Thursday 20 June 2013

"UKIP Is Still Dad's Army"


I’ve been surprised to find that some people have taken my American Spectator article as a retraction of my past criticism of UKIP. No such thing was intended, though ‘Phil W’, and several people on Twitter, seem to think so. Nor do I think that a careful reading will show that such a reading is justified.

Here is Mr ‘W’:

UKIP - AN APOLOGY, by Peter Hitchens In common with all other newspapers, I may have given the impression that I do not believe that UKIP has any credibility as a political party.

Phrases such as, 'absurd Dad’s Army of UKIP', 'UKIP will remain small', 'silly, futureless organisation' and 'amateur, and on shallow foundations' may have given the impression that I believed UKIP is farcical non-entity with no political future.

Additionally, readers may have inferred that when I claimed UKIP, 'really lacks any polished and persuasive performers' that I do not rate Mr. Farage very highly.

I now realise none of the above is true and that UKIP's recent success, 'is in fact a long-delayed and irreversible confirmation of a crucial truth', and that only 'conformist choirs of conventional commentators in London' would seek to deny this.

Furthermore, rather than lacking in appeal, Farage actually 'embodies something indomitable, irreverent, commonsensical, and entirely British that is instinctively liked by many, whatever their political views'.

I apologise for any confusion this may have caused.

Mr ‘W’ and others should read what I say more carefully. The article is of course written for an American audience who have never heard of UKIP and may in some cases think that the Tory Party is a conservative formation. My aim was to explain to them how and why it was that Tory voters had deserted their party, and what it might mean in general. I might add that Dad’s Army, to which I frequently compare UKIP, is largely unknown in the USA and probably wouldn’t be understood if it were.

I concentrated on attacking the Conservative Party because this is my main secular aim in life, and I think that if its true state becomes more widely known in foreign countries, this knowledge may reflect back into Britain and do it damage.

I also chose to make some more general points about what Anglosphere conservatism is, how it has its roots in the general contentment of a free law-governed people and so is vulnerable to opponents who are informed by ideology. It cannot understand them, and so cannot oppose or defeat them, or undo their bad deeds. This theme has become more important to me as I argue this case, and was a large part of my contribution to a recent debate at the University of York, in which I urged the local student Tories to disband.

I’d also add that I have for some time urged my readers to vote UKIP as the least worst option. This is emphatically not because I endorse that Party, which I absolutely and definitively decline to do, but because a large UKIP vote will aid the destruction of the Tory Party, my chief aim in politics.  

My reservations about Mr Farage, and my lack of sympathy with him,  are clearly stated in the American Spectator article. For instance: ‘His voice is a kind of bray, as those who have seen his attention-seeking public attack on European Council president Herman Van Rompuy will know. (Mr. Farage, a fine self-publicist, had no doubt noticed that a similar verbal machine-gunning of the then Labour premier Gordon Brown by an ambitious Tory called Daniel Hannan had garnered a large YouTube audience.)’.

Anyone who knows what I think about marriage, cars, drugs, decorum, smoking and drinking will also not see the following passages as a keen endorsement: ‘He is happy, even eager, to be photographed with a half-empty (or is it half-full?) glass of beer in his hand. And by “beer” I mean the proper tepid, flat liquid, pumped into the glass by hand through yards of slimy tube, known in England as “bitter” and served by the pint, not in foreign liters.

‘He is a committed smoker (despite having survived testicular cancer). If there were an Olympic long lunch contest, he would be a gold medalist.’

Or : ‘Apart from the smoking and the beer, his life is a living, breathing (or rather, wheezing) rejection of political correctness. He is not embarrassed to visit lap-dancing clubs. One would expect him to ask for extra lead in his gasoline and extra tar in his cigarettes. He was exposed in a downmarket newspaper (which did him no harm at all) for allegedly sharing an energetic night of passion with a Latvian woman, not his wife, an episode about which he seems to be both proud and embarrassed. He has been run over while far from sober, and narrowly escaped death when a light plane in which he was flying crashed (the plane was towing a UKIP campaign banner, which somehow got tangled in the tailplane). Claims that he is some sort of foreigner-hating xenophobe crumble when it is pointed out that he has French ancestry and that his (second) wife is German.’

I note that this behaviour appeals to an important part of the public because this is true, not because it appeals to me.

