Labour Party Archives - Richard M. Langworth

“Our Nige”: The New Happy Warrior

25 October 2014 Comments 0 Comments

N.B. A shorter version of this piece on Nigel Farage appeared in The Weekly Standard online

A few years ago Britain’s Nigel Farage was a political curiosity, head of a fringe party, gadfly member of the European Parliament, an ex-commodities broker who never went to college, dismissed as a nutter by ruling elites in London and Brussels. On 23 June 2016, he was widely credited with a key role in the referendum favoring Brexit— Britain’s exit from the European Community.

“Our Nige,” his supporters call him—personable, chatty, good-looking, beer swilling, cigarette and cigar smoking—wants Britain, not the European Union, to govern British affairs.…

Churchill’s “Infallibility”: Myth on Myth

10 July 2012 Comments 10 Comments

Mr. Daniel Knowles (“Time to scotch the myth of Winston Churchill’s infallibility,” (originally blogged on the Daily Telegraph but since pulled from all the websites where it appeared), wrote that the “national myth” of World War II and Churchill “is being used in an argument about the future of the House of Lords.”

Mr. Knowles quoted Liberal Party leader Nick Clegg, who cited Churchill’s 1910 hope that the Lords “would be fair to all parties.” Sir Winston’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames MP, replied that Churchill “dropped those views and had great reverence and respect for the institution of the House of Lords.”…

“Winston” Olbermann and the Healthcare Debate

19 October 2009 Comments 1 Comment

N.B.: If Mr. Olbermann had done more research, he would know what Churchill did say about national healthcare, which is more to the point: see Churchill and Healthcare.

MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann is for the proposed American healthcare reform bill, which is neither here nor there.

What is interesting to Churchillians is his use of Winston Churchill’s words to support it—from both 1945 (when Churchill was campaigning against socialism), and 1936 (when Churchill was urging rearmament in the face of Nazi Germany).

In 1945, Olbermann says, Churchill

equated his opponents, the party that sought to introduce “The National Health,” to the Gestapo of the Germans that he and we had just beaten just as those opposing reform now have invoked Nazis as frequently and falsely as if they were invoking Zombies.…