UKIP Rally at Hove Town Hall on Monday 3rd June 2013. The party faithful, the disillusioned and the curious turned up on a warm summer evening to hear the leader of UKIP Nigel Farage speak. Looking around the room one spotted disgruntled upper middle class Tories, mixing with alienated former Labour voters with a sprinkling of BNP and EDL for good measure. The proceedings were kicked off by the local party chair Nigel Carter, a little chubby man who prattled on about local organisation and how the local party was not a party of protest, but a real player. He curiously stated that the local Green Party was a party which had harnessed the protest vote and said that this vote would desert them and that they would lose the Hanover bye-election. Now I’m no political analyst but I don’t think that the good people of Hanover will vote UKIP somehow. But then again the Labour Party could split the vote in UKIP’s favour. So remember Hanover, a left wing Green is got to be better than anything New Labour has to offer. Right back to the rally, Chairman Carter constantly referred to the party as a non racist party and this was the thread binding his speech. He stated that although UKIP was against gay marriage (move to smiling faces from those of an extreme right persuasion in the audience) they weren’t homophobic and had a load of gays about the place (watch smiling faces turn to frowns). He stated that the party wanted the country back, he didn’t say from whom and I hadn’t realised that the country had been taken in the first place. He spoke affectionately about the NHS which he said was ours because we had paid into it and it belonged to us the community. Bearing in mind that the audience was a sea of white faces, one could only speculate on what the underlying message was. There was however no hint of policy around protecting or funding the NHS. So to sum up there was no real policy detail from Chairman Nige , but he did repeatedly tell me that the party was non racist, which was very comforting as one hears all these awful stories. So I thought to myself keep an open mind as the main attraction had arrived and surely there will be some hint of joined up policy. Enter the most charismatic leader in politics today (sorry Boris, you are yesterday’s man) Nigel Farage to a chorus of applause and some boos. The counter demonstration had begun. Various individuals alluding to the fact that UKIP might be a racist organisation. I saw several unsavoury characters grabbing hold of these protestors quite aggressively before security intervened. While this fracas was developing Mr Farage was bellowing from the stage that the demonstrators were anti democratic and were indeed funded by the trade unions and the Labour Party and bizarrely was demanding that Ed Miliband give him an apology for this attack on democracy. No apology was forthcoming as surprisingly Ed wasn’t there. Eventually order was restored, but not before I witnessed the extraordinary sight of middle aged ladies in all their finery shouting ‘SCUM’ at the protesters as they were dragged out of the auditorium. Mrs Thatch would have been so proud. So the big speech began with Mr F attacking Europe, so no surprises there then. But what I didn’t know was that the entire collapse of the British economy was down to Polish plumbers and Hungarian cherry pickers. And there was me thinking that it was down to corrupt banks and corporations and the fact that free market capitalism just doesn’t work. So a big thank you to UKIP for putting me straight on that one. It’s the bloody foreigners that have pushed us all into poverty and they were keen to point this out in such a nice non racist way. Nige then spoke about our political class and the fact that they were all from the same narrow class of privilege and public school, peppered with a top Oxford University. He however was a man of the people who had actually worked for a living unlike the careerist politicians who moved from uni to research to parliament without holding a real job of any kind. Now a little a bit of homework on Mr F will tell you about his privilege background, oh yes, son of a stock broker who went to a private school (wait a minute very similar to our wonderful Prime Minister no less) and what of this real job, was he a nurse, or a train driver, or perhaps a builder, come on he’s a man of the people who drinks ale in the pub with the ordinary folk. Sorry to shatter illusions, but there is no real job unless you count gambling in the city for a merchant bank as a proper job. So Nigel’s a wealthy posh boy just like those he supposedly detests. Nigel Farage is a competent and engaging speaker, he can interact with ordinary people in a way that very few current politicians can. His constant theme was that only UKIP can save the country from a nasty Europe which wanted to swamp us and that this wasn’t a racist policy because in its place we could have closer trading links with the commonwealth or the empire, depending on how right wing you are. It’s a fair point why have anything to do with a fair and just Europe when you can trade with unregulated countries and go back to exploiting the likes of Africa. He