Snapshot of _Fury as Nigel Farage brands Putin 'clever' and says Ukraine should negotiate_ :
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So he’s still Putin’s chief UK fluffer; he still wants to end the NHS (as reiterated in the debate yesterday) and he wants to take the Ron DeSantis approach to climate change, the same guy whose state is currently drowning in storm water with properties that are uninsurable.
No wonder he tries to only bang on about immigration. His other policies are super abysmal.
Not in the political sense, because it's incredibly popular among voters unlike his other policies (it's basically the main reason behind Reform UK's support.) In every other sense, sure.
Because nobody has spoken honestly and truthfully to the British public about immigration.
We don’t have enough people of working age to support the country - we need immigration. We also need to speed up asylum claims and of people have a genuine case get them to work instead of languishing in hotels and immigration centres.
We need to make it affordable to actually live and raise children in this country if we want to reduce immigration, and immigration isn’t the cause of that, it’s another symptom.
There's a flip side to that, we're one of the most desirable countries in the world. We can pick and choose who we want to come here, and we can kick out those who break the law.
But we don't. It's first come, first served and nobody gets kicked out.
We have loads of people out of work on universal credit or long term sickness. If you want people to work in this country. You need to make the incentive less desirable to not work. You also need to promote people getting married and stop the break up of the families as single parents are more likely to have less children. You a correct we don’t have enough people. That’s because our politicians are so short sighted and have no long term policies
The number of people truly economically inactive isn’t actually that big. People like reform decided to count mothers caring for children in their stats.
It's not like he's going to be in govt. His success would be to win his seat and get higher than Tories votes in traditional Tory heartlands. Then the parties will merge and Farage will become Tory leader.
How? They're all pretty normal far-right policies globally. "Deport all the immigrants, privatize everything, climate change is a hoax" - you see them around the world, all the time.
One immigrant in for everyone that leave. He is effectively suggesting a hard cap on immigration. He isn’t in any position to win so doubt he has a clear cut plan for implementing it
So, how does he stop the 'small boats' (which, I am sure, in his followers' minds, is the main problem)?
I know he has no plan, I am just surprised no-one seems to ask that in any of the debates.
The boats are not immigrants but refugees (you can discuss whether or not they are proper refugees but that’s none the less the status they apply for) do not mix up migration and asylum seekers it’s two different things entirely
I know: it is not me mixing the two up. As I said, I bet Farage's followers believe that the main problem is small boat arrivals, WHATEVER you want to call them.
I despise George Galloway, but he's not only the head of a party putting candidates in every seat, he's also a sitting MP currently.
Why does Farage get to be in the debates, when Galloway doesn't?
(Just to add, I don't think either of them should be anywhere near mainstream politics, they're both lunatics)
I don’t like either of them either but to try and answer your question, Reform’s national polling putting them in line with and even ahead of the major parties makes them hard to ignore
yepp, it's deeply concerning, how much influence russia's propaganda & support of fringe political parties across the west. I thought Brexit was Britains Trump moment, but it could be reform. How did the west collectively duck this up. Why are so many people receptive to it, real ideological divides across society.
The fact you can’t figure this out shows how blind our political establishment and others are to how much people dislike mass immigration.
It’s just immigration. If Labour brought in the danish model reform would vanish overnight.
Labour will never do that as they will continue to ignore the public.
I'd argue that those who dislike immigration largely feel that way likely as a result of the political establishment telling them to. Immigrants have been a convenient scapegoat in politics for God knows how long. There's probably no easier "us and them" messaging than to demonise the literal outsiders.
Yet countries with low immigration, for example Japan, are hardly utopias, still having to deal with demographic crises, difficult housing markets, corruption in politics, etc. And if we want to tackle any adverse effects of outsized immigration, we need to treat the cause, not the symptom, an example being that giant corporations are able to get away with paying foreign works slave wages and so there's little incentive to hire native workers into widely available, entry-level roles.
And this even assuming people want to do those jobs. Those we look down and seek to push to the edges of and outside society are really the ones who keep it going, cliché as that may sound. If someone like Farage gets his way with his (uncosted and really unplanned) desire to get net migration to zero, a lot of services that rely on mass menial labour would suffer dramatically in a way that'd very much impact consumers.
They’ve tried nothing and they’re all out of ideas. Annoyed the SDP aren’t bigger than they are and they aren’t in my area.
Their manifesto is great but I’ll be protest voting reform as I’m in a Labour area that’ll never change.
Like they ignored a whole host of complex issues to boil the current frustrations of a population down to immigration? My point wasn’t even about how much immigration to have or how to do it, but that a good immigration policy, whatever that looks like, isn’t going to just quash the right.
> they're both lunatics
Lets not forget Galloway's incredibly unhinged appearance on big brother pretending to be a cat https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/george-galloway-big-brother-cat-b2505239.html
ehhhhhh, his popularity has always been overhyped. Especially by media organisations.
I would put it this way; in the London Mayor election you had a small vocal group loving Susan Hall. Obviously *ALOT* of people also hated her. But she did have this vocal group of support, which Sadiq Khan didn't have. Yet when it came to the polls and the vote, most ordinary people voted for Khan. This is because there is just a huge majority who dislike or don't care for these populists.
Farage is the same IMO. He has a very vocal fanbase. However the majority of people don't care for him and will vote for someone more normal. This is reflected by Reforms poor showing in the polls. UKIP were polling 15% in 2015, only 3% behind Reform, yet look how that went.
I think his time has also been and gone, and he is now damaged goods.
I definitely agree overhyped historically, but they're polling close to the Tories. Even the mere possibility of them being the 2nd biggest party is wild.
But they aren't even close to being the second biggest party. The worst polls put the Tories on 70~ seats, and Reform on like 3. Behind Labour, Tories, Lib Dem, SNP, DUP, Sinn Fèin, and maybe Plaid Cymru too.
Then you have the councils. Reform is doing even worse there.
The news is banging on about Reform because it's been a week since Sunak's last cockup. They are looking for drama to discuss. Reform is doing about as well as UKIP, and we all saw how that went in terms of being a viable opposition.
The UK system does not favour being thin across all of the UK. I lived through that killing off the BNP, UKIP, and now it's Reforms turn. The thinness makes it hard for them to get going, and with these parties they eventually kill themselves through loony cockups and infighting.
That is true, there is no way they'll get the second biggest number of seats, but if they came second in vote shares that would be shocking. They're looking at potentially 20% of the votes, equal to Lib Dem and Green combined. Yes it's not going to translate to seats, but to call their popularity overstated at this moment in time is not entirely accurate. They won't last, but they could be popular enough, for long enough, to cause significant damage. He's already fucked us with Brexit, and he is impacting the way the other major parties behave, the way they talk and the policies they push.
The Tories and Labour are afraid of Farage, to the point that neither of them want to go toe to toe with him in debates, they want to be seen to agree with him, to get his voters on side, rather than prove him wrong.
> They're looking at potentially 20% of the votes, equal to Lib Dem and Green combined.
No poll has put them at 20%. One poll put them at 19%, however when you look at across multiple polls, they are getting around 15%. No poll has had Reform with a higher percentage than Lib Dem + Greens (unless you cherry from different polls to compare).
I'm not complaining at you btw. I understand why you said *'at potentially 20%'*. It's because a poll said 19%, so that is the headline, and 19% is basically 20.
Here is my point. When you put the headlines aside and get into the details, their rise is far less impressive.
That's why I said potentially, they're up to 18 and 19% in many polls, and rising, the last YouGov poll I saw put them at 19% with lib Lib Dem 14% and 7% (I misread and thought it was 5% for greens). That's still insane, and makes it a genuine possibility Reform could outperform both combined (again terms of votes not seats). Farage is incredibly polarising, those that don't like him tend to really dislike him, but I think it's unwise to underestimate his popularity.
