Hugo Rifkind on the Carswell vs. Farage and Banks feud
Many people who follow politics will echo the Tony Benn line that it ought to be about policies rather than personalities. I certainly go along with this to some extent - when politics is only about the personalities of individual people it inevitably either becomes shallow at best or vicious at worst.
As in so many things Tony Benn's view took a good point and carried it to extreme and unworldly lengths. You can never entirely disentangle the policies from the people who have to carry them out.
Of course, poisonous political feuds are particular meat and drink to journalists. Nevertheless, when the journalists are presenting irrefutable evidence that the people trying to run any given party not merely have disagreements - which in any government trying to run the country is completely unavoidable - but cannot stand one another and have a completely dysfunctional working relationship (Blair vs. Brown or Steel vs. Owen spring to mind) then other things being equal that is a good reason not to vote for them.
Hugo Rifkind has such an article, "The real reason Nigel Farage hates Douglas Carswell," in the Spectator.
He makes an extremely convincing argument that Carswell is a genuine anti-establishment figure - as UKIP's one MP he even turned down the "Short Money" offered to opposition parties, for instance - where the real problem Banks and Farage have with the establishment is that they're not in it.
Well worth a read.
As in so many things Tony Benn's view took a good point and carried it to extreme and unworldly lengths. You can never entirely disentangle the policies from the people who have to carry them out.
Of course, poisonous political feuds are particular meat and drink to journalists. Nevertheless, when the journalists are presenting irrefutable evidence that the people trying to run any given party not merely have disagreements - which in any government trying to run the country is completely unavoidable - but cannot stand one another and have a completely dysfunctional working relationship (Blair vs. Brown or Steel vs. Owen spring to mind) then other things being equal that is a good reason not to vote for them.
Hugo Rifkind has such an article, "The real reason Nigel Farage hates Douglas Carswell," in the Spectator.
He makes an extremely convincing argument that Carswell is a genuine anti-establishment figure - as UKIP's one MP he even turned down the "Short Money" offered to opposition parties, for instance - where the real problem Banks and Farage have with the establishment is that they're not in it.
Well worth a read.
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