by Jon Bounds
It’s easy to laugh at the racists and fruitcakes that make up the UK Independence Party roster of election candidates and councillors. Like clichéd children they do say the funniest things. But like kids they don’t fully understand the consequences of their actions. UKIP exists for no other reason than to pull the country’s political discourse dangerously to the right and that’s so worrying because voters, members and even candidates and MEPs don’t realise.
UKIP members can’t be striving to take power to carry out their manifesto, because there is no coherent UKIP policy on anything to get behind. Poster boy Nigel Farage doesn’t know, care, or agree with the manifesto. He dismissed the plans with a comment about how he’d, “never read that. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” And that’s seemingly okay in a media environment that berates Labour for not having detailed spending plans years in advance.
Treasurer Stuart Wheeler has given the party £514, 957 since 2001 and he doesn’t know what their policies are either. Interviewed at a lunch for Eddie Mair’s PM he blustered, called for more wine, and had very little idea what was going on.
“We’ll launch it [the manifesto] after the European elections,” Farage says. After the election. And you thought only the Lib Dems could make up policy so much on the fly.
Essentially though, it doesn’t matter what UKIP’s policies are —they have an almost zero chance of getting into any sort of power, which is one thing for which we might have to thank the failure of the electoral reform referendum to bring in PR. That means that can say absolutely anything: from “repainting all trains in traditional colours” to “sending the buggers back” if it will keep them in the media’s eye. There’s been more coverage of Farage not standing in a by-election than then has been of the Green Party’s whole European election campaign—making simple ideas like not condemning us all to climate chaos seem more ‘out there’ than a flat 30% tax rate.
When you consider that to change anything at a European level they would have to take power nationally, it doesn’t even matter what their policy on the EU is. Voters who really wanted to leave the EU would have more chance of it with a large Tory majority. The party simply exists to oppose the control on the actions of capital of any kind. That is why they vote against each and every law in the European Parliament, when they can be bothered to turn up.
Members of the party are routinely caught out saying odd, unacceptable and contemptible things and then disowned by a leadership that sees them as disposable because they are disposable. There’s no mandate for the party due to a mass membership, there’s no structure or shared ideas. Voters can ignore any part of UKIP with impunity, because they’re never going to be in charge of anything. Every vote is a protest, but they’re not protesting against anything coherent — and they can have no idea what they’re protesting for.
UKIP is not so much a broad church as a circus big top of useful idiots and dangerous animals. They can be whipped by a ringmaster but he’s in no danger because he can easily replace them but doesn’t need them. They are nothing but paper candidates and a means to an end of securing airtime for those that they can trust to spread their message. And the only way to get the circus to leave town is to stop watching.
They are capital’s revenge: using any or all electoral tricks they wish, not to get elected and change anything but simply to pull the acceptable window of political discussion as far to the libertarian free-market right as possible.
In this they are more akin to other millionaire funded organisations like think tanks, right-wing newspapers or the Taxpayers’ Alliance. Except they are more dangerous — because other politicians won’t attack them properly.
Attacks on UKIP are wrong in the way they are handled: yes they say stupid things (individually and collectively), yes they are racist (in many cases individually and in the few policies they do have), yes you can pick apart almost all they say. That however is a distraction, the real issue is how money can manipulate the Overton window of ideas that are deemed politically acceptable. Influencing this narrow range is all that the money behind UKIP wants.
All the other parties know that, because they use the same tactics, and to dismiss UKIP is to lift the curtain on that window, revealing the political wizards to be controlled by the forces of the status quo.
How does a party funded by millionaires, led by an ex-banker who’s been an MEP for 15 years claim to be not of the establishment? Because they don’t have the problem of ever having to be in power and they know no-one will want to reveal just how that establishment works. Clegg pulled the window towards electoral reform and fairness on education by playing the same nonsense outsider role in 2010’s TV debates, and we saw how that played out with a whiff of responsibility.
How does a party grow so quickly and reconcile the views of all its members? UKIP don’t have to because there is no group: just a collection of angry individuals nudged around to provide media ballast. That collection gives them the strength and the cover to say whatever bizarre things they want: because all the party must think the same as they do.
How can they truly say they aren’t a racist party? Because all their ideas exist only to free the movement of capital, to unhinge the means of production from any control by the state. And capitalism isn’t racist: it has many faults but it doesn’t care about the ethnicity of those it exploits.
UKIP exists purely to further the interests the very people they will say they are against — the establisment — and to break their influence we need to really break the political mould, opening up on how it all works. Is anyone brave enough to do that?
Jon Bounds is a writer, on culture and the internet especially. He is currently working on a book Pier Review, about memory & the seaside
Tags: capital, European election, Jon Bounds, Nigel Farage, Racism, UKIP
You entirely miss the point of UKIP. Difficult to do, but you manage admirably.
Probably why the mainstream doesn’t know how to handle them.
They exist for one thing and one thing only – the EU. They aren’t interested in anything else and trying to drag the debate into other areas is pointless and the actions of fruitcakes and loons. Avoiding the EU issue which Labour does – os also pointless and throwing out promises of 2017 is also pointless.
People see mainstream political parties, people see liars and thieves.
People see UKIP, people see something amusing – and no, they don’t take them seriously, but they will still vote for them. And that’s the result of the damage the mainstream has done.
Should UKIP finish top of the pile in May then because a general election is 12 months later, europe will be the major topic. The main parties don;t like that, will at first deny it, and then will slowly be sucked into it – the tories already have been.