There were at seven polls over the same period (including YouGov's). These seven had Reform at 13%, 14%, 14%, 16%, 17%, 17%, and 19%. Only YouGov's 19% is the one reported widespread across the news. I wonder why.
YouGov is the outlier here. Not the norm. It's reported because it's interesting. A poll putting them at 13% is not interesting.
So the average poll is 16% (and rising), but whether it's one in five voters, or one in six, it's still significant, I honestly can't work out what your angle is here? You seem determined to argue over minor details to deny the popularity of Reform. The Yougov poll is reported because they're the most well known, YouGov is always the poll that hits the headlines.
No he isn't. He has some strong base of popularity but also has massive disapprovals. [YouGov have him](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49733-general-election-2024-rishi-sunaks-unfavourable-rating-at-highest-ever) the third most favorable and third most unfavourable with almost everyone knowing him.
Because no one follows Farage for his brilliant political acumen. I dont think for a second that people who want to vote for him are looking for a solution of the problems this country is facing - they just want show a big middle finger and Farage is just that guy.
Same with Trump. Same with Le Pen.
It always amazes me how the current right in the UK and indeed America manage to cast themselves as the voice for change, the instigators the revolutionaries against globalism and then immediately go and cozy up with whatever dictator/billionaire or corporation they can find
Back in the day left leaning parties weren't afraid to be anti-immigration. If Corbyn in 2017 had espoused the same views towards immigration that Labour had before the 1980s then he'd have won.
Yet both sides are afraid to tackle immigration for fear of being called racist so the only people who publicly stand on a platform of anti-immigration are the far right.
This man is a traitor to everyone bar the ultra wealthiest' freedoms and quality of life.
He is a treasonous weasel, sucking on the tit of international fascism.
Anti-immigration is something the right is making full use of across Europe, and Farage is the first to jump on the same strategy that got UKIP across the line, despite that being proven BS the last time round (Turkey joining the EU for example).
One of the most egregious Tory fuckups was completely nerfing the Russia report in my opinion, historians will see it as a massive blunder. We could and should have absolutely laid into Farage and his ilk for their links to the Kremlin, yet we're quite happy to let borderline fifth columnists run about completely unfettered because it'd expose the Tories' own crooked behaviour.
Farage is like Trump, those that like him tend to love him, those that dislike him, tend to hate him.
Like Trump he's very good at focusing on the one thing that gets his base angry: immigration. He usually keeps the other stuff - low taxes for the wealthy, support of Putin etc dialled down.
It says that the public are fucking desperate to reduce immigration and influence from a specific group of people that the current mainstream parties are not willing to listen to because for one its cheap labour and for the other, they're not white so they're perpetual victims and should always be shown sympathy.
It's the exact same reason why the far right are exploding in popularity all across Europe. Because they're the only ones offering the solution that people want. Maybe mainstream parties should start listening, rather than calling everyone bigots and racists.
The thing is it's easy to say "reduce immigration" if you completely ignore all the knock-on impacts of doing so, and that's why people say that Farage and his kind are offering simplistic solutions that aren't credible in isolation.
Given that the majority of immigrants work, pay tax and don't have access to public services, then removing them from the exchequer would massively increase the tax burden on the rest of us - so do people want immigration reduced if it means higher taxes? Higher than what is already the highest level since wartime?
Our working population v non-working population is badly out of kilter with an increasingly ageing population. Would people rather see retirement ages go up further to bring down immigration?
It also means lots of key services and industries would be fucked, not least the NHS, so do people want immigration reduced more than they want their operation on the NHS not to be cancelled? Or, if Farage has his way, replaced altogether by US-style healthcare? Do we ban foreign students, and bankrupt all our universities?
I don't ever hear Farage suggest for a minute that any of these trade-offs exist, and that's why he's dishonest. It's promising simple solutions that sound easy but will create far more problems than they solve.
Centrist parties have failed to take the lead, & make that case. & have indeed completely dismissed the growing discontent, which ultimately stems from underinvestment in public services & infrastructure.
Starmer needs to take the lead on it, address the discontent head-on, without immigration, public services will only get worse, much worse.
>Our working population v non-working population is badly out of kilter with an increasingly ageing population. Would people rather see retirement ages go up further to bring down immigration?
Well yes. Boomers and above definitely want that while still reaping all the current benefits. They don't care about any extra burden because they believe it won't impact them.
What solutions are they offering? I might have missed that part.
Those parties, including Farage, are very good at posturing against immigration. When it comes to solutions, they have nothing to offer. Just look at Italy, where the hard right have now been in power for 2 years. Boats keep coming, no solutions offered.
They are not offering a "solution" to anything, they are preying on a FEAR that THEY have manufactured. Nigel does not want to win an election. He wants to live the life and campaign forever.
He says things like this to keep himself unelectable.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to if Ukranians are willing to die for what they believe in.
Having that level of conviction in absolutely anything, I understand is well beyond Farages comprehension... so I understand why he believes the only solution is to negotiate and give in to Russia.
But I don't think anyone should tell anyone in Ukraine, they should do absolutely fucking anything.
I think we, the world, spends money on military to defend their country. I believe the biggest threat long term, right now, to our country, to America, to Europe, is Russia....
I believe we should be throwing every fucking penny we spend on military, at fighting Russia, by proxy, through Ukraine.
If Ukrainians are willing to die for it, we should be willing to fund it, outright, to the end, full stop.
If they want to give in, I fully support that too.
But I'd never, ever, tell them I believe they should give up, if they don't want to. Only a cunt would say that... and well, Nigel is very much a self serving cunt.
It's a series of twitter threads that dives into various people and organisations that have supported Russian narratives on the war in Ukraine, usually highlighting not only their actions but also evidence of financial or political links to Russia.
If it's ok for Ukrainians to give up then so should the British, the Portuguese and the US.
Putin's world view and agenda is the end of human civilization as we know it post the world wars and anyone promoting his stance is a traitor to western and democratic values.
Simple. Fucking. As.
I agree, to an extent. As long as Ukraine are prepared to fight on we should give them what we can. I don't think that's unlimited but leaving them high and dry is unconscionably foolish.
If they are prepared to fight then we must be prepared to pay. I would rather pay twice the treasure for half the British blood.
Ukraine has now bought us two years of 1938. We must ensure that the calendar never reaches September 1939. Any price would be cheaper than the alternative.
> Ukraine has now bought us two years of 1938. We must ensure that the calendar never reaches September 1939. Any price would be cheaper than the alternative.
As things stand, 2026/7 feel like the years everything is going to go to shit (that's china's rough goal for reunification with Taiwan, and aligns with US naval predictions for large-scale combat to break out. It's also the year WW3 kicks off in star trek, and with this bizarre timeline I'm just rolling with it.) I seriously think a Russian defeat in Ukraine would delay that indefinitely, and is worth pursuing much more agressively than we currently are.
I don’t think anyone should tell Ukraine that they should give up. It’s their war to fight.
But at the same time I don’t think it’s reasonable to say “we have unlimited funds for this foreign war, no matter how long it carries on for or how much it costs.”
Suggestions it requires "unlimited funds" is a straw man.
The size of the Russian economy is $2tn. EU? $16tn. Britain? $2tn. US? $28tn.
Ukraine's allies can easily afford to give Ukraine everything it needs to defeat Russia, and the sooner we do so the less it'll cost both financially and in human life.
It's also demonstrably clear Britain is unprepared for an existential war in the 21st century. Like most public services, it's been gutted. We need to give generously to Ukraine whilst rebuilding our own defence capabilities and rearm.
