Farage marches on

Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party is clearly dominating the debate, such as it is, over the farcical European elections that take place later in the month. Despite a fig-leaf of support from veteran campaigner George Galloway and a handful of former Trotskyites who have made their name in the bourgeois media, Farage’s platform is essentially like the UKIP of old.

The Brexit Party will hoover up most of the anti-immigrant vote that once went to openly racist parties; and disaffected Tories will vote for the Farage slate in protest at Mrs May’s inability to deliver Brexit.

None of this will make the slightest bit of difference to what is going on in Parliament. Mrs May’s Government cannot deliver Brexit and this fractious Parliament cannot deliver anything these days.

The European Parliament has become a byword for undemocratic practices, corruption, nepotism, waste and fraud on a massive scale. The elections themselves are nothing more than a bogus public relations exercise for a body that possesses no meaningful executive powers at all. They don’t deserve the credibility of a vote at all.

The only way out of the impasse is another general election and this has to be the central demand of the labour movement in the weeks to come. In the meantime don’t bother to vote in the European elections. It’s a pointless exercise for a worthless institution.