Every Thursday at 9 a.m. LBC radio (Leading Britain’s Conversation) hosts Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on the Nick Ferrari show. The segment is called ‘Call Clegg’ and Ferrari’s show is the highest rated on the station that is the only significant rival to the BBC when it comes to talk/news radio.
Clegg threw down the gauntlet on Thursday challenging the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which opposes EU membership, to a fully fledged debate on the matter. On Friday UKIP leader Nigel Farage responded, while also appearing on the Ferrari show.
Farage opened up saying he ”almost choked on his bacon roll” when he heard Nick Clegg wanted a debate on the big European question and went on to point out that “this was the guy three years ago who was advocating an in/out referendum who now says there shouldn’t be a referendum so he’s all over the place.”
Clegg has his back against the wall. The junior coalition partner of the Conservative Party Clegg’s Liberal Democrats are rapidly losing ground to Farage’s UKIP in a political re-alignment the country has not seen since the late 1940s.
As the Conservatives move to the social centre and even left, taking away some Lib. Dem. voters they leave behind a trail of natural conservatives who are finding a new home in UKIP. Meanwhile the Lib. Dem. party itself, which has picked up a marginal 20% of disaffects for two generations is losing them to UKIP showing these voters were never ideologically centrist.
As European elections approach in May, and UKIP routinely finishes second in by-elections, the Lib. Dems are literally in danger of becoming history. The May elections will be a golden opportunity for Farage when anti EU sentiment will be voiced at the ballot box.
Back to the debate which Clegg simply had no choice but to try before he becomes completely irrelevant! Farage told Nick Ferrari that he would like to have Opposition Leader Ed Miliband of Labour as well as Prime Minister David Cameron involved, although he thought they would decline.
In fact Team Cameron had already pre-empted this with a message that the Prime Minster was “too busy running the country” to participate in any such thing. Farage was quick to point out that ‘running ‘ was the appropriate term for Cameron and reminded listeners that EU Commission Vice-President Viviane Reding said that 70% of Britain’s laws are already made by Brussels.
And the likes of Reding would like to go further. She said in January "We need to build a United States of Europe with the Commission as government and two chambers – the European Parliament and a "Senate" of Member States," that this would be the "best weapon against the Eurosceptics".
Clegg seems to have gotten the idea and in a page from Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, who told the Greek Press recently: "We must not avoid confrontation with populists, nationalists, with these brainless people who call themselves eurosceptics"; the Deputy Prime Minister has decided to take on the leader of the “brainless”.
Farage said one of the reasons he got into politics was that he realized the British never discuss the implications of being part of the European system and said “at no point have we ever had a full national debate about the merits or demerits of EU membership.”
Farage went on to say “I suspect that David Cameron never wants to have this debate. I think the splits in the Labour Party between New Labour and Old Labour over the European question have been highlighted by open door immigration which hasn’t just put lots of our youngsters out of work it’s led to wage compression.”
This last point by Farage is one that tends to get relegated. Many people can tell that excessive and/or illegal immigration puts pressure on the availability of jobs but wage compression gets talked about much less.
Flooding the job market with cheap labor leads to depressed wages and lowers almost everybody’s standard of living. Establishment types like it because they can produce product for a lower labor cost but that illegally and recklessly disregards the general interests and will of the nation.
But the debate is on and gaining national attention! An early instant poll on the LBC website asked readers if they thought Clegg or Farage would carry the day and it is the UKIP leader that has a commanding 70.5% - 29.5% lead at time of writing. The date and format have yet to be arranged.