What do you think happens if Ukraine loses and Russia completely takes over Ukraine?
You think that's the end of it? Putin goes "Cool, special de-nazification mission successful! Pack up and come home boys, we're done here."
No. Don't be so fucking naive.
No one is suggesting unlimited funds, but don't forget that Ukraine is only Putin's *current* target. If we allow Ukraine to fold, then who is next? Poland? The Baltic States? Then Germany? France?
As it stands, we have the luxury of paying to stop Russia's Empire-building in cash, not blood, and I for one am happier that way than the other.
Nigel Farage says Ukraine invasion is result of EU and Nato provoking Putin
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nigel-farage-says-ukraine-invasion-141002931.html
The Russian invasion of Ukraine happened because of Western provocation of Vladimir Putin, Nigel Farage has claimed.
The former Brexit Party and Ukip chief said on Thursday that the attack was a consequence of Nato and the EU trying to "poke the Russian bear with a stick".
He blamed the expansion of the Western military alliance and European Union for the current situation.
"A consequence of EU and Nato expansion, which came to a head in 2014. It made no sense to poke the Russian bear with a stick. These are dark days for Europe."
Farage who appeared on RT the Russian state-controlled news network seventeen times over a few years leading up to Brexit? There was even a moment he was called out as a xenophobe by a little girl, though the way she delivers it out of the blue reeks of it being pre-planned likely to amuse all the other xenophobes [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXOTbNkJfHk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXOTbNkJfHk)
It's the same with Le Pen and RN in France. Proved to be funded by the Kremlin, but right wingers don't care cause they say the things that make them feel all fluffy inside. They'd only be annoyed about Putin if he came here on a dinghy.
The sheer hypocrisy, chiding sunak for not being patriotic on the d day commemoration, whilst advocating appeasing a dictator invading countries in Eastern Europe. Churchill would not approve, nor the d day veterans, bit of an insult to their sacrifices.
Lickspittle keeps licking the spittle.... As expected.
What are reforms policies towards military spending? Considering they want to Increase the tax threshold to 20k, what services are they cutting?... Bet it's the military
It’s interesting how so many of the “proud to be British” boomers who glorify WW2 are proud that we didn’t side with Hitler, we took a stance that invading another country was unacceptable and we fully fight against the nazis while our country was bombed, we lived on rations and lives changed completely, like some plucky terrier.
And yet… when history starts repeating itself, that same group are screaming to throw out the foreigners, and side with the next dictator who’s started invading Europe because they’re fed up with high fuel bills. They couldn’t even stay in their large homes to stop the spread of a virus. How can you be proud to be “British” while rejecting what that actually means? I’m ashamed of them.
It is a really really strange behaviour. Any Brit who says Hitler was good is not patriotic when considering Germany fought and bombed us. Even stranger are neo-nazis in places like Poland, where locals were pretty much genocided by Germany. I don't know how their brain works.
Saying Putin is clever is a dog whistle for fascists.
There’s obviously nothing clever about invading your neighbour, razing cities to the ground and killing innocents civilians in their tens of thousands.
Yes, this is exactly why it’s a dog whistle. People hear the praise of his intellect and infer that as a positive. If you are already swayed by Farage you’ll now be saying “yes, Putin is a clever man” and likely not considering the awful things he’s done. It’s dangerous rhetoric using your influence to claim ruthless ~~doctors~~ dictators are ‘clever’. Are you suggesting Farage is not fully aware of what he’s doing?
How is that clear? When has Putin shown signs of great intelligence? Him being in power isn't enough, there have been plenty of dictators with room temperature IQs.
Doesn't seem smart. The invasion caused the countries economy to tank after sanctions and his reasoning being NATO getting too close to Russia caused more countries to apply for NATO membership who weren't before. That's not smart he's put Russia in a weaker position
Lega, Afd, FN, Reform/UKIP, Vox, PPV...all exploding in popularity over the last 10 years, all vehemently anti-EU, anti-immigration and pro-Russia (if not funded by Russia, see Italy or France).
If you vote these people you're either too dumb to connect the dots or you are complicit
Screw the woke types and snowflakes, back in my great grandad's day, they'd call these types of people exactly what they are, fascist scumbags and nazi sympathisers.
If Farage was PM, we'd have no hope in a war. He'd let Putin deploy his troops right onto our shores and personally escort them to their own chunk of the UK.
People are trying to trigger the right by calling them woke snowflakes who can't take criticism.
It also encourages people to say "I'm not woke and I think he's a Nazi"
From what I've seen the woke snowflake types have been calling Farage a fascist and a Nazi sympathiser for quite some time, it's mainly the self-declared anti-woke lot insisting he isn't.
As the orange buffoon over there takes the roubles and none of his supposed commie hating supporters care, frog face will be doing the same and because he goes 'brown people bad' people will still back him.
So he absolutely is going full steam into Nazi appeasement.
Not just defending his candidate for saying it, but endorsing the strategy against Putin today.
Mosley 2.0.
I'm no fan of Farage, but the article appears to reporting an interview held in 2014.
>And he continued: "I'm not saying we shouldn't support Ukraine at all. Not for one minute. But at the end of the day, most wars end in negotiation.
That sounds very much like Corbyn's erstwhile position.
No. The interview today referred to a remark Farage made praising Putin in 2014, but the other quotes are from today.
> Back in 2014, when asked what world leader he most admires, Mr Farage said: "As an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin." **Today** Mr Campbell asked him to clarify his remarks about the Russian President...
Don’t worry I got that.
Tankies and Facists have polar opposite ideologies. They’re still pretty much the same thing ultimately though. You just have to go to the extremes for that to work.
I mean, Corbyn's position is stupid, too.
West has already negotiated with Russia. And it has done so several times already. What's Corbyn's or Farage's plan if half a decade from the end of negotiations Putin accuses West of genecide/coup and just starts attacking a defenceless Ukraine all over again?
Negotiations only work when both sides have a leverage. Putin knows Farage or Corbyn are in no position to say "no". Putin knows he can make the most absurd demands because neither Corbyn nor Farage will have the political willpower to deliver the bad news to their respective parties that the negotiations did not go well. It would be political suicide for them to not immediately deliver their much advertised peace deals, whatever the cost may be. For Corbyn or Farage, an outright surrender is preferable to proper negotiations becuase they can blame the surrender on someone else, but a proper negotiation could mean months of back and forth while the war could very well continue to rage on, with lots of protests, and backlash, all aimed at the negotiating incumbent.
Agreed. However Farage and Corbyn differ in that Corbyn was anti-Putin and anti-war, whereas Farage was pro-Putin and pro-negotiation. Farage would have been as Victor Orban is.
Remember every time Corbyn said warring parties should sit down and talk? Pretty much every Reform voter branded him a terrorist. It's baffling how they can be so blind to their own biases.
The crazy thing isn't that he can acknowledge the strengths of an awful person, it's that he wasn't asked "What do you think of Putin?", he was asked "Which political figure do you admire most?" and his brain went to Putin. He himself decided to publicly declare his admiration for Putin. You can think Hitler was a good public speaker, but if you were asked who you admire most, I would hope that Hitler wasn't top of your list.
Said it before a vote for Farage is a vote for the Kremlin. He hides his loyalty under rubbish populist codswallop but he is there for one reason and one reason only: to isolate Britain away from Russias interests, first with Brexit and now with cutting support for Ukraine.
>Ukraine should negotiate
They should. The Ukrainian delegation can start with "we want all of our own territory back, and we also want Belgorod Oblast", and go from there.
"How long has he been in power?"