Got it in one. Farage is an agent of the Bankers, Capitalists and NeoCons.
Surprising that nobody has twigged yet.
Nigel Farage wasn’t a banker, he was a trader on the metals market.
” Attacks on UKIP are wrong in the way they are handled ”
I think you have been hoisted by your own petard here. Your article ranges from smear to ad-homien attack. You do exactly what you criticise others doing. Have you read what you have written ? The vitriol is unbelievable.
“Useful idiots and dangerous animals” are you serious ? Clearly we have one very upset lefty on our hands. I hate to use the phrase “looney left” but it certainly seems applicable here.
Your main accusation is that UKIP are racists, but any sane individual (that doesn’t include you by the way) can see that they are approaching an issue caused by the secret open door policy of the previous Labour government and EU regualtions which says we have to accept every waif and stray who turn up.
Labours failure to accept any sort of responsibility for their previous policies and Silibands refusal to go anywhere near far enough in acknowledging what happened is why Labour voters are deffecting to UKIP. Those low paid, low skilled workers who are traditionally Labour voters have had enough of being squeezed.
Its becoming highly amusing watching attack after attack on UKIP from Labour. Whilst they were previously content to laugh becuase UKIP were dragging down the Tories, the sudden realisation and polls like ComRes yesterday proving Labour voters are defecting in droves has sent the Guardianistas into a frothy mouthed frenzy.
I’m not a UKIP supporter, but neither am I a hypocritical looney left idiot like the writer of this blog.
I support UKIP, but I don’t think the party is perfect. However this article is simply ignorant. It is factually incorrect and/or stupid in so many ways that it must be deliberate. The author is obviously not concerned with insight or accuracy, and is preaching to the closed minded left-wing choir. The whole thing is written as a tin-foil-hat wearing rant, and shows little or no appreciation of what’s really going on.
I wonder who gains by 100,000s of people wandering thousands of miles across Europe for a job -certainly not the discarded-by-Labour communities into who’s communities migrant workers turn up in.
Remember – “increasing immigration to bring down the cost of labour”
But I do agree that UKIP have no serious depth to their policies – they are the equivalent of Hartlepool voting in a monkey for a Mayor.
But it gives us an indication of what the UK thinks of the rest of our politicians.
I stopped voting Labour 12 years ago when it dawned on me that the labour project was simply making things worse. There is nothing in the current set of ‘radical’ policies offered by labour that’ll change my mind.
So this is the first time in twelve years that I’ll be exercising my right to vote. So why should it go to UKIP you may ask, as, according to you, they are a bunch of fruitcakes without any policies.
Well this will be the only thing like a referendum on Europe and an open-door immigration policy that’ll be available to me for the next decade (at least) – there is a remote chance that David Cameron might be able to deliver a referendum, but that’ll be a very different referendum in very different terms to the meaning of the vote on May 22.
If you think the EU is making things worse a vote for UKIP is the only way of saying so.
As Tony Benn used to say: politics should be about policies and not about personalities – how quickly we do forget.
And now to the point about the benefits of the first-past-the-post electoral system. It occurs to me be be a very peculiar view of democracy that is willing to disenfrancise 40% of the electorate, so that a single party can govern with less that a third of the vote and less than a quarter of the electorate supporting them.
This is the kind of irrationality that eventually turned me off Labour,
It’s really refreshing to hear someone finally nail the issue with UKIP. They are not about standing up for the disenfranchised working classes and they are not even that bothered about Europe. They are the bankers’ party, for the rich and the few but harnessing the inchoate rage of the poor and the many for their own devices. The author’s got it spot on when he describes their supporters and apologists as ‘useful idiots’ (a nice twist as this is a term usually used for those on the left) and as we can see from these comments, those idiots are out in force today.
But I do agree that UKIP have no serious depth to their policies – they are the equivalent of Hartlepool voting in a monkey for a Mayor.
Stuart ” H’Angus the Monkey” Drummond was voted in three times 02, 05 & 09 – because the public thought he was head and shoulders above all the other candidates. Which he was.
Directly elected Mayors were abolished in Hartlepool following a second referendum, instigated by the political parties ‘ganging-up’ because they couldn’t make any headway against an independent who couldn’t give a toss what the parties said or thought. Bullying in other words, because they couldn’t get their way at the polls.
My wife finds Nigel Farage repulsive.
Mike, I hardly think your wife’s sexual desires have anything to do with it.
All that this article – and many of the comments – do is basically try to run away from UKIP’s messages.
Basically they are:
– people feel they have no place in their own country
– they feel run by an unelected dictatorship (the EU)
– they think politicians are lying thieving illegitimates
– they object to widespread immigration
– they object to the Human Rights Act being abused (as they see) to prevent criminals being allowed to escape extradition.
Not to acknowledge those issues is like acting like an ostrich..
As for claiming “it’s the bankers’ party”, the banks will lose out big style if we leave teh EU . The UK is the lead for trading in Euros.. Do you honestly think that will continue if we leave? No wonder the banks oppose leaving.
I am afraid you appear as out of touch as the politicians UKIP criticse…
I am neither a UKIP member nor supporter…
@fish the definition of a frother is:
– Left wing
– no real understanding of the way the world works
– economically illiterate
– massive public spending is everything
– life is unfair because the Tories make it so
Fothers need to be educated.
non frothers need to learn to spell.
@fred:
Nazis deserve to be shot.