Why are UKIP's Members of the European Parliament campaigning to ensure continued public funding of a Europarty of which the main affiliates are the BNP, the Front National and Jobbik? So much for the lower-middlebrow standby that those are somehow parties of the Left. Unless UKIP is. Is it?
Godfrey Bloom's argument is that this is about democracy, pluralism, and freedom of speech. UKIP fears being next on the hit list. "First, they came for the Nazis," and all that. Quite what it says about UKIP's sense of self, that it fears being next on the hit list after that lot, it is perhaps politest not to speculate.
But, although that is a very valid argument, it is only half the story. UKIP is the Outside Right of British politics, the very rightmost point of the acceptable spectrum, the most right-wing force with the representatives of which everyone else would share a platform or a panel.
That gives it an organising role in anchoring the Right while engaging fully in the battle
of ideas at every level of cultural life and of the education system, and while co-ordinating broad-based and inclusive
campaigns on issues of common interest, all the while acting as a friendly
critic and a critical friend of the Conservative Party.
Sometimes, that means protecting the funding of the BNP, in order to ensure that it was still there when the wider Right needed it for whatever purpose. That is what UKIP is doing at the moment. Of course.
Sometimes, that means protecting the funding of the BNP, in order to ensure that it was still there when the wider Right needed it for whatever purpose. That is what UKIP is doing at the moment. Of course.
Utter rot, it is because it is about treating democracy as something real rather than paying lip service to it, have a read of this http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2569/defending_democracy_does_the_bnp_deserve_your_cash
ReplyDeleteTrue. But only half the story. As I explained.
ReplyDeleteAnd Alexandra "Taxation Is Theft" Swann is against the public funding of absolutely everything. Apart from the BNP.
Ukip needs to be careful. Auntie won't like this. And Ukip is nothing without Auntie.
ReplyDeleteAlexandra Swann is an anarcho-capitalist who favours open-border immigration and the abolition of the welfare state.
ReplyDeleteShe is not, therefore, a conservative. She's a Ron Paul liberal.
Your blog post is quite wrong on a number of issues, however. UKIP bans anybody with any past BNP affiliations from joining the party.
Its concern is with the principle of democracy-the BNP has many thousands of supporters (many of them, former Labour voters, of Lindsay's persuasion). So whether we like it or not, is irrelevant.
It shouldn't be denied funding. It's ideas should be defeated in the political sphere, (light is the best disinfectant etc) not artificially denied oxygen by the state.
Besides, this Government, and particularly Labour Governments, waste taxpayers money on enough bad things (the Iraq War, the EU, the Afghanistan war, 200,000 abortions a year, unmarried women who choose to have five kids by five different dads) I can't see why on Earth they'd stop at the BNP. Can you?
I'm no fan of Boris but it's interesting to read his thoughts on the real motivations behind Miliband's "we don't want an in/out referendum" speech.
ReplyDeleteHe wrote that it's all to do with internal Labour Party politics-and Miliband's fear of a split between the unstable coalition of pro-EU New Labour and Eurosceptical Old Labour-and that Miliband may be forced into a humliating U-turn on his pledge not to give a referendum, before 2015.
Johnson: '"Miliband has ruled out a referendum, not because he cares about the UK or Europe.... but because he wants to avoid the kind of split that sunk Labour in the 1970s and 1980's.
""It won't work. He will either do a humiliating U-turn, or go into the election with a suicidal commitment to ignore the British people.""
Oh, this is all true. But it won't be sold as U-turn. Or bought as one. He was going to win in 2015, anyway. What will we be in by then? A quadruple dip recession? A quintuple dip recession?
ReplyDeleteThere will be no "humiliation". He is already beyond that possibility with the starving, freezing electorate, which will forgive him anything and the Coalition nothing.
There are extremely few Old Labour UKIP voters. You are assuming that everyone, absolutely everyone, in somewhere like Rotherham would ordinarily have voted Labour. In fact, based on the traditional Tory vote there, or anywhere else, only taking 20 per cent was not doing very well for UKIP.
The Conservative vote went down. The Labour vote held up. It doesn't take much working out. UKIP is as the BNP was a few years ago: somewhere for disgruntled Tories in Labour areas to sulk until they get hungry and go home.
Swann the anarcho-capitalist who wants the BNP of all things to be funded by the EU of all things, as an occasional Telegraph Blogger, is Fleet Street's only voice of UKIP. If that is a problem for UKIP, and I am not convinced that it is, then it is UKIP's problem. Good luck selling the abolition of all public provision even to the Tory voters of somewhere like Rotherham.
UKIP is the only party that needs a ban on former BNP members. And Trots were not allowed in the Communist Party, for decades the Outside Left of British politics. That did not mean that it and the Labour Left did not find them useful, as they also found each other, on occasion.
UKIP and the Conservative Right need the BNP to do the less salubrious sort of work from time to time, just as the CPGB and the Labour Left needed the likes of the International Marxist Group (including man in the news, Chris Huhne), the International Socialists who became the SWP, and such Militant Tendency as there ever really was.
To the point that UKIP will even campaign to rescue the otherwise bankrupt BNP by saving its EU funding. Impossible to satire. But, for those who can see and understand the parallels, perfectly easy to believe.
Wrong-the BNP was the home of disgruntled Labour voters, while UKIP was the home of disgruntled Tories.
ReplyDeleteUKIP is now embracing both-as your friend said last week.
The voters won't be fooled for long by Cameron's EU con-nor will they be fooled by Miliband's equally-fraudulent U-turn.
As Peter Hitchens wrote this Sunday "all three Establishment Parties will campaign for us to stay in, cheered on by whoever is in the White House".
Whether Miliband can win in 2015 (and anyone could, against this lot) no hope will come from that quarter.
UKIP remain the only popular party advancing a serious policy on the EU-and thus on immigration, too.
They'll get more popular, the more voters begin to realise that.
Swann's views aren't in line with UKIP-as she openly admitted on Twitter when she said abolishing the welfare state would be "unthinkable" and that mass migration was hurting the people.
UKIP are right to propose a complete freeze.
Stopped reading after the first line, at once illiterate and innumerate.
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to simply wooden, boring and detached from reality.
ReplyDeleteLike your posts.
You'll never increase your readership unless your nice to the very few of us who actually read this.
You don't want to burn your bridges or you'll be down to 0.