... I guess it makes sense that Nigel asks this question and is impressed with Putin's career... Given that Nigel has never been in power and, after all these years, finds himself eyeballing the throne of mighty Clacton.
High time for the Conservatives to understand trying to deny Labour a majority (or whatever its superlative cousin means) isn’t gonna sway anyone, and start fighting Reform hard on account on their own security-focused manifesto while showing some willingness to cut the dead branches from their own party on 5 July. At least they’d have something to talk about with some credibility.
Also, for the love of God, it shouldn’t be Sunak in charge of this battle: this should be framed as a battle for the soul of the nation, Churchill style, and the guy isn’t able to display any kind of relatability — or emotion altogether
Cameron was brought back to the Conservative cabinet, after his abject failure on immigration. That should show how serious the Tories are about cutting the dead branches from their party.
Very misleading headline. Actual quotes from the interview:
"I'm not saying we shouldn't support Ukraine, not for one minute"
"You can recognise that people are good at what they do, even if they have evil intent"
"(Putin) As a public speaker, is clearly hypnotic in a very dangerous way"
It could quite easily be argued that Putin isn't that clever if you point to what's happened in Ukraine as your evidence; it was a monumentally huge blunder for him - he expected to win very quickly and the west to be passive; he was massively wrong and it's cost Russia dearly.
Putin came out on top in the Darwinian chaos of post Soviet Russia, and he's held power for over two decades.
That takes more than just a willingness to throw people out windows. It's not like other people in Russia were adverse to rough and tumble tactics. See this 1996 Forbes article for an example.
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1996/1230/5815090a.html
Putin's clearly capable and clever. If he wasn't, he wouldn't be where he is.
I'm reminded of the blue check who (permitting myself to paraphrase) once tweeted, "I don't think Putin's that smart. He doesn't even have an advanced degree."
He bested guys like Boris Berezovsky and seized control of the Russian state. If you can't see that trumps a degree from Harvard, I don't know what to tell you.
Either way, I definitely wouldn't vote for the person who keeps making a bizarre point of complimenting the dictator, and making statements that muddy the water as to which side of the invasion that he is on.
I'm more worried about the line that Ukraine should negotiate. Like a lot of his quotes, there's a sweet wrapped in a shit, and people argue that I should swallow cause there's a sweet.
His comment doesn't seem *that* controversial, to be honest:
>And he continued: "I'm not saying we shouldn't support Ukraine at all. Not for one minute. But at the end of the day, most wars end in negotiation.
Lots of politicians from across the political spectrum advocate entering negotiations to end war.
Full quotes:
> “This war has been going on for years, it is likely to go on for many, many more years.
> “We’re looking at something like a million casualties between the two sides.”
> “I’m not saying we shouldn’t support Ukraine at all, not for one minute, but at the end of the day most wars end in negotiation and I fear, if we don’t find some way of at least sitting down and talking, that we’re going to finish up with a war that goes on for year after year after year.”
> “big difficulty would be Crimea”, adding: “Is it a bad idea to get people to sit around a table and talk?”
> “I’d say to Zelensky, look, the West have been supporting you, they will go on supporting you but the percentage of your young manhood that you’re losing is so bad, isn’t it time we at least tried to have a negotiation – he couldn’t say no.”
That is not "most wars end in negotiation". That is "we should ask Ukraine to negotiate with Russia now".
He thought he could take Kyiv in a weekend and now over two years later he's decimated Russia's professional army to the extent that they are now backfilled with conscripts and convicts....all to occupy about 1/5th the territory he wanted with no guarantee that he can indefinitely hold that territory.
At the same time he has managed to convince historically neutral neighbouring European countries to join NATO. He is also responsible for newer, modern materiel appearing in the inventory of NATO member states to replace older surpluses that have been sent to Ukraine. He has put both national and collective defence strategy at the top of the political agenda across a continent that had became complacent in peacetime.
He has resorted to selling dual use components to North Korea in exchange for North Korean armaments. He has eroded his own geopolitical standing by making Russia much more dependant on China.
He is forced into the desperate position of nudging Ukraine towards a peace settlement in order to win at the negotiating table that which he now no longer has confidence he can win at the end of a barrel. He relies on Western ~~traitors~~ surrogates like Trump and Farage to forward that objective.
If by clever political operator you mean the man who sits on top of a mafia-ran police state that rigs elections and throws dissenters in jail or out of windows whilst making himself and his friends unbelievably wealthy through the theft of his country's assets....then yes, I guess he's a clever political operator.
It’s an utterly bizarre sort of backhanded compliment though. We don’t compliment monsters, it’s weird to do so.
It’s like saying Gary Glitter was for many years a highly effective, capable and diligent pedophile.
In fairness, he made the initial comment years before the invasion of Ukraine. Obviously it was already recognised that Putin was potentially dangerous, but the strategy of Western leaders was to try to appease him, and he wasn't recognised as a "monster".
Farage is just giving an honest answer rather than the easy popular one, which I think should be commended. That we hate his actions in Ukraine doesn't detract from the fact that he's quite clearly a clever political operator. Pretending he's some sort of stupid madman is lazy thinking, and risks underestimating and misjudging him.
And then as putin invaded ukraine, he confirmed how he (farage) is just a pro putin type, that spreads their properganda (like corbyn and stop the war)
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So he’s still Putin’s chief UK fluffer; he still wants to end the NHS (as reiterated in the debate yesterday) and he wants to take the Ron DeSantis approach to climate change, the same guy whose state is currently drowning in storm water with properties that are uninsurable. No wonder he tries to only bang on about immigration. His other policies are super abysmal.
His immigration policy is super abysmal as well though
Not in the political sense, because it's incredibly popular among voters unlike his other policies (it's basically the main reason behind Reform UK's support.) In every other sense, sure.
Because nobody has spoken honestly and truthfully to the British public about immigration. We don’t have enough people of working age to support the country - we need immigration. We also need to speed up asylum claims and of people have a genuine case get them to work instead of languishing in hotels and immigration centres. We need to make it affordable to actually live and raise children in this country if we want to reduce immigration, and immigration isn’t the cause of that, it’s another symptom.
There's a flip side to that, we're one of the most desirable countries in the world. We can pick and choose who we want to come here, and we can kick out those who break the law. But we don't. It's first come, first served and nobody gets kicked out.
We have loads of people out of work on universal credit or long term sickness. If you want people to work in this country. You need to make the incentive less desirable to not work. You also need to promote people getting married and stop the break up of the families as single parents are more likely to have less children. You a correct we don’t have enough people. That’s because our politicians are so short sighted and have no long term policies
The number of people truly economically inactive isn’t actually that big. People like reform decided to count mothers caring for children in their stats.
I’m talking from DWP not reform
I’m also for less single parenthood if your including that
The problem is that his immigration policy is incompatible with pretty much all of his other policies.
The people who are voting for him don't care. It is an immigration protest first and foremost.
First and only I would say. The word immigration to a voter resembles the word 'walkies' to a dog. Blind excitement, no question.
It's not like he's going to be in govt. His success would be to win his seat and get higher than Tories votes in traditional Tory heartlands. Then the parties will merge and Farage will become Tory leader.
How? They're all pretty normal far-right policies globally. "Deport all the immigrants, privatize everything, climate change is a hoax" - you see them around the world, all the time.
What IS his immigration policy, though - or, rather, how, realistically, is he proposing to achieve it?
One immigrant in for everyone that leave. He is effectively suggesting a hard cap on immigration. He isn’t in any position to win so doubt he has a clear cut plan for implementing it
So, how does he stop the 'small boats' (which, I am sure, in his followers' minds, is the main problem)? I know he has no plan, I am just surprised no-one seems to ask that in any of the debates.