even went as far as to say we could be the Australia of Europe, as good old Australia had got immigration right and was an example of a non racist society. At that point I’m sure I heard the sound of aborigines rejoicing on their didgeridoos. We finally came to questions from the audience and at last I was hoping for some kind of policy statement. However this gave good old Nige the chance to continue to attack Europe and to state that UKIP was not racist, again (I had by now counted up to about 20 such uttering’s and was starting to believe that the party was merely being smeared in such an awful way by nasty lefties, oh the injustice of it all). So if UKIP are not racist then what are they, well according to Nige they are, no wait for it, Classic Liberals in the Gladstone mould. So there you have it, clarification from Farage himself, UKIP are Classic Liberals who want to send immigrants home in a non racist way and make Britain (minus Scotland of course) great again. Interestingly the answers given to questioners showed that there is no real substance to UKIP and they appear very muddled on a number of issues. On the economy they attacked their opponents as parties of borrowing and stated that they would not burden the country with more debt. They would create employment by closing our open door immigration policy which would in turn solve youth unemployment. There was no explanation on investment or growth and the policy remained in such vague terms as withdrawal from Europe would somehow render our economy successful once again almost by magic. There was a statement that we should value entrepreneurs and large corporations who would bring riches to the country once the shackles of Europe had been removed and the foreigners sent packing. But no policy detail. For goodness sake even the incompetent Labour Party has detailed policies. I think Ken Clarke could be right about this lot. There was a question about the housing crisis which was answered with a thumbs up for the Thatcherite selling of council housing and some waffle about brown field sites and immigrants taking existing housing stock, but no commitment to getting builders back to work building social housing. Bearing in mind that they won’t borrow to invest in infrastructure, shows that they are no different from their opponents. So much for radical change. He was very vague on privatisation, which by definition is anti democratic, although they would ensure that the police and civil service would become independent again after years of political interference. The only increase to spending would be on the military, although they stated that they are completely anti war. One wonders why the party would increase military spending when holding such pacifist views, when investment is needed in other more important areas. And God knows what kind of energy policy they have because after trashing renewables and blaming Europe for increasing energy prices rather than the greedy energy companies, it appeared that the rant ended with their Britain keeping the existing out of date power stations. Truly unbelievable There was the customary attack on the BBC for being left wing and the media in general as it is controlled by the narrow privileged political class, which incidentally Farage belongs to which apparently, carries a negative bias towards UKIP. He wants to try being a socialist. His view of the media is quite interesting in that he has a ready made excuse of a bias already in place to counteract the media who undoubtedly will eventually expose this party as a ‘one trick pony’. The question of the night however was how UKIP differed from the BNP. And the answer to this was truly astonishing. Farage stated that the BNP differed in that, 1. The BNP would come out of Europe and be completely isolationist. 2. They wouldn’t trade with the Commonwealth. 3. They would be protectionist, whilst UKIP believes in free trade. and 4. They have a constitution which only allows white Anglo Saxon members. This answer was widely applauded by his white Anglo Saxon audience and party members. So in summary my thoughts on Farage, well in my opinion he is a cross between Oswald Mosley and Silvio Berlusconi, a man of charisma, a good debater, with a common touch, however for me his one obvious attribute is the fact that he is a classic manipulator. Like the second hand salesman trying to sale a dodgy motor he is able to sell you a dream which will inevitably turn into a nightmare. It’s the same tired old rhetoric which has been used by heroes of the right in the past, whether it be Mosley or Powell playing on people’s fears and manipulating opinion for their own ends and scapegoating. A depression brings with it fear and uncertainty and here the manipulator finds its prey. Overall I found Farage to be a disappointment with no substance, but I was in a minority in that hall and his bandwagon continues to roll. So are UKIP just a sophisticated version of the BNP, fascists in smart suits, I’ll let you make your own minds up on that. Gary Jones
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 09:31:25 +0000
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