Thread by @JohnFinagin

I was intrigued by the website below. I must admit I found its tone a bit overexcitable at times but it gave some really interesting insights into the Brexit Party.

Thread .......1/

So I followed it through, selecting only those who were elected to become Brexit Party MEPs. I double-checked the information with a number of other sources to come up with the table below with the caveat not everything is known about each MEP at this point in time ....2/

The Brexit Party is pretty obviously an upmarket UKIP v2.0. That's worked well to distance itself from Farage's abandoned UKIP v1.0 but it doesn't take much scrutiny to see that common people are no longer welcome to positions of influence and power .....3/

Brexit Party MEPs' primary backgrounds:

Politics, including advisors: 6 MEPs
Business: 6 MEPs
Journalism: 3 MEPs
Asset management: 3 MEPs
Property investment & development: 2 MEPs

........4/

And one MEP each from:

ex-armed services, legal services, PR, former nurse, doctor, dentist, ex civil servant, opera singer, privately wealthy (rich husband) .........5/

In terms of where they're coming from:

Climate change deniers: 14 (48%)
Financiers: 11 (38%)
Described 'Moneyed Elite': 10 (34%)

Other attitudes are varied, & info is limited as we simply have insufficient information on a number of new MEPs to reach any conclusions .....6/

There are two obvious weaknesses to the Brexit Party - its links to climate change denial and the paradox of its populism ......7/

Half the BXP MEPs have displayed denial of climate change as a result of human agency & a number of those have strong views on decarbonising energy supply, including Farage himself, along with a desire for deregulation projects the party as being environmentally unfriendly ....8/

And the obvious intention of not giving its working class base any real voice in where it goes in its selection and prioritisation of MEPs, who range from comfortable middle class to the super-rich might come back to bite if it tries to run in a general election .....9/

It looks to me that Bannon has advised Farage to keep the pigs well away from the sheep! It appears to have worked for now in Trump's USA, but with the rise of young stars like @AOC the myths of populism sooner or later have to be tested against reality..........10

End of thread