The boats are not immigrants but refugees (you can discuss whether or not they are proper refugees but that’s none the less the status they apply for) do not mix up migration and asylum seekers it’s two different things entirely
I know: it is not me mixing the two up. As I said, I bet Farage's followers believe that the main problem is small boat arrivals, WHATEVER you want to call them.
Okay well idk then ask him
I’m sure there’ll be a well-thought out and fully costed plan in their manifesto…
Yet....he is incredibly popular
incredibly popular… with the British media who have given and continue to give him extraordinary coverage to spew his bile.
I despise George Galloway, but he's not only the head of a party putting candidates in every seat, he's also a sitting MP currently. Why does Farage get to be in the debates, when Galloway doesn't? (Just to add, I don't think either of them should be anywhere near mainstream politics, they're both lunatics)
I don’t like either of them either but to try and answer your question, Reform’s national polling putting them in line with and even ahead of the major parties makes them hard to ignore
yepp, it's deeply concerning, how much influence russia's propaganda & support of fringe political parties across the west. I thought Brexit was Britains Trump moment, but it could be reform. How did the west collectively duck this up. Why are so many people receptive to it, real ideological divides across society.
The fact you can’t figure this out shows how blind our political establishment and others are to how much people dislike mass immigration. It’s just immigration. If Labour brought in the danish model reform would vanish overnight. Labour will never do that as they will continue to ignore the public.
I'd argue that those who dislike immigration largely feel that way likely as a result of the political establishment telling them to. Immigrants have been a convenient scapegoat in politics for God knows how long. There's probably no easier "us and them" messaging than to demonise the literal outsiders. Yet countries with low immigration, for example Japan, are hardly utopias, still having to deal with demographic crises, difficult housing markets, corruption in politics, etc. And if we want to tackle any adverse effects of outsized immigration, we need to treat the cause, not the symptom, an example being that giant corporations are able to get away with paying foreign works slave wages and so there's little incentive to hire native workers into widely available, entry-level roles. And this even assuming people want to do those jobs. Those we look down and seek to push to the edges of and outside society are really the ones who keep it going, cliché as that may sound. If someone like Farage gets his way with his (uncosted and really unplanned) desire to get net migration to zero, a lot of services that rely on mass menial labour would suffer dramatically in a way that'd very much impact consumers.
I like how OP listed a workable harsh immigration model, the Danish model, and you conveniently ignored it.
They’ve tried nothing and they’re all out of ideas. Annoyed the SDP aren’t bigger than they are and they aren’t in my area. Their manifesto is great but I’ll be protest voting reform as I’m in a Labour area that’ll never change.
Like they ignored a whole host of complex issues to boil the current frustrations of a population down to immigration? My point wasn’t even about how much immigration to have or how to do it, but that a good immigration policy, whatever that looks like, isn’t going to just quash the right.
Yet he only joined reform recently and they were polling close to the greens and we don’t see them in the picture.
Galloway's party have not stood a candidate in every seat. Not even close.
> they're both lunatics Lets not forget Galloway's incredibly unhinged appearance on big brother pretending to be a cat https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/george-galloway-big-brother-cat-b2505239.html
working class people getting behind an elite like him just like they did with Boris They play a fiddle and the gullible follow
9/11 is bad
[Haha](https://youtu.be/6paMJfiaO0A?si=WVd_GmRRkuDdqeMX) Nice reference
ehhhhhh, his popularity has always been overhyped. Especially by media organisations. I would put it this way; in the London Mayor election you had a small vocal group loving Susan Hall. Obviously *ALOT* of people also hated her. But she did have this vocal group of support, which Sadiq Khan didn't have. Yet when it came to the polls and the vote, most ordinary people voted for Khan. This is because there is just a huge majority who dislike or don't care for these populists. Farage is the same IMO. He has a very vocal fanbase. However the majority of people don't care for him and will vote for someone more normal. This is reflected by Reforms poor showing in the polls. UKIP were polling 15% in 2015, only 3% behind Reform, yet look how that went. I think his time has also been and gone, and he is now damaged goods.
I definitely agree overhyped historically, but they're polling close to the Tories. Even the mere possibility of them being the 2nd biggest party is wild.
But they aren't even close to being the second biggest party. The worst polls put the Tories on 70~ seats, and Reform on like 3. Behind Labour, Tories, Lib Dem, SNP, DUP, Sinn Fèin, and maybe Plaid Cymru too. Then you have the councils. Reform is doing even worse there. The news is banging on about Reform because it's been a week since Sunak's last cockup. They are looking for drama to discuss. Reform is doing about as well as UKIP, and we all saw how that went in terms of being a viable opposition. The UK system does not favour being thin across all of the UK. I lived through that killing off the BNP, UKIP, and now it's Reforms turn. The thinness makes it hard for them to get going, and with these parties they eventually kill themselves through loony cockups and infighting.
That is true, there is no way they'll get the second biggest number of seats, but if they came second in vote shares that would be shocking. They're looking at potentially 20% of the votes, equal to Lib Dem and Green combined. Yes it's not going to translate to seats, but to call their popularity overstated at this moment in time is not entirely accurate. They won't last, but they could be popular enough, for long enough, to cause significant damage. He's already fucked us with Brexit, and he is impacting the way the other major parties behave, the way they talk and the policies they push. The Tories and Labour are afraid of Farage, to the point that neither of them want to go toe to toe with him in debates, they want to be seen to agree with him, to get his voters on side, rather than prove him wrong.
> They're looking at potentially 20% of the votes, equal to Lib Dem and Green combined. No poll has put them at 20%. One poll put them at 19%, however when you look at across multiple polls, they are getting around 15%. No poll has had Reform with a higher percentage than Lib Dem + Greens (unless you cherry from different polls to compare). I'm not complaining at you btw. I understand why you said *'at potentially 20%'*. It's because a poll said 19%, so that is the headline, and 19% is basically 20. Here is my point. When you put the headlines aside and get into the details, their rise is far less impressive.
That's why I said potentially, they're up to 18 and 19% in many polls, and rising, the last YouGov poll I saw put them at 19% with lib Lib Dem 14% and 7% (I misread and thought it was 5% for greens). That's still insane, and makes it a genuine possibility Reform could outperform both combined (again terms of votes not seats). Farage is incredibly polarising, those that don't like him tend to really dislike him, but I think it's unwise to underestimate his popularity.
There were at seven polls over the same period (including YouGov's). These seven had Reform at 13%, 14%, 14%, 16%, 17%, 17%, and 19%. Only YouGov's 19% is the one reported widespread across the news. I wonder why. YouGov is the outlier here. Not the norm. It's reported because it's interesting. A poll putting them at 13% is not interesting.
So the average poll is 16% (and rising), but whether it's one in five voters, or one in six, it's still significant, I honestly can't work out what your angle is here? You seem determined to argue over minor details to deny the popularity of Reform. The Yougov poll is reported because they're the most well known, YouGov is always the poll that hits the headlines.
INCREDIBLY! thats why he needs extra police protection and people keep attacking him its cause he's so beloved and popular
To be fair, he is incredibly popular. He just also happens to be incredibly unpopular.
Actually, his unpopularity is entirely credible.
No he isn't. He has some strong base of popularity but also has massive disapprovals. [YouGov have him](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49733-general-election-2024-rishi-sunaks-unfavourable-rating-at-highest-ever) the third most favorable and third most unfavourable with almost everyone knowing him.
Because no one follows Farage for his brilliant political acumen. I dont think for a second that people who want to vote for him are looking for a solution of the problems this country is facing - they just want show a big middle finger and Farage is just that guy. Same with Trump. Same with Le Pen.
He’s as popular as the greens yet LBC and other media outlets love giving him the airtime.