But the heart of my description is here : ‘Behind him stands a party that has little substance and many possible embarrassments. Mr. Farage himself is not a social conservative (he has mused in public about “decriminalizing” drugs), though quite a lot of his supporters are and he will sooner or later have to face this. But my guess is that he is a demolition man, not a builder. His task is to destroy. He is a missile directed straight at the heart of David Cameron’s Tory Party. And when he has finished exploding he may, with luck, have cleared a space for the creation of something Britain has never really had but now badly needs: a truly conservative party…’

This sums up my attitude. I am glad he is damaging the Tories. I do not agree with him, or particularly approve of him, or of his party. I still regard UKIP as a Dad’s Army which cannot possible replace the Tories as a major party of government.

7 comments:

  1. "when he has finished exploding he may, with luck, have cleared a space for the creation of something Britain has never really had but now badly needs: a truly conservative party…’"

    Precisely.

    And that, perhaps unexplained even to himself, is Nigel Farage's mission.

    Britain, as Peter says "has never had a truly conservative party".

    No wonder the Establishment fear UKIP's rise so much.

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  2. There is nothing to fear. The American Spectator is a monthly magazine, and much of this article was already out of date by the time that it was published. In the meantime, UKIP has lost a third of its already meagre support.

    Peter Hitchens is part of the Establishment? That is priceless. But, if this is possible, not as priceless as that "perhaps unexplained even to himself".

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  3. What is to fear is a truly conservative party-which can only come about when one of the Big Two has gone-so the other will have nothing to prop it up.

    UKIP hasn't lost anything-you were wrong the last time you predicted its collapse over some Facebook comments-just before it cleaned up a whole load of Council seats.

    Now you're jumping around over a single poll-which asked about 100 people.

    Are you about six years old?

    Was I talking about Peter Hitchens? When has he ever "feared" UKIP?

    It was he who pointed out that the London Liberal commentators talk of a "blip" reflects their own fear.

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  4. No, it was fully borne out by the results.

    7.5 per cent of the eligible vote in the least populous areas of England: exactly how many votes cast was that?

    No council controlled, or anywhere close. No Westminster seat where it is on course to be First Past The Post.

    No Labour council seat taken. Your only seat in supposedly heartland Nottinghamshire lost to Labour.

    And even Peter Hitchens still calling you Dad's Army.

    An interesting phenomenon. But not an important one.

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  5. Hardly borne out-we consistently captured 25% of the votes cast.

    If we're going on eligible vote-Labour became a Government with 22% of the eligible vote in 2010.

    Since when did "eligible vote" instead of "actual votes" become the measure of success-except as a selective weapon when it suits certain people to downplay something they don't want to happen?

    But I agree-the real story of those Council elections wasn't necessarily UKIP-it was Labour's utterly atrocious performance (all the more so, against such an unpopular government).

    That was far more of a story-and showed what a failure Miliband is.

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  6. You should read the extract John Rentoul published in the Independent today.

    He notes that Tony Blair's greatest achievement was to make the Tories left-wing-as Hitchens has said all along.

    """The greatest acknowledgement of his achievement was the change in the Conservative Party.""

    "" This is a true measure of a leader's historical significance.""

    "" Just as the Tory party accommodated itself to Attlee's postwar settlement, and Blair himself marked Labour's accommodation to Thatcherism, by 2005 he had forced the Conservatives to put public services before tax cuts. Even in trying to close the deficit five years later David Cameron and George Osborne protected spending on the NHS and schools.""



    ""The Conservative Party. has abandoned the idea that people should be encouraged to opt out of the NHS; and who would have thought that the Tories would now be opposed in principle to extending selective state education?""

    In order words, Blair forced the Tories to abandon their remaining conservatism.

    They are both (barring some Tory back-benchers) one big Left-wing party now-no idea why they sit on opposite sides.

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  7. If we're going on eligible vote-Labour became a Government with 22% of the eligible vote in 2010.

    Which is a lot more than 7.5. And even that was only in the Shires.

    Labour topping the English County Council Elections was breathtaking. Astonishing.

    As for Rentoul, he is attributing to the Tories position that they never held.

    On education, that has been their position even longer than it has been Labour's, and all told they have done more than Labour to give effect to it over the last 45 years.

    On health, they held no such position, ever, until after they had returned to office in 2010. If they had gone into that Election on such a ticket, then they would have lost. When they go into the next one on it, then they will lose.

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