Tagged with Nigel Farage

How Ukip and their friends are re-writing history

UKIP roundelIf you’ve picked up a newspaper or turned on the radio in the past week, you might have heard about Martyn Heale. He’s Ukip’s branch chairman and election agent in South Thanet – the constituency where one Nigel Farage hopes to be elected an MP next May. He’s also, you’ll probably have heard, a former National Front activist. As nice a little story as this is, it’s not news – it’s been public knowledge for some time. What might concern you more, and what none of the recent reports seem to have noticed, is that as recently as October, he was still defending the violent racist organisation.

This was revealed by James Meek in an epic report on “Farageland” in the London Review of Books. Meek met Heale and asked him about his past in the NF. “In view of Ukip’s insistence that it isn’t a racist party, I thought Heale might be defensive, or embarrassed, about being a member of the NF in 1978,” Meek writes. “To my surprise, he came to its defence.” Heale was clear enough: “There’s been an attempt by many people to associate the National Front with the far right. But that’s not fair, that’s not true. It was a bit of a social club. Initially the National Front was just a group of retired people and soldiers.” Continue reading →

The way back from Rochester, Strood and austerity

Moving on from flags and white vansMark Reckless’ UKIP victory over the Tories serves notice on all the parties. The Tories, having sworn to “throw the kitchen sink” at retaining it in Cameron’s words he must now regret, see a near-10,000 Tory majority in 2010 turned into a 3,000 (7.3%) UKIP lead. Labour, which never had a chance of winning, loses nearly half its vote. The LibDems virtually disappear with less than 1% of the vote. Of course by-elections are wholly different from general elections, but the result for UKIP in Rochester, 271st in their list of target seats, hardly suggests that the Farage phenomenon, based largely on sentiment rather than policy, has lost momentum. But there are several important implications. Continue reading →

Race to the bottom on immigration won’t work

enoch powell & nigel farageThe Tory programme on immigration is set to get the worst of all worlds, with disastrous consequences for Britain over the EU. The Tories now want to restrict benefits to immigrants and to make citizens from future EU member countries wait longer before they are allowed to work in Britain. Now Cameron is going further still with rhetoric about ‘fixing’ immigration to Britain from the EU, and has even floated the idea of an ‘emergency brake’ on immigration beyond a certain level from even existing EU members. Continue reading →

Is the EU Commission on the side of Farage?

Nigel FarageIt is difficult to believe that some senior members of the EU Commission are not secret Ukippers. To demand that Britain hands over more than €2bn because its economy is doing relatively well compared with the rest of the Eurozone, which is doing appallingly badly, is beyond satire. The idea that Germany, where the Merkel doctrine of unwavering austerity has brought the eurozone low, should now receive a rebate at Britain’s expense of £780m is the kind of black comedy normally associated with farce.

The UK contribution to the EU budget is already large at £8.6bn last year, and this surcharge would now make the UK by far the biggest top-up contributor. What adds salt into the wound is that this surcharge stems from the EU charging the way it calculates gross national income to include more hidden elements such as prostitution and illegal drugs! Continue reading →

UKIP, image & reality: brash, loud and uncompromising – naff but canny

UKIP+RosetteThis tweet (shown below) by Ellie Mae O’Hagan planted a seed. Strip away the populist politics for a moment, what is it that UKIP’s chosen symbol – the pound sign – says about their party? Or, to be more accurate, what is it about the logo that resonates. What about Nigel Farage. Is his appeal solely down to his cigarette quaffing, pint-smoking persona? Let’s play with the signs that feature prominently in kipper material and prise them apart like so much mouldy pulled pork. What does it say about message and audience? Continue reading →