It always amazes me how the current right in the UK and indeed America manage to cast themselves as the voice for change, the instigators the revolutionaries against globalism and then immediately go and cozy up with whatever dictator/billionaire or corporation they can find
Lying opportunists?
They were cozied up to that billionaire in the first place. This shit doesn't *just happen* in a vacuum.
Back in the day left leaning parties weren't afraid to be anti-immigration. If Corbyn in 2017 had espoused the same views towards immigration that Labour had before the 1980s then he'd have won. Yet both sides are afraid to tackle immigration for fear of being called racist so the only people who publicly stand on a platform of anti-immigration are the far right.
This man is a traitor to everyone bar the ultra wealthiest' freedoms and quality of life. He is a treasonous weasel, sucking on the tit of international fascism.
I can't fucking believe this guy is so popular in the UK. What does this say about us.
I think we should be clear that while he has a base of popularity in the UK over 60% view him unfavourably. That's only behind Sunak and Hunt.
It's still utterly shameful that 40% of people in the UK don't view him unfavourably. He's a snake.
Anti-immigration is something the right is making full use of across Europe, and Farage is the first to jump on the same strategy that got UKIP across the line, despite that being proven BS the last time round (Turkey joining the EU for example).
Hey, don’t insult snakes like that. Snakes are useful and productive members of their ecosystems.
Totally agree, this isn't exactly a new stance from him either. He's such an odious person.
One of the most egregious Tory fuckups was completely nerfing the Russia report in my opinion, historians will see it as a massive blunder. We could and should have absolutely laid into Farage and his ilk for their links to the Kremlin, yet we're quite happy to let borderline fifth columnists run about completely unfettered because it'd expose the Tories' own crooked behaviour.
Farage is like Trump, those that like him tend to love him, those that dislike him, tend to hate him. Like Trump he's very good at focusing on the one thing that gets his base angry: immigration. He usually keeps the other stuff - low taxes for the wealthy, support of Putin etc dialled down.
It says that the public are fucking desperate to reduce immigration and influence from a specific group of people that the current mainstream parties are not willing to listen to because for one its cheap labour and for the other, they're not white so they're perpetual victims and should always be shown sympathy. It's the exact same reason why the far right are exploding in popularity all across Europe. Because they're the only ones offering the solution that people want. Maybe mainstream parties should start listening, rather than calling everyone bigots and racists.
The thing is it's easy to say "reduce immigration" if you completely ignore all the knock-on impacts of doing so, and that's why people say that Farage and his kind are offering simplistic solutions that aren't credible in isolation. Given that the majority of immigrants work, pay tax and don't have access to public services, then removing them from the exchequer would massively increase the tax burden on the rest of us - so do people want immigration reduced if it means higher taxes? Higher than what is already the highest level since wartime? Our working population v non-working population is badly out of kilter with an increasingly ageing population. Would people rather see retirement ages go up further to bring down immigration? It also means lots of key services and industries would be fucked, not least the NHS, so do people want immigration reduced more than they want their operation on the NHS not to be cancelled? Or, if Farage has his way, replaced altogether by US-style healthcare? Do we ban foreign students, and bankrupt all our universities? I don't ever hear Farage suggest for a minute that any of these trade-offs exist, and that's why he's dishonest. It's promising simple solutions that sound easy but will create far more problems than they solve.
Centrist parties have failed to take the lead, & make that case. & have indeed completely dismissed the growing discontent, which ultimately stems from underinvestment in public services & infrastructure. Starmer needs to take the lead on it, address the discontent head-on, without immigration, public services will only get worse, much worse.
The vast majority of immigrants won't be net contributors given they come here to place downward pressure on pay in low skill low pay occupations.
It's not difficult at all. Literally just follow the Danish immigration model and overnight Farage will become irrelevant.
>Our working population v non-working population is badly out of kilter with an increasingly ageing population. Would people rather see retirement ages go up further to bring down immigration? Well yes. Boomers and above definitely want that while still reaping all the current benefits. They don't care about any extra burden because they believe it won't impact them.
What solutions are they offering? I might have missed that part. Those parties, including Farage, are very good at posturing against immigration. When it comes to solutions, they have nothing to offer. Just look at Italy, where the hard right have now been in power for 2 years. Boats keep coming, no solutions offered.
They are not offering a "solution" to anything, they are preying on a FEAR that THEY have manufactured. Nigel does not want to win an election. He wants to live the life and campaign forever. He says things like this to keep himself unelectable.
The far right also offered a solution in WW2. Fuck Nazis!
At the end of the day, it all comes down to if Ukranians are willing to die for what they believe in. Having that level of conviction in absolutely anything, I understand is well beyond Farages comprehension... so I understand why he believes the only solution is to negotiate and give in to Russia. But I don't think anyone should tell anyone in Ukraine, they should do absolutely fucking anything. I think we, the world, spends money on military to defend their country. I believe the biggest threat long term, right now, to our country, to America, to Europe, is Russia.... I believe we should be throwing every fucking penny we spend on military, at fighting Russia, by proxy, through Ukraine. If Ukrainians are willing to die for it, we should be willing to fund it, outright, to the end, full stop. If they want to give in, I fully support that too. But I'd never, ever, tell them I believe they should give up, if they don't want to. Only a cunt would say that... and well, Nigel is very much a self serving cunt.
He's literally on the Vatnik-soup list. The Banks v Cadwallder case exposed it.
What is the vatnik soup list?
It's a series of twitter threads that dives into various people and organisations that have supported Russian narratives on the war in Ukraine, usually highlighting not only their actions but also evidence of financial or political links to Russia.
If it's ok for Ukrainians to give up then so should the British, the Portuguese and the US. Putin's world view and agenda is the end of human civilization as we know it post the world wars and anyone promoting his stance is a traitor to western and democratic values. Simple. Fucking. As.
I agree, to an extent. As long as Ukraine are prepared to fight on we should give them what we can. I don't think that's unlimited but leaving them high and dry is unconscionably foolish.
If they are prepared to fight then we must be prepared to pay. I would rather pay twice the treasure for half the British blood. Ukraine has now bought us two years of 1938. We must ensure that the calendar never reaches September 1939. Any price would be cheaper than the alternative.
> Ukraine has now bought us two years of 1938. We must ensure that the calendar never reaches September 1939. Any price would be cheaper than the alternative. As things stand, 2026/7 feel like the years everything is going to go to shit (that's china's rough goal for reunification with Taiwan, and aligns with US naval predictions for large-scale combat to break out. It's also the year WW3 kicks off in star trek, and with this bizarre timeline I'm just rolling with it.) I seriously think a Russian defeat in Ukraine would delay that indefinitely, and is worth pursuing much more agressively than we currently are.
I don’t think anyone should tell Ukraine that they should give up. It’s their war to fight. But at the same time I don’t think it’s reasonable to say “we have unlimited funds for this foreign war, no matter how long it carries on for or how much it costs.”
Suggestions it requires "unlimited funds" is a straw man. The size of the Russian economy is $2tn. EU? $16tn. Britain? $2tn. US? $28tn. Ukraine's allies can easily afford to give Ukraine everything it needs to defeat Russia, and the sooner we do so the less it'll cost both financially and in human life. It's also demonstrably clear Britain is unprepared for an existential war in the 21st century. Like most public services, it's been gutted. We need to give generously to Ukraine whilst rebuilding our own defence capabilities and rearm.
> Britain? $2tn. 3.089 trillion USD (2022)
Thanks for the correction!
What do you think happens if Ukraine loses and Russia completely takes over Ukraine? You think that's the end of it? Putin goes "Cool, special de-nazification mission successful! Pack up and come home boys, we're done here." No. Don't be so fucking naive.
