I've tuned out of the General Election coverage so that I can concentrate on the stuff that really matters about politics. But the soap opera nature of Westminster coverage is a hard drug to go cold turkey on. One of the threads still floating around my head was the story that lit up the last week before the nominations closed. Nigel Farage and some other Brexit sages and luminaries expressed their outrage that the Conservatives were trying to bribe them into standing aside with offers of jobs and gongs.
This doesn't sound totally impossible at first sight. The Tories' chances of winning a majority were severely curtailed by the presence of the Brexit Party. It would certainly be possible to imagine the seasoned campaigner with the name so closely associated in the minds of everyone with Brexit pulling off a few coups that could be very damaging indeed to the prospects of the Boris premiership. And it is not exactly known for the Tories to let ethics get in the way of efficacy. So bribing rivals to stay away is certainly not outside their normal operating parameters.
Against that we need to remember that Farage himself is quite simply one of the most dishonest and unscrupulous politicians this country has produced. He is also well able to lie with enough motive power to keep a string of middle eastern bazaars in business for a month.
So who should we believe? I don't think it is impossible that hints were dropped. But I doubt that they were concrete enough for Farage to be able to claim that an actual offer was made. Quite apart from anything else, that would be technically illegal. And the one thing the Tories would want even less than the Brexit Party standing it is a court coming along and putting a halt to the whole election process.
The point is that stopping the Brexit Party from standing only works if you can literally nobble them the last week before nominations go in. If they had pulled out a few weeks before there is every chance that a grass roots movement of sincere Brexiters could have mobilised replacement candidates. That might have been worse for the Tories than the Farage operation. Say what you like about authoritarian and undemocratic organisations - at least they can make a decision. They don't have to worry about what the activists think.
So if I were trying to get as clear a run from the Brexit Party as I could I would have definitely be doing what I could to get the Brexit Party to stand down. And giving them the impression they had been promised something would have been a handy trick to deploy. But I'd have stopped short of actually making any promise that was bankable. So why is Farage shouting so loud about it? I have a feeling that for once he's been taken for a ride. He's a canny operator and has done a lot of very clever stuff over the years. But I think he has finally met his match. Because look at the state he has ended up in. By standing down nearly half his troops he has, single handedly, done more damage to the ultra-Brexit cause than anyone else. If the Tories go on to win their majority, they own Brexit.
I don't want to help the Brexit side of the debate, but it is quite clear to me was what they actually needed was a democratic party with a proper grass roots that would push for what they want through thick and thin. Activists are tough birds and can cope with years of failure. But all the time they keep going, they are still in the game. You only have to look at how the Labour Party picked itself up after its disastrous showing in 1983. The Lib Dems have faced wipe out twice and bounced back. The Brexit Party on the other hand has no grass roots. It doesn't even have any roots. And its one purpose - the one written on the tin - will shortly be redundant.
It does however have one achievement to its name. It did destroy the actual grass roots party that did so much to bring about Brexit. It is quite likely that Brexiters will soon have forgotten about the Brexit Party but wish they still had UKIP.
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