Can you be arsed to vote?

TORIES in Wales could be excused for taking a dim view of Mark Reckless; the UKIP, then Conservative, and now Brexit Party AM for South Wales East.

By way of recap, Mark Reckless left the Conservative Party to defect to UKIP on the eve of the Conservatives’ 2014 Party Conference, in a way calculated to cause the greatest possible damage to the Tories. An incandescent David Cameron went around that evening’s rubber chicken circuit vowing to “kick his fat a**e” out of the Commons. After calling and winning a by-election, the fat a**e was eventually booted out at the 2015 General Election.

In what cannot be seen as a compliment to our nation’s legislature, Farage decided the following year to bestow Reckless on an appalled Welsh Assembly. After a couple of years of ferocious infighting that made even Plaid Cecru – The Party of Squabbles look disciplined, Reckless quit UKIP and made the Churchillian decision to re-rat to the Tories.
Andrew RT Davies, then Welsh Conservative leader and a committed breakfast-means-breakfast Brexiter, decided to expend a majority share of his spa**e political capital on rehabilitating the fat a**e, inviting it to cwtch up next to his own well-padded posterior in the Conservative Assembly group.

This has turned out, with the benefit of hindsight, to be every bit as bad a decision as it appeared at the time. Although it allowed the Tories to displace Plaid as the official opposition, the a**e’s presence in the Assembly’s Conservative group did not enable or block the passage of a single piece of legislation. It made centrist Welsh Conservatives regard the Assembly group with something close to disgust. Worst of all, it failed to attract a single Brexity vote. In Conservative Associations like Carmarthen East & Dinefwr, almost every single member and activist will be voting for other a**es standing for the Brexit Party next Thursday.

Now, Reckless has repaid RT’s trust by re-re-ratting to the ascendant Brexit Party. Current Tory leader Paul Davies, expressing himself a good deal more politely than the circumstances merited, thanked the a**e for its “valuable contribution as a part of the Welsh Conservative Group in the Assembly over the last two years”. Reckless will hold sway over former UKIP AMs Mandy Jones, Caroline Jones and David Rowlands in the Brexit Party Group.

While any sensible Tories in the Senedd should regard the fat a**e’s departure with something between equanimity and delight, it has left others tamping. Rattled members of Plaid are petitioning the Assembly’s comically biased presiding officer, Elin Jones, in the hope that she will change the Assembly’s rules with the specific purpose of blocking the formation of a Brexit Party group.

In this, Plaid find an unusual ally in Neil Hamilton. Until now an almost Mayite political survivor, the writing is on the wall for the wicked uncle of the Welsh Assembly. Farage absolutely detests him (as does the Brexit Party’s leader in Wales, the reptilian Nathan Gill), the UKIP voter base has disappeared and there is little to no prospect of his re-election in 2021. Gravy train, meet buffers.

Worse, the defection of the other Kippers means UKIP (i.e. Hamilton and the similarly egregious Gareth Bennett) will no longer be entitled to form an official Assembly group, with all the office support and funding that entails. The only miniscule consolation for the wicked uncle is that his group’s annihilation means Bennett can no longer claim to be the UKIP Assembly group leader, and Neil Hamilton is left, in a Berlin-bunkerish way, as the undisputed Führer of UKIP in Wales.
132,138 people across Wales voted UKIP in 2011; 13.7% of the total vote. That vote is now represented by two AMs and no group. Obviously undemocratic, but the Kippers have brought this grim outcome on themselves, by courting the far right and outright fascist thugs like Tommy Robinson.

In the European elections, it has been impossible to avert your gaze from the amazing, all-surpassing awfulness of the UKIP campaign. The Kippers have fallen way below the dignity of being a**es. Even Sargon of Akkad’s own mother probably won’t vote UKIP after the horrendous stuff their candidates have said. There may be a few –John Worboys, perhaps– who quite like the new, rapey cut of the purple party’s jib, but unless UKIP reconsiders its opposition to giving prisoners the franchise, it isn’t going to get the full benefit of the pro-rapist vote. Once a formidable force, UKIP are finished in Wales.

What lessons does this hold for the future of the Brexit Party? Slicker, mostly denazified, and with the perennially fascinating Farage back –very firmly– in charge, it is sure to do well next Thursday.

This is despite its not being identifiably a political party, as has neither policies nor members.

It doesn’t need them The Brexit Party is ultimately another incarnation of the Farage fan club. It is a Potemkin party; a giant political Ponzi scheme. UKIP had a degree of ideological consistency, but nothing unrelated to Brexit unites the views of Nancy Mogg (© 2010 David Cameron) and the IRA-supporting revolutionary communism of Claire Fox. Once the UK has seen sense and revoked Article 50, and the Brexit Party is in the invidious position of having to articulate policy, nothing will hold them together any more than UKIP held together. It will be like herding a few hundred vicious, un-housetrained Serval cats.

For now, the extraordinary political foment caused by Brexit is punishing the main parties. Life is awfully difficult if you are Dan Boucher, or any of the other three candidates for the Conservative and Unionist interest in Wales. If they are like their activists, they probably won’t even vote Tory themselves. Going about seeking election to a Parliament you don’t want to join and don’t think we should be members of must be a soul-destroying business. Dan Boucher should go the whole hog, and follow the eccentric example of one of the ChangeUK candidates in Scotland by actively campaigning against himself.

Labour’s credibility is similarly shot, because Jeremy Corbyn and his sock puppet in Wales have hijacked what was an almost entirely pro-Remain party and weaponised it to bring about Brexit. Labour is now another pro-Brexit party, and a vote for Labour on Thursday will be interpreted by its leadership as a vote for Brexit.
Happily, Welsh voters opposed to Brexit have options. ChangeUK –whatever presentational pratfalls might occur in launching an entirely new party in an unavoidable hurry– offers a genuinely fresh approach of sensible, moderate, evidence-based politics, and an unequivocal commitment to remaining in Europe.

The liberals still exist, but their positive showing in recent local elections as a share of the vote was achieved largely because other parties’ voters stayed at home, rather than by more voters choosing to vote LibDem. Fans of independence can vote Plaid, even if the destructive chaos of Wales leaving the UK would make the destructive chaos of the UK leaving Europe look like a minor disagreement about traffic cones in the Cilycwm Community Council.

Whichever flavour of Remain you prefer, what is most important is to get out and vote. Previous European elections have been met with apathy and a turnout in the low thirties. If that is repeated on 23rd May, extremists will be the winners. If you can’t be a**ed to vote, other people will choose your representation in Europe for you. And they will probably choose a**es like Nigel Farage.