"UKIP Is Still Dad's Army"

UKIP - NO APOLOGY from Peter Hitchens:

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.