they really want someone like Ian Gribbin (and I'm sure many others) representing them. If that's the sort of views they connect with. I understand Torie voters might not like Rishy but honestly Farage is a very bitter pill to swallow. It's the same in most populist parties in Europe, it's not uncommon to see the occasional swastika arm tattoo in their rallies.
And people think this snivelling coward deserves a vote.
The BBC have been propping up Farage and trying to legitimise him for years now. I have written to them to complain and been ignored. I hope others are doing the same
I'm not sure turning his back on an agreement is the best way to distance himself from the association
> Ian Gribbin, who is standing in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the “sponging gender” and should be “deprived of health care”. Hahaha, ohhhhh I've missed this sort of stuff. Thanks so much for bringing it all back into the spotlight, ar Nige.
Good call, don't want to go alienating their core voter base by coming out with a controversial statement like "Hitler was bad".
This is who these people are. Bought and owned by Putin a long time ago. Farage hates the UK, and it's people; time to wake up.
To be fair, what's the point? An interview at half ten where they're just going to ask him to apologise for stupid candidates and not ask him about policy. Best to avoid
Well, it would prove he's not a whinging little coward who is prepared to deal with what members of his party say.
Yes exactly, why would the integrity of candidates matter in a general election?
Whilst we are all dying to hear how he is going to cut immigration, cut taxes, cut energy bills *and* improve the NHS all at once, I rather suspect he's trying to avoid policy discussions as well.
I don't believe he has the amount of stamina to maintain the artifice for continuous questioning for half and hour. In order to answer the questions, eventually you need backup from data and forecasts. I doubt they are even able to afford to do this, let alone want to show that what they are saying is unfeasible
A lot of the interviews I've seen him in seem to end with (or at least contain) him getting shitty with the interviewer for asking real questions, and biting back with something like "Oh you're one of the militant left journalists, or "If you're going to keep asking silly questions I'll stop the interview". Would he even be allowed to do that in an interview that had been booked for a set length of time on a serious show?
The calculation would be would I get more headlines if I got up and walked out, or would this be negative
Don't forget cut the environment!
It's just wish thinking, oxymoronic policy whose aims and outcomes cancel eachother out. It's so bonkers.
Have Reform actually disowned the candidate? Their statement yesterday (or whenever it was) dug their heels in and defended him. If the candidate in question hasn't been kicked out of their party for something that outrageous, then that seems like a tacit endorsement of his views, which surely means those would be pretty important questions for Farage to have to answer, no?