Tagged with UKIP

Two key reasons for Corbyn’s stunning advance

This post first appeared on Socialist Economic Bulletin.

Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership the Labour Party has staged a stunning revival, prevented Theresa May achieving a landslide which she would have claimed as a mandate for ‘Hard Brexit’ and has caused a crisis of Tory government which will make it harder to make new cuts in public spending, apart from rising inflation. None of Corbyn’s opponents could have possibly achieved that outcome.

This point can be factually established in two ways. First, there is the record of the election campaign itself. None of Jeremy Corbyn’s internal or external opponents would have conducted anything like the same campaign or written anything similar to the manifesto that was produced. On the contrary, the tactic of Corbyn’s opponents was to ‘give him enough rope to hang himself’, believing that his programme would prove massively unpopular. Continue reading →

UKIP launch manifesto calling for zero net migration and burkha bans

UKIP launched their general election manifesto yesterday, unveiling a document that ranged from the unusual to the unpleasant. Their main pitch is unsurprisingly around Brexit, with the party returning to its role of yesteryear, acting as outriders to the Conservative party, rather than challengers to their dominance on the political right. With May’s calculated pitch to Brexit voters having all but squeezed UKIP out, and the party led by a deeply unpopular charlatan in Paul Nuttall, it remains to be seen what their purpose is.

Nuttall told a press conference that “It is not good enough to light candles and proclaim that extremists will not beat us. Action is required on multiple fronts.” That was immediately followed by controversy as donor Aaron Banks called for ‘internment’, with the support of UKIP MEP Roger Helmer. Continue reading →

Douglas Carswell and the fall of UKIP

As surprises in politics go, this one’s right up there with night following day. In case you’ve hid in a cave or were too dazzled by the March for Europe’s liberal virtue, Douglas Carswell has resigned from the United Kingdom Independence Party. Something of a square peg in a round hole, Carswell’s politics are complete crap. They dress an apologia for the megawealthy up in the taffeta of individual autonomy and pearls of hypermodernity. That said, his market fundamentalism doesn’t come with extra wrappings of racism and sexism, as per official kipperism, nor the patrician know-all arrogance of his bezzy mate.

In his resignation note, Carswell says that it’s “mission accomplished” as far as UKIP are concerned, and so there is little point staying around. Nothing, you understand, to do with his summons before the party’s NEC, due to be heard Monday afternoon, on allegations that he derailed a knighthood for Nigel Farage. Indeed, old NF himself on Sophy Ridge this Sunday has pledged to stand against Carswell in Clacton next time. There’s little chance of that happening, seeing he’s a serial bottler. Still, for those of us who despise UKIP some grim satisfaction can be reaped from their implosion as politics comes to grips with the damage they and their highly placed enabling friends have wreaked. Continue reading →

The UKIP campaign in Stoke Central

Time for a little talk about UKIP. Oh not, not another one. Yah, I’m afraid so. I want to talk about their campaign in Stoke-on-Trent, the character of its vote and their relationship to the Tories and, more significantly, Tory voters.

What Stoke definitively showed was UKIP is something less than a political party. As a 30,000-strong army of Nigel Farage groupies, re-orienting themselves as a “proper” force without a domineering personality to cling to was always a big ask. Such formations tend not to attract strong people. It’s a club for careerist losers, lickspittles, and human-shaped voids. Anyone with an ounce of talent and ability, such as the unlamented Steven Woolfe, tend not to last very long. And why vacant oafs like Paul Nuttall can rise without a trace. When the big daddy figure of these one-man populist parties (and it’s almost always men, Marine Le Pen and Pauline Hanson notwithstanding) depart from the scene, which is what Farage is doing with his LBC/Fox News/White House stints, what is left behind is a shell, a simulacrum of a political party. It looks like a party, campaigns like one, complies with legislation (well, in UKIP’s case, after a fashion), but there is no substance. Only crisis. Continue reading →

Who is Paul Nutall?

16308386333_bcbb6ef438_bWho’s that knight on a white charger? Why, it’s none other than Paul Nuttall, Eddie Hitler look-a-like and the latest leader of our purple friends in the United Kingdom Independence Party. His election by a landslide suggests a desire on the part of the party’s much-reduced membership (of which, 15,500 out of 33k cast a ballot) to put the recent period of fracas and farce behind it. But more significantly, and unlike the hapless Diane James, Tory-in-exile Suzanne Evans, and homosexual donkey anecdote man, Nuttall is the man with a plan. To put the UKIP jigsaw together again (his words), they’re going to go all out and concentrate on the northern working class Labour seats. It’s a “big open goal” as far as he’s concerned, and plenty of the media agree. Despite evidence of a declining brand, there are plenty only too happy to talk up this threat. Continue reading →