Hope Not Hate has produced a grade card for the first year of Nigel Farage’s career as an MP.
It doesn’t make for pretty reading. Unless you’re one of his millionaire donors of course.
The full article is well worth a read. But in summary:
Turning up to speak in Parliament: F
Despite his love of appearances in the media, he doesn’t bother to turn up to say much when it comes doing to his actual job. He’s spoken less than any other leader of a political party in Parliament.
Farage has spoken just 45 times. That compares, for instance, to 226 for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, 97 for Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, and 152 and 86 respectively for Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay.
Turning up to vote in parliament: E
Speaking aside, he can’t even be bothered to pop in to do another integral part of his job – participating in Parliamentary votes.
He has mustered the energy to vote in parliament on 91 occasions. That’s fewer than Ed Davey (111), Carla Denyer (205), Adrian Ramsay (178) – even Kemi Badenoch (92) managed to best him by one vote.
He’s even skipped some of the votes on subjects he pretends to care about, such as on the winter fuel allowance or the smoking ban.
What is he doing instead? A brief summary includes:
- Repeatedly jetting off to America in effort to hang out with Donald Trump and his supporters.
- Going to Europe on holiday whilst Parliament is sitting – and in fact debating the UK-EU summit he’d previously claim to have extremely strong opinions on – rather than waiting just a few days for the Parliamentary recess.
- Working in one of his many other jobs, which, after all, bring him in a lot more income than being an MP would.
Teamwork: F
He struggles to get on with his colleagues.
Since his election, deputy leader Ben Habib quit, citing “fundamental differences” with Farage.
Reform MP Rupert Lowe was suspended over bullying allegations a couple of days after he called Reform “a protest party led by the Messiah”.
Reform chair Zia Yusuf quit (for a bit) saying the job wasn’t “a good use of my time”. His replacement, David Bull, previously suggested Farage was an idiot, dangerous and prejudiced.
Constituency work: F
He’s also too lazy and/or not good at another absolutely critical part of the job of an MP – working on behalf of his constituents.
He announced that, unlike basically every other MP, he wasn’t going hold face-to-face surgeries with the people he’s supposed to represent, claiming that the House of Commons Speaker’s Office told him not to for security reasons. Which turned out to be a lie.
Transparently declaring his interests: F
The rules require MPs to register:
…any financial interest or other material benefit which a Member receives which might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her actions, speeches or votes in Parliament
in the House of Commons Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Farage has omitted at least a couple of entries that he really should have declared.
- His ownership of a commercial fishing boat.
- At least two “investment properties” has owns, neither of course being in this constituency.
Adopting positions his donors will like: A
Finally he gets a good grade! Yes, Farage might not be fulfilling his obligations to represent his everyday constituents in the slightest – but he’s doing very well at representing the interests of his extraordinarily rich millionaire and billionaire pals – especially if they see fit to funnel money in the direction of him and his party.
Perhaps most notably this came in the form of the Britannia Card proposal, which, as we previously saw, will allow foreign millionaires to live in Britain without paying a significant chunk of the taxation they would under current rules; robbing the public purse to ensure the rich get richer.
It’s not mentioned in the Hope Not Hate article – but we’ve also previously seen how his tax policy proposals for those of us born in Britain is also extremely regressive, handing out a far greater value of tax cuts to the people who are already very wealthy than to the people who may actually need some help.
[…] already saw Nigel Farage earning very low grades in terms of doing his actual job as an elected MP. In his first year he turned up to Parliament and […]