Saturday, May 17, 2014
Nigel Farage's car crash radio interview
This interview of Nigel Farage's car crash interview is all over the interweb. Dan Hodges in the Telegraph thinks that it is the UKIP leader's Nick Griffin moment. We can but hope.
As Dan Hodges says,it started with the Ukip leader attempting to defend his party over charges of racism. It ended with his Communications Director Patrick O’Flynn interrupting the interview live on air and then, according to LBC staff, physically dragging him out of the studio off camera:
What happened in between has effectively finished Nigel Farage’s political career. To understand why, you have to listen to the interview in its entirety. In particular, the moment when O’Brien pulls the Ukip leader into another attempt to defend his statement that people would rightly be alarmed if a group of Romanians moved next door.
First Farage denies he said it. Then he repeats it. Then he implies Romanians are criminals. Then he claims they’re people traffickers. The killer moment comes when O’Brien asks him what would be the difference between Romanians moving next door and Germans, citing Nigel Farage’s own German wife and children. Farage responds: “You know the difference”.
Nigel Farage’s intention was to destroy the perception that Ukip has crossed a line with its anti-immigration euro election campaign. Instead, he has cast that perception in stone.
It reminded me of the moment Nick Griffin went on Question Time. The mask slipped, and Griffin and the BNP never recovered.
“You know the difference”. The mask has slipped for Nigel Farage. There is no way back now.
Somehow I think this might be over-optimistic but we can hope.
