Nigel Farage is simply wrong about Vladimir Putin
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It looks to me as if Nigel Farage and the Reform party have just blown their chance to become a major voice in the British Parliament. The suggestion that the West “provoked” the tyrant in the Kremlin into launching his bloody war in Ukraine is utterly wrong-headed.
The results of Putin’s aggression have been abominable. He is directly responsible for the deaths of the soldiers and civilians who have suffered in his conflict. Nato’s expansion to the east did not force Putin into an invasion. It is a defensive alliance, not a military threat, and the idea that a desire to join the European Union was any more of a justification is laughable. Putin’s actions directly violated the Budapest Memorandum signed by Russia in 1994, which promised to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine”. What independent, sovereign country would confer upon its neighbours the right to veto its foreign policy?
I feel great frustration over Farage’s comments. If he had said that our pathetically small Army and lack of conventional defence meant that Putin thought he had the “green light” to invade Ukraine, because we no longer cared for our security and the defence of Europe, then I would have agreed with him enthusiastically.
So, I suspect, would those in middle England who see Farage as the answer to years of Tory “wets”, and the grindingly dull and grey future which awaits us under Keir Starmer and his crew. After all, many of Reform’s ideas are excellent, and resonate with many of us in this country. Stopping the boats, cutting taxes, ensuring that those who don’t want a job are not continuously propped up by taxpayers and increasing defence spending straight away to 3 per cent, are all things that I and millions would vote for in a heartbeat.
Farage is by far and away the best orator and debater around and says, sometimes, what huge numbers of us think. In a politically stagnant age, of the crushingly dull Starmer and the “rabbit in the headlights” Sunak, Farage adds much colour to the hustings and would certainly do so to the House of Commons.
But this error of judgment on foreign policy is simply catastrophic. The most pressing task facing Britain on the 5th of July will be to ensure our national security, and that begins by seeing the task in Ukraine through. Vladimir Putin must be defeated, utterly. There can be no rewards for starting wars on the European continent, and destabilising the global economy.
If we get this wrong, the cost of living, small boats and climate change could become horrifically irrelevant. The risk that we would find ourselves facing another conflict on our continent would rise.
And that means I cannot vote for a man who, however unintentionally, has almost certainly given Putin a ray of hope. The West must present a united front of this issue. Every time we hint at wavering, we strengthen Russia’s resolve, giving it the sense that if it just holds on a little longer, Western support will wane, the flow of ammunition will dry up and victory will be in sight.
It is a self-inflicted wound, and all the more frustrating for that.
