Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum of Acting Man blog [6],
Reuters reports that UKIP's Nigel Farage has held talks with the leader of Italy's 5-Star movement, Beppe Grillo, to explore the idea of the two parties teaming up in the European parliament.
Farage made it clear that UKIP doesn't wish to be associated with European far-right parties, which as a rule have a protectionist and statist outlook.
“The leader of Britain's anti-European Union UK Independence Party (UKIP) said on Sunday he hoped to form an alliance with Italy's anti-establishment 5-Star Movement in the European Parliament.
UKIP's Nigel Farage met with 5-star leader Beppe Grillo earlier this week after both parties performed strongly in European Parliament elections earlier in May.
[…]
"I met Beppe Grillo last week … I am hoping we can do a deal with him and our group will sit bang in the middle politically of that parliament with a strong Euro-skeptic agenda," Farage told the BBC in an interview.
Forming a political group would give its members more power to support or block legislation, greater access to funding and the right to sit on committees. To form such a group in the 751-seat Strasbourg-based parliament, 25 members of parliament from seven states are needed.
In the new legislature, UKIP will have 24 seats and 5-Star will have 17 seats.
Farage repeated previous comments that he would not work with France's National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who this week struck a deal with four other Euro-skeptic parties.
"They come from a different political family," he said. "We want nothing to do with that party at all."
We're not surprised to hear that Farage is ruling out a coalition with Marine Le Pen's FN, but it it should be noted that the European and US mainstream media have displayed a tendency to lump all these parties together under the label 'far right'. As Justin Raimondo remarked to this:
“The "far right" meme is based on the results in France, where the National Front of Marine le Pen has for the first time won a plurality of seats in the European Parliament, and this news is usually coupled with panic-stricken reports of UKIP’s sweep across the Channel. Yet the two parties have nearly nothing in common except for opposition to the euro and the European project. The French Front is statist, protectionist , and carries red banners in the streets on May Day. UKIP is a quasi-free market split from the Tories, pro-free market and vaguely Little Englander. They aren’t opposed to immigration per se: they just want immigrants with assets, as opposed to the poorer variety.
The only thing these two movements have in common is opposition to the rule of Brussels, but that is quite enough for the Eurocrats and their journalistic camarilla to cast them in the role of volatile "extremists," dangerous "populists" out to tear apart the "social fabric" of Europe. One prominent Eurocrat, the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, foresees a replay of 1914: "I am chilled by the realization of how similar the crisis of 2013 is to that of 100 years ago," intones Jean-Claude Juncker.
While there aren’t many Archdukes left to assassinate, whatever the similarities to 1914, the so-called right-wing populists have little to do with it. Indeed, it is the EU, in seeking to assert itself as an international power, that has ratcheted up the war danger by challenging Russia in Ukraine, allying with Washington to push NATO to the very gates of Moscow. In opposing the EU’s very existence, these parties – whatever their other characteristics – are taking on the forces that make war more likely.
Indeed, it is those striving for more centralization and a 'Federated Europe' whose efforts are likely to end up increasing the probability of Europe getting tangled up in wars. With respect to the Ukraine and Russia, Martin Schulz, the president of the EU parliament since 2012 (soon likely to be replaced by JC 'I lie when things get serious' Juncker, a bureaucrat-politician who is a fixture in Brussels), recently said in a TV interview that the EU had nothing to offer in terms of military aggression that could be directed against Russia, so it had to make do with sanctions. To his credit, it didn't really sound as though he regretted this fact, although we cannot be 100% sure whether we interpreted his body-language and tone of voice correctly.
And yet, there are those who dream of a 'European Empire', a socialist super-state that sooner or later very likely will be deemed to need to throw around its weight militarily as well. After all, it is all about being 'taken seriously on the world stage'. There are already a number of papers floating around which are inter alia bemoaning the 'EU's defense deficit' ('defense' meaning 'war-making capability').
The problem of the EU's political elites is that the average citizen couldn't care less about their 'weight on the world stage' and instead worries about more tangible and immediate problems that are far removed from the political elite's concerns. Hence the electoral success of parties like UKIP (and due to lack of alternatives, FN in France).
Anyway, the upshot is that if UKIP and 5-Star can form a coalition, their move will likely undercut David Cameron's reported attempts to cut off UKIP's EU funding by trying to poach UKIP allies which hitherto were said to be 'unacceptable' to the Tories.
Lastly, the future entertainment value of the European parliament has surely been vastly increased by the election result, and that is just about the best one can hope for anyway.
[7]
Grillo and Farage have a laugh (presumably at Cameron)