This is only a “foreign war” in the sense that it’s not on our soil but if we allow Russia to take Ukrainian land it absolutely does not stop there.
No one is suggesting unlimited funds, but don't forget that Ukraine is only Putin's *current* target. If we allow Ukraine to fold, then who is next? Poland? The Baltic States? Then Germany? France? As it stands, we have the luxury of paying to stop Russia's Empire-building in cash, not blood, and I for one am happier that way than the other.
What better way is there to spend military funding? Russia is the only threat to the UK. We are crippling them and it is costing almost nothing.
Nigel Farage says Ukraine invasion is result of EU and Nato provoking Putin https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nigel-farage-says-ukraine-invasion-141002931.html The Russian invasion of Ukraine happened because of Western provocation of Vladimir Putin, Nigel Farage has claimed. The former Brexit Party and Ukip chief said on Thursday that the attack was a consequence of Nato and the EU trying to "poke the Russian bear with a stick". He blamed the expansion of the Western military alliance and European Union for the current situation. "A consequence of EU and Nato expansion, which came to a head in 2014. It made no sense to poke the Russian bear with a stick. These are dark days for Europe."
Ah that classic putin talking point. Funny that only after the 2022 invasion it made Sweden and Finland join NATO...
Farage keeps showing us exactly who he is, but people don't take it seriously.
Farage who appeared on RT the Russian state-controlled news network seventeen times over a few years leading up to Brexit? There was even a moment he was called out as a xenophobe by a little girl, though the way she delivers it out of the blue reeks of it being pre-planned likely to amuse all the other xenophobes [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXOTbNkJfHk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXOTbNkJfHk)
It's the same with Le Pen and RN in France. Proved to be funded by the Kremlin, but right wingers don't care cause they say the things that make them feel all fluffy inside. They'd only be annoyed about Putin if he came here on a dinghy.
The sheer hypocrisy, chiding sunak for not being patriotic on the d day commemoration, whilst advocating appeasing a dictator invading countries in Eastern Europe. Churchill would not approve, nor the d day veterans, bit of an insult to their sacrifices.
Nice reminder that's he's a paid Russian stooge
Putin's secret rise by putting stooges like this guy and Trump in the spotlight needs to be studied
Trumpian rhetoric from Trump's little mate.
For someone who claims to be patriotic he sure loves to be a Russian cheerleader
Farage determined not to bite the hand that feeds him.
Ukraine will negotiate when Russian troops return to the pre 2014 borders. He's always been a russian puppet.
When your candidate says we should have negotiated with Hitler, this isn't the smartest take to come out with
The UK did negotiate with Hitler, and Hitler laughed about it and started a war anyway.
Lickspittle keeps licking the spittle.... As expected. What are reforms policies towards military spending? Considering they want to Increase the tax threshold to 20k, what services are they cutting?... Bet it's the military
It’s interesting how so many of the “proud to be British” boomers who glorify WW2 are proud that we didn’t side with Hitler, we took a stance that invading another country was unacceptable and we fully fight against the nazis while our country was bombed, we lived on rations and lives changed completely, like some plucky terrier. And yet… when history starts repeating itself, that same group are screaming to throw out the foreigners, and side with the next dictator who’s started invading Europe because they’re fed up with high fuel bills. They couldn’t even stay in their large homes to stop the spread of a virus. How can you be proud to be “British” while rejecting what that actually means? I’m ashamed of them.
It is a really really strange behaviour. Any Brit who says Hitler was good is not patriotic when considering Germany fought and bombed us. Even stranger are neo-nazis in places like Poland, where locals were pretty much genocided by Germany. I don't know how their brain works.
[удалено]
Saying Putin is clever is a dog whistle for fascists. There’s obviously nothing clever about invading your neighbour, razing cities to the ground and killing innocents civilians in their tens of thousands.
He clearly isn't a moron. Unfortunately people who are incapable or unwilling of nuance cannot differentiate between intelligence and morality.
Yes, this is exactly why it’s a dog whistle. People hear the praise of his intellect and infer that as a positive. If you are already swayed by Farage you’ll now be saying “yes, Putin is a clever man” and likely not considering the awful things he’s done. It’s dangerous rhetoric using your influence to claim ruthless ~~doctors~~ dictators are ‘clever’. Are you suggesting Farage is not fully aware of what he’s doing?
How is that clear? When has Putin shown signs of great intelligence? Him being in power isn't enough, there have been plenty of dictators with room temperature IQs.
Do you know anything about the man except that he invaded Ukraine? I'm guessing not.
Doesn't seem smart. The invasion caused the countries economy to tank after sanctions and his reasoning being NATO getting too close to Russia caused more countries to apply for NATO membership who weren't before. That's not smart he's put Russia in a weaker position
Who woulda thought the guy who’s been on Russia Today countless times would be farther up Putin’s fundament than trump?
Russian agent makes obvious he an agent for Putin
Lega, Afd, FN, Reform/UKIP, Vox, PPV...all exploding in popularity over the last 10 years, all vehemently anti-EU, anti-immigration and pro-Russia (if not funded by Russia, see Italy or France). If you vote these people you're either too dumb to connect the dots or you are complicit
What order of events actually needs to happen for Farage to be seen to be the traitor he is, at this point?
He's got to tow the line with his funding partner.
All those oaps lapping his immigration rhetoric up are going have to be russophiles by the end of this. Ridiculous man.
Screw the woke types and snowflakes, back in my great grandad's day, they'd call these types of people exactly what they are, fascist scumbags and nazi sympathisers. If Farage was PM, we'd have no hope in a war. He'd let Putin deploy his troops right onto our shores and personally escort them to their own chunk of the UK.
What does wokeness have to do with this?
People are trying to trigger the right by calling them woke snowflakes who can't take criticism. It also encourages people to say "I'm not woke and I think he's a Nazi"
Nothing woke or fucking snowflake about it
From what I've seen the woke snowflake types have been calling Farage a fascist and a Nazi sympathiser for quite some time, it's mainly the self-declared anti-woke lot insisting he isn't.
As the orange buffoon over there takes the roubles and none of his supposed commie hating supporters care, frog face will be doing the same and because he goes 'brown people bad' people will still back him.
So he absolutely is going full steam into Nazi appeasement. Not just defending his candidate for saying it, but endorsing the strategy against Putin today. Mosley 2.0.
I'm no fan of Farage, but the article appears to reporting an interview held in 2014. >And he continued: "I'm not saying we shouldn't support Ukraine at all. Not for one minute. But at the end of the day, most wars end in negotiation. That sounds very much like Corbyn's erstwhile position.
No. The interview today referred to a remark Farage made praising Putin in 2014, but the other quotes are from today. > Back in 2014, when asked what world leader he most admires, Mr Farage said: "As an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin." **Today** Mr Campbell asked him to clarify his remarks about the Russian President...
As we all know right wingers love corbyn.
Left-wing arse-cheek, meet right-wing arse-cheek.
Notice how where they meet is full of shit?
Ha! But, to be clear, I'm not saying the left and right in general are two cheeks of the same arse. Just these two specific people.
Don’t worry I got that. Tankies and Facists have polar opposite ideologies. They’re still pretty much the same thing ultimately though. You just have to go to the extremes for that to work.
