Just Kipping?

Yesterday morning, on the Today programme, I heard Nick Clegg described as the most abused man in British politics. I suppose in BBC-Land that would ring true, given that in their closed world Nigel Farage simply does not exist if they shut their eyes and chant loudly enough. In truth the kind of people who make up the majority of the Beeb’s staffers could quite cheerfully insist that he is a figment even as they hold their nose and conduct a constantly interrupted interview with the leader of the third most popular party in the country. What, somebody other than Holy Labour actually listening to 'ordinary people'?  It. Does. Not. Compute. There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence of huge porky pies being told on doorsteps by activists of other parties and a failure to prompt for Ukip by polling organisations. What is everybody so scared of?

In support of the establishment thesis that Ukip is insignificant and thus by inference so are the opinions of those who will vote for them, the general election media coverage in the last 48 hours is steadfastly playing down any Kippery, unless of course it plays into the narrative that Ukip supporters are all unhinged, frothy-mouthed racists obsessed with and blaming every single ill on immigrants. Yet Ukip have categorically stated that it is not immigrants but uncontrollable, high-volume immigration, stemming from our membership of a political union that nobody was ever asked to join that is the root cause of our inability to arrange our own affairs sensibly. Hence the name; the United Kingdom Independence Party and not the United Kingdom Darkies Go Home Party.

Given that all the other outfits are similarly campaigning on stretch in the NHS, the ‘crisis’ in education and school places, a lack of housing, the downward pressure on wages and our creaking infrastructure, is it really too outlandish to surmise that a greater population than our society can comfortably accommodate may be contributory to every single one of those problems? And if – I hesitate to use the word - ‘mature’ parties like the Tories and Labour are insisting they will bring immigration under control despite the failure of both of them to actually do so, why is it that when Ukip flag up that particular failure this is taken as proof positive of their ‘vile’ racial hatred?

Fruitcakes, loonies, ignorant, ill-educated, racist rabble? There are poor spellers, bigots, verbally incontinent morons and deluded fools voting for every political party in the land, statistically in easily greater numbers for red and blue than for purple. Some idiot children will vote Labour because Russell Brand told them to, some others will vote Green… because Russell Brand told them to. But only the ‘Kippers are racist? Maybe they just got fed up of voting for more of the same, but if it’s racism you really want, look no further than those cuddly third-world communities so beloved of one party in particular.

Do fuck off back home, dear...

I don’t have any such misty-eyed recollections as John Major’s “long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist.” I know it wasn’t like that for the majority. But I do have very real memories of growing up in what felt like the best country in the world. The country that had saved - actually saved - the world from Hitlerian fascism. Whoever you vote for, surely wanting to prevent us 'sleepwalking' into becoming just another EU sub-regional backwater is a legitimate ambition to recognise and not just to slap down with hysterical slurs. Is Britain just 'Kipping? Or is it waking up?

Voting Rights

How can anybody hope to vote ‘the right way’? If Twitter is any guide – and in the new connected world we keep hearing about it must surely be representative of those who HAVE an opinion – it is unlikely. Given that most opinions are deeply embedded, formed from an agglomeration of our background and our experiences and our flocking with birds of similar plumage, entrenched views can be hard to shift. It is doubly difficult given that we filter even relatively dispassionate news reporting through our own biased mindset. But how are we to process the news that UKIP is to be condemned by a cross-party alliance for running a 'racist' campaign?

Really? Farage’s Army is so evil that only a concerted campaign by parties normally at war with each other can possibly stop them? Disaffected ex-Labour and Conservative voters are actually The Nazis now? I seem to recall the union rallies of the 1970s and 80s having far more in common with Goebbels’ dogma chanting mobs than the KIPpers’ cheerful gatherings in homely pubs. And see how easily people believe what they WANT to believe. Reaction to a recent distorted story about Roger Helmer was visceral; the story taken at face value and people expressing disgust rather than incredulity. I doubt that many bothered to read his rebuttal.

So your mind is made up? Forget the policies and concentrate on one emotive thing - opposition to uncontrolled immigration is purely racist and not prompted by any economic argument. Inward migration of low-skilled workers – despite all logic – is unremittingly good, essential even? Odd then, that a newspaper that has often been called racist itself, but has also happily headlined spurious examples of racism, today carries the news that 150,000 EU migrants effectively pay no tax at all and many others are a net drain on UK taxpayers. (I may have pointed this out a few hundred times before.)

As a sovereign island nation we've never been fully comfortable with the notion of being European and even after forty years of EU membership there is a vague fifty-fifty split for IN or OUT, but based on what? For almost certainly the majority of UK citizens it would make no immediate difference but the machine is on the move to claim their minds. The current spin – recently adopted by a variety of otherwise antipathetic ideologues – is that for all those years we have only ever heard bad things and not enough has been done by the pro-debate to illustrate the benefits. This is of course code for “We've had a meeting and realised we may be losing the argument, so we've decided what you need to be told. But sod facts, we know you’re not good with facts; we’re going to stick with unquantifiable emotive stuff like racism.”

Why do I want out of the EU federal projekt? Quite simply because I have little enough faith in our own elected representatives to tell the truth, but at least we have a slight chance of rattling their cages every five years. The EU is largely run – and very expensively at that – by hordes of unknowns, many of them with solid socialist and even communist credentials and with absolutely no interest in the unique concerns of the UK. I want control of our national interests entirely within our borders. And that’s it. A fully accountable UK government; one we can change if they don’t perform.

Snack time in the EU - is this what you want?

So, what’s to be done? The truth will never gain what they now call ‘traction’ so in a dirty war of words, what trumps racism? I’m pretty sure a bit of inventive spinning and media distortion could easily portray Van Rompuy as looking like a low-grade paedophile. And Martin Shulz could be rumoured to be a coprophiliac – a charge oft-levelled at a certain former German leader. With a knowing wink we could say, “allegations are unproven” and thereby firmly plant the notion that a vote for the EU is vote to be ruled by a bunch of Nazi, shit-eating, kiddy-fiddling perverts… and foreigners to boot.