In the course of denouncing any proposal for a UKIP pact with the Conservative Party, the UKIP Deputy Chairman Suzanne Evans writes:
And as for talk about ‘Uniting the Right,’ well the Tories have completely misjudged UKIP if they think the party is ‘right wing,’ whatever that really means.
We now very much occupy the common sense centre ground.
Ending the bedroom tax; taking everyone on minimum wage out of tax altogether; cutting fuel bills; keeping the NHS free; restoring free eye and dental checks; regulating zero hours contracts; scrapping road tolls; taking our fair share of refugees; abolishing tuition fees for poorer families on approved courses: arguably, these are all ‘left-wing’ policies UKIP is committed to and which will take centre stage in our 2015 Manifesto.
By publishing someone who advocates "Ending the bedroom tax; taking everyone on minimum wage out of tax altogether; cutting fuel bills; keeping the NHS free; restoring free eye and dental checks; regulating zero hours contracts; scrapping road tolls; taking our fair share of refugees; abolishing tuition fees for poorer families on approved courses", and who favourably describes that position as "left-wing", James Delingpole's Breitbart London has gone where Telegraph Blogs never went.
I am the first say that the national and parliamentary sovereignty of the United Kingdom is, with municipalism, the only means to social democracy in the territory that it covers, and is thus the democracy in social democracy.
No less than the previous point, only social democracy, and not least the public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, is capable of safeguarding that sovereignty, national and parliamentary, and that democracy, parliamentary and municipal.
One Nation, indeed. The common sense centre ground, indeed.
But I never took that for the position either of UKIP or of Breitbart News London. And in the former case, especially, I wonder who will.
If it is not the Conservatives wanting to be New Labour, then it is UKIP wanting to be, or at least to appear to be, Old Labour. No one wants to be on the Right in Britain. No one will even admit to being on the Right in Britain. No matter how obviously they are.
UPDATE: That Toby Young is another one. His "argument" (the facts, if facts they be, are not the present point) is that Frances O'Grady and the TUC ought to support the Conservatives rather than Labour because, in the very traditional understanding of the term, the Conservatives are more left-wing than Labour, and that that is self-evidently a good thing.
If it is not the Conservatives wanting to be New Labour, then it is UKIP wanting to be, or at least to appear to be, Old Labour. No one wants to be on the Right in Britain. No one will even admit to being on the Right in Britain. No matter how obviously they are.
UPDATE: That Toby Young is another one. His "argument" (the facts, if facts they be, are not the present point) is that Frances O'Grady and the TUC ought to support the Conservatives rather than Labour because, in the very traditional understanding of the term, the Conservatives are more left-wing than Labour, and that that is self-evidently a good thing.
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