Nigel Farage’s divide and rule shame

Everybody knows that from time to time politics becomes a dirty business: Personal attacks, campaigns to undermine and dish the dirt, point scoring wherever you can. Politicians often say, "We will have less yaboo politics" but when push comes to shove, most cannot resist it. It’s tribal.

But what the Leader of UKip  Nigel Farage has engaged in over the last few days goes way beyond the ‘Punch and Judy’ knock about of British politics. 

In a truculent, breath taking statement, he wilfully sought to pit the suffering of those caught up in unprecedented flooding around the country, against those in war-torn Syria, Africa, and Afghanistan, where some people  are subject to the worst humanitarian conditions imaginable.

"Wouldn't it be brilliant to see the British Government say 'yes, we're going to put our own struggling country first?" he proclaimed to the waiting press.

He went on to say that monies should be diverted from the aid budget and given to those struggling with the floods.

Farage’s populist appeal has been taken up by both the Daily Mail and the Daily Express with petitions to cut the Foreign Aid budget. In recent years, the UK has been at the forefront of ensuring Britain maintains its level of foreign aid to those who most need it, such as giving £175 million to the tens of millions people being caught in the Syria's  bloody civil war.

Whilst no country can be certain that every penny is spent where it needs to go, the overwhelming majority of our tax money goes to the most vulnerable, including simply keeping children alive.  Farage is well aware and seems to care little that most of those children who are dependent on our aid as a matter of life or death are black and brown.

To pit the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable in world against those suffering from floods is just cruel and wrong. We can only applaud the Prime Minister David Cameron, and other senior politicians for resisting Farage’s gutter divide and rule politics.

In a week in which bankers bonuses will hit the billions Farage could have easily suggested to them-the bankers-that they take only half their bonus and donate the millions to those suffering from the floods. 

Instead Farage uses this awful tragedy of flooded homes to politically make us feel less about others with this false dichotomy of 'it’s either them or us.'

This is man with no shame! But we must be better than that.

Simon Woolley