We may not get ‘The Flying Farage’ – but the RNLI should honour its greatest fundraiser

‘The Flying Farage’ was launched from the RNLI’s Dover station after the smashing of a pint of English ale off the bow. Its first voyage into the choppy waters of the English Channel was accompanied by a flotilla of small boats.

“It’s almost like Dunkirk,” said the man it was named for, a nostalgic tear welling in his (right) eye. He’d performed a volte face on the RNLI after a stunt involving him filming migrants in boats went awry requiring the rescue of him and his crew.

The first boat load of people picked up by ‘Flying’ from the choppy waters were offered similar refreshment, with Cola available for the non-drinkers.

“Fortunately we got there quickly and the crew obviously made sure they were in good health first, but we thought it appropriate as a tribute to the man who’s become our greatest fund raiser,” said a spokesperson.

Okay, I know, that’s a fever dream. For a start it would require Nigel Farage to admit that he was wrong to criticise the RNLI. He’s not a man inclined to do that about anything.

It’s also true that when Simon Harris, who also runs the popular Facebook page ‘Man Behaving Dadly’, launched a spectacularly successful, and ongoing, fundraiser with the stated aim of buying a new lifesaving hovercraft for the RNLI – to be called ‘The Flying Farage’ – there was a caveat.

Harris’s GoFundMe page makes it clear that it will be up to the charity to decide what to do with the proceeds. “The final decision on whether on not to proceed with ‘The Flying Farage’ is entirely at their discretion,” the page says.

In other words, the charity will be free to do whatever it thinks best furthers its aims of saving lives, regardless of the creed, colour, nationality, or asylum status of those lives. And who could argue with that?

Oh. Right.

Harris appears to have a far better handle on what motivates the charity than the critics who have emerged from the primordial swamp to take potshots at it for saving the lives of people attempting to cross the channel in small boats in a bid to reach Britain and the (dubious) safety it offers.

Farage has emerged as chief among them in the wake of his hiring by GB News, which looks to me like a flailing apparent by the Fox News wannabe to rescue itself from a return to said swamp.

A boat, so named, would surely be the people’s choice. At least the choice of decent people who recognise that it is lives that matter to the charity, that all men and women are created equal when it comes to pulling their shivering bodies from the chilly stretch of waters that batters this island’s southern shores, and that passports don’t matter in those circumstances.

I imagine that the RNLI will probably feel that having a hovercraft bearing the suggested name is, perhaps, a little too much of a lightning rod, much less Harris’s suggestions for future vessels that he’s suggested might be bought with his fundraising campaign’s proceeds.

The ‘Hovering Hopkins’ is a reference to the far right commentator Katie, who recently found herself in the news for being summarily booted out of Australia for violating that nation’s Covid quarantine rules. She took a plane, so she didn’t require rescue at sea.

The ‘Galloping Grimes’, meanwhile, takes a pop at Darren, who’s become something of a Farage ‘mini me’ and has taken to criticising the RNLI in a similar manner. Quite how rescuing drowning people from the Channel could ever be considered “deeply irresponsible” – as he put it – is beyond bizarre, but we do live in strange times.

Back to the ‘Flying Farage’, because I have another idea if the RNLI is worried about using the name for a hovercraft.

You may recall that when the Natural Environment Research Council turned to the internet to find a name for its swanky new polar research vessel, the internet bypassed suggestions such as ‘Shackleton’, ‘Endeavour’ and ‘Falcon’ in favour of ‘Boaty McBoatface’.

The exercise in online democracy – and irreverent British humour – proved to be too much for the powers that be, and the vessel was ultimately named for Sir David Attenborough, the famous naturalist. However, the NERC proved it was at least able to see the joke by giving the name to one of the vessel’s three robot controlled subs.

Perhaps the RNLI could do something similar, say, with an inflatable ‘Flying Farage’ launched from one of its bigger vessels? Turning Nigel into the new Boaty would at least recognise the role he’s played in sparking a huge surge in donations to the RNLI, which will help to save the lives of people who get into difficulty at sea.