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Nigel Farage is the man of the moment. Putting the cat amongst the pigeons with the main political parties. All but writing government policy judging by the Queens speech the other week.

Personally I can't stand the bloke. And he is such a bloke with his pint and fags down the pub image. But it is just an image. Whilst he is a million miles from power he can safely play the 'average bloke' to the max.

I guess compared with Cameron, Milliband and Clegg he almost seems normal. Well as normal as a boarding school attending stockbroker can ever seem. And there's the thing that he's a member of the European parliament as well. His supporter's would say he's subverting from within. I wonder what his expenses claims are like? Pretty parsinimous you would expect given his dislike of the waste of the EU.

Has he even got any policies beyond pulling out of the EU and clamping down on immigrants? If he has I'm guessing they are pretty much the same as the Tories. Cos that's what he is a maverick Tory.

For all the consternation he's causing Cameron he's also a handy distraction. We can get back to bashing the EU, immigrants and skivers on the dole. Lets dodge the less comfortable questions about the NHS, ageing population, house price bubbles and the financial markets that seem to be acting like 2008 never happened. The rich people who pay less tax because they are allegedly 'wealth creators'. But just who is getting that wealth?

In fact the ageing population is a much more serious concern than immigration in my opinion. There's a lot of talk about the massive cost of the Uk's welfare payments. Over half of those are paid to pensioners not to unemployed or low paid people. 

Similarily there is talk of immigrants coming over and using our hard pressed health service. The reality though is that immigrants tend to be younger and therefore healthier. The strain on the NHS will continue to rise as we all tend to live longer.

I don't think the problem is unsolvable. But it will mean people taking a reality check about how soon they will be able to retire and accepting that the living standards of everybody may have to drop for the good of us all.

Funnily enough a party run by and for the benefit of the rich minority don't want to hear this or be involved in it. Instead they cling onto a system that is running out of steam in the hope it'll keep going long enough for them to make their money and scarper.

Meanwhile immigrants are a handy folk devil to scare people. I'm not saying that unlimited immigration into the Uk is a good idea. But I think some of the stories that are passed as fact have to be challenged. For instance the idea that immigrants come over and jump to the top of social housing lists and immediately start claiming benefits. I don't think this is actually true or possible and I don't think I've seen any facts and figures (as opposed to anecdotal 'I've got a mate who told me..' stories) that back this up. 

I think the governments latest plan to get NHS staff and landlords to become their new border control is stupid, unworkable and stinks of an attempt to turn us into the new East Germany with everybody spying on each other. 

The idea of NHS staff checking people's passports and papers is particularly insidious. One inevitable consequence of this will be that people with infectious diseases will not seek treatment and chances of infection spreading will increase. Above all else though its inhumane to inhibit people's use of health services in this way. We are not the United States with their apartheid style health system. Well not yet anyway. Once the nurses have got the hang of checking for passports they can move onto taking credit card details.

I think its time to sit down and think about what sort of country we want to live in and how we want to live in it. Are we satisfied being a miserable mean spirited spiteful bunch easily divided and conquered by the corporations and their lap dog politicians. Getting worked up by scare stories in the tabloids when the people who are really taking what's ours are doing it in clear sight and with no challenge from anybody.

Lovable spiv Farage is no better to my mind than chubby cheeked public school boy Cameron. Just another apologist for the status quo. If Milliband wants to be PM he's got to start growing a spine. And talking in simple clear terms about what he's going to do different to the Tories; and for the benefit of the majority rather than the minority. 

Live at Leeds 2013

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