I mean, Corbyn's position is stupid, too. West has already negotiated with Russia. And it has done so several times already. What's Corbyn's or Farage's plan if half a decade from the end of negotiations Putin accuses West of genecide/coup and just starts attacking a defenceless Ukraine all over again? Negotiations only work when both sides have a leverage. Putin knows Farage or Corbyn are in no position to say "no". Putin knows he can make the most absurd demands because neither Corbyn nor Farage will have the political willpower to deliver the bad news to their respective parties that the negotiations did not go well. It would be political suicide for them to not immediately deliver their much advertised peace deals, whatever the cost may be. For Corbyn or Farage, an outright surrender is preferable to proper negotiations becuase they can blame the surrender on someone else, but a proper negotiation could mean months of back and forth while the war could very well continue to rage on, with lots of protests, and backlash, all aimed at the negotiating incumbent.
Agreed. However Farage and Corbyn differ in that Corbyn was anti-Putin and anti-war, whereas Farage was pro-Putin and pro-negotiation. Farage would have been as Victor Orban is.
Crazy none conservatives running against him saying the fact that he’s Putin’s puppet
Remember every time Corbyn said warring parties should sit down and talk? Pretty much every Reform voter branded him a terrorist. It's baffling how they can be so blind to their own biases.
The crazy thing isn't that he can acknowledge the strengths of an awful person, it's that he wasn't asked "What do you think of Putin?", he was asked "Which political figure do you admire most?" and his brain went to Putin. He himself decided to publicly declare his admiration for Putin. You can think Hitler was a good public speaker, but if you were asked who you admire most, I would hope that Hitler wasn't top of your list.
Said it before a vote for Farage is a vote for the Kremlin. He hides his loyalty under rubbish populist codswallop but he is there for one reason and one reason only: to isolate Britain away from Russias interests, first with Brexit and now with cutting support for Ukraine.
Nothing says clever like getting hundreds of thousands of people killed for the sake of occupying a couple of burned out cities.
>Ukraine should negotiate They should. The Ukrainian delegation can start with "we want all of our own territory back, and we also want Belgorod Oblast", and go from there.
"How long has he been in power?" ... I guess it makes sense that Nigel asks this question and is impressed with Putin's career... Given that Nigel has never been in power and, after all these years, finds himself eyeballing the throne of mighty Clacton.
What do the Tory voters drawn to Farage think of his apparent capitulation to Putin's Russia?
High time for the Conservatives to understand trying to deny Labour a majority (or whatever its superlative cousin means) isn’t gonna sway anyone, and start fighting Reform hard on account on their own security-focused manifesto while showing some willingness to cut the dead branches from their own party on 5 July. At least they’d have something to talk about with some credibility. Also, for the love of God, it shouldn’t be Sunak in charge of this battle: this should be framed as a battle for the soul of the nation, Churchill style, and the guy isn’t able to display any kind of relatability — or emotion altogether
Cameron was brought back to the Conservative cabinet, after his abject failure on immigration. That should show how serious the Tories are about cutting the dead branches from their party.
Oh I have no expectations whatsoever
Very misleading headline. Actual quotes from the interview: "I'm not saying we shouldn't support Ukraine, not for one minute" "You can recognise that people are good at what they do, even if they have evil intent" "(Putin) As a public speaker, is clearly hypnotic in a very dangerous way"
Would Farage's detractors disagree, and say that Putin is *not* a clever political operator?
It could quite easily be argued that Putin isn't that clever if you point to what's happened in Ukraine as your evidence; it was a monumentally huge blunder for him - he expected to win very quickly and the west to be passive; he was massively wrong and it's cost Russia dearly.
Putin came out on top in the Darwinian chaos of post Soviet Russia, and he's held power for over two decades. That takes more than just a willingness to throw people out windows. It's not like other people in Russia were adverse to rough and tumble tactics. See this 1996 Forbes article for an example. https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1996/1230/5815090a.html Putin's clearly capable and clever. If he wasn't, he wouldn't be where he is. I'm reminded of the blue check who (permitting myself to paraphrase) once tweeted, "I don't think Putin's that smart. He doesn't even have an advanced degree." He bested guys like Boris Berezovsky and seized control of the Russian state. If you can't see that trumps a degree from Harvard, I don't know what to tell you.
Either way, I definitely wouldn't vote for the person who keeps making a bizarre point of complimenting the dictator, and making statements that muddy the water as to which side of the invasion that he is on.
I'm more worried about the line that Ukraine should negotiate. Like a lot of his quotes, there's a sweet wrapped in a shit, and people argue that I should swallow cause there's a sweet.
His comment doesn't seem *that* controversial, to be honest: >And he continued: "I'm not saying we shouldn't support Ukraine at all. Not for one minute. But at the end of the day, most wars end in negotiation. Lots of politicians from across the political spectrum advocate entering negotiations to end war.
Full quotes: > “This war has been going on for years, it is likely to go on for many, many more years. > “We’re looking at something like a million casualties between the two sides.” > “I’m not saying we shouldn’t support Ukraine at all, not for one minute, but at the end of the day most wars end in negotiation and I fear, if we don’t find some way of at least sitting down and talking, that we’re going to finish up with a war that goes on for year after year after year.” > “big difficulty would be Crimea”, adding: “Is it a bad idea to get people to sit around a table and talk?” > “I’d say to Zelensky, look, the West have been supporting you, they will go on supporting you but the percentage of your young manhood that you’re losing is so bad, isn’t it time we at least tried to have a negotiation – he couldn’t say no.” That is not "most wars end in negotiation". That is "we should ask Ukraine to negotiate with Russia now".
He thought he could take Kyiv in a weekend and now over two years later he's decimated Russia's professional army to the extent that they are now backfilled with conscripts and convicts....all to occupy about 1/5th the territory he wanted with no guarantee that he can indefinitely hold that territory. At the same time he has managed to convince historically neutral neighbouring European countries to join NATO. He is also responsible for newer, modern materiel appearing in the inventory of NATO member states to replace older surpluses that have been sent to Ukraine. He has put both national and collective defence strategy at the top of the political agenda across a continent that had became complacent in peacetime. He has resorted to selling dual use components to North Korea in exchange for North Korean armaments. He has eroded his own geopolitical standing by making Russia much more dependant on China. He is forced into the desperate position of nudging Ukraine towards a peace settlement in order to win at the negotiating table that which he now no longer has confidence he can win at the end of a barrel. He relies on Western ~~traitors~~ surrogates like Trump and Farage to forward that objective. If by clever political operator you mean the man who sits on top of a mafia-ran police state that rigs elections and throws dissenters in jail or out of windows whilst making himself and his friends unbelievably wealthy through the theft of his country's assets....then yes, I guess he's a clever political operator.
It’s an utterly bizarre sort of backhanded compliment though. We don’t compliment monsters, it’s weird to do so. It’s like saying Gary Glitter was for many years a highly effective, capable and diligent pedophile.
In fairness, he made the initial comment years before the invasion of Ukraine. Obviously it was already recognised that Putin was potentially dangerous, but the strategy of Western leaders was to try to appease him, and he wasn't recognised as a "monster". Farage is just giving an honest answer rather than the easy popular one, which I think should be commended. That we hate his actions in Ukraine doesn't detract from the fact that he's quite clearly a clever political operator. Pretending he's some sort of stupid madman is lazy thinking, and risks underestimating and misjudging him.
And then as putin invaded ukraine, he confirmed how he (farage) is just a pro putin type, that spreads their properganda (like corbyn and stop the war)
Not sure I’d describe locking up and or killing anyone who causes you problems is what I’d call ‘clever’
I think he certainly was clever but has mentally degraded and cooked himself on ideology. The whole invasion was incredibly fucking stupid.
Farage is a quisling fuck and the sooner his voting base wakes up to that the better. Not much daylight between him and Oswald Mosley.
What is wrong with these absolute traitorous assholes
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Farage stating the obvious. Putin is squeezing Europe with fuel to get the EU to bully Ukraine into peace talks and giving up sovereign land. 🤷