European Union

UKIP’s Weakness, Brutally Exposed

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

matt adams bike

 

The Telegraph has been carrying the amusing but unfortunate story of charity cyclist Matt Adams, who swerved off the road and dived head-first into the long grass after taking his hands off the handlebars of his bike to strike a victory pose for a photographer. There could be no better analogy for UKIP’s fortunes over the past five days, with the long asphalt road representing the election campaign and the wayward bicycle as the party’s newfound trajectory following a series of stunning self-inflicted wounds.

Conventional wisdom has it that following his contentious interview on LBC radio last week in which he made sweeping and deeply unpleasant generalisations about Romanian immigrants, Nigel Farage has lit a long fuse to the dynamite underneath his political career. The interview – which Farage’s chief aide tried at one point to halt – can be seen in its entirety here:

 

The blowback, even from fellow eurosceptics and normally reliable media sympathisers, has been intense and unrelenting, with even The Sun publishing an editorial denouncing Farage’s comments as ‘racist’. The nation’s opinion columnists cannot agree on precisely how soon UKIP will founder, but a strong consensus says that it is only a matter of time.

For this, neither Nigel Farage nor the party he leads deserve sympathy. Such is the degree of euroscepticism within the country, the level of pent-up rage against the political establishment and the smug deafness of the main political parties that a strong showing for UKIP in the coming elections was all but assured – and, until recently, deserved.

In fact, because few voters pay attention to LBC radio interviews or the post-game coverage in the wider press, the party may actually avoid facing the real consequences until after Thursday’s European and local council elections, by which time the narrative could have changed in their favour. But when reality finally catches up with UKIP, no one will be able to say that it was undeserved.

Up until now, normal, non-racist UKIP sympathisers have largely been able to cling on to the narrative that while there may be some unpleasant and noisy individuals at the margins of the party, their principles remain solid and the leadership strong. But Nigel Farage’s image of calm, steady leadership has taken a justifiable beating over the weekend, and while UKIP supporters may abide instances of nastiness or foolishness coming from isolated candidates at the fringe, it is asking a lot to expect them to look the other way when the very same misdeeds are being committed at the top.

Nigel Farage’s “car crash” interview has effectively combined with the antics of the fruitcake fringe to trap UKIP’s more moderate supporters – fervent eurosceptics or libertarians without a racist bone in their bodies – in a pincer movement, and they now find themselves very exposed to the blanket charges of racism and xenophobia emanating from hostile media outlets such as the Guardian and the Huffington Post.

The sad thing is that Farage & co. have been here before, but clearly failed to learn the lessons from their last foot-shooting extravaganza.

At UKIP’s last party conference in September 2013, delegates were enjoying buoyant poll numbers and a period of unexpectedly benign press coverage when one rogue MEP, Godfrey Bloom, managed to spoil it all for everyone by making sexist comments at a fringe event, and then hitting a journalist over the head with a conference booklet while making his escape from the scene.

Instantly, the tone of the press coverage changed and any conceivable bounce from the conference was lost. No-one summed up the feeling of frustration within the party at the time better than Nigel Farage himself, who said in his closing speech:

There have been once or two incidents today … There is no media coverage of this conference. It’s gone. It’s dead. It’s all about Godfrey hitting a journalist and using an unpleasant four-letter word. It’s gone. And we can’t – put – up – with – it. And I said to you earlier, we cannot have any one individual – however fun or flamboyant or entertaining or amusing they are – we cannot have any one individual destroying UKIP’s national conference, and that is what he’s done today, and I’m sad about that, but we can’t tolerate it and we have to act.

The anger and frustration was real and visceral then:

 

Strong words, and yet Nigel Farage has effectively managed to equal Godfrey Bloom’s feat of self-sabotage a mere eight months later, and just days away from what could be UKIP’s pivotal moment. Will Farage now turn that same withering, critical analysis on himself?

UKIP does not have a deep bench of political talent from which they can draw in times of emergency or turmoil. They have no one else as charismatic as Nigel Farage, no one cannier with the press, no one better at putting out (or genially dismissing) the various fires that the party’s lesser candidates so frequently start. But can UKIP abide this eleventh-hour implosion from their leader?

The media’s coverage of UKIP, like the political establishment’s attitude toward the party, was never anything close to being fair and balanced. But the slurs and accusations that UKIPers complained about just last week are nothing compared to what comes now. As far as getting any kind of message out via the mainstream media goes now, it’s game over. UKIP is a racist party. Euroscepticism is just racism repackaged. Libertarians are in bed with racists. It has already started.

UKIP may yet emerge from this latest self-inflicted crisis relatively unscathed. There may be too little time between Farage’s gaffe and polling day for the impact to feed through to peoples’ voting intentions. UKIP could yet win the European election, in which case the narrative and news agenda will completely change, allowing UKIP to find their feet – until the next campaign, when the video and audio footage will be unearthed by every hostile journalist in the country.

Even in this best-case scenario for UKIP, the LBC interview is an urgent reminder that they simply cannot go on existing in the public consciousness as a one-man party, where Nigel Farage alone serves as chief executive, chief political strategist, chief policy architect, chief salesman and chief damage repair technician.

This twenty minute radio interview, this “car crash”, also reminds us that some of UKIP’s principles – euroscepticism, libertarianism, that fervent anti-establishment spirit – are too important to be entrusted to any one single person, even the leader.

The British voters deserve a eurosceptic, libertarian party that they can vote for in good conscience and without fear of unintentionally consorting with or abetting racists, while moderate UKIP supporters deserve to be able to watch the evening news without constant fear or trepidation of the next scandal about to beset them.

Whether Thursday’s elections bring triumph or disappointment for UKIP, there are now many serious questions to be answered. The party’s weaknesses have been brutally exposed under the unceasing glare of media scrutiny and through calamitous self-inflicted crises. And without new faces and the immediate jettisoning of the party’s nasty rhetoric on immigration (and the block of undesirable votes that come with it), things will only get worse.

When the cyclist Matt Adams plunged headfirst from his bicycle off the road and into the verge, he hopped back on the seat and continued riding, thinking that he had “got away with it” – until he crossed the finish line and realised that he had become a minor internet celebrity. The internet always remembers. People always remember. And the electorate will remember how nasty UKIP managed to make themselves look over the course of the past week, not just when they vote on Thursday but also when the more important general election takes place in 2015.

Whatever the result of Thursday’s European elections, UKIP – and respectable British euroscepticism – will now be stuck in damage control mode for many months to come.

EU’s Google Ruling Undermines Freedom Of Information

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Google ECJ data ruling

The European Court of Justice, in another inspired ruling, has effectively declared that EU citizens have the right to request that Google delete undesirable search results which may portray them in a negative light.

With astonishing disregard for freedom of information and a troglodyte’s grasp of modern technology and its administration, the court held that there are certain circumstances when an individual may petition Google (and presumably other search engines) to delete links to various sites which contain information deemed false, obsolete or irrelevant.

Supporters of this backward and anti-democratic move might argue that Google search results function in a similar way to road signs, and that just as a city has a responsibility to remove road signs that point to closed routes or demolished visitor attractions, so a responsible search engine should prune its records to remove links to outdated information. And this neat analogy almost holds together.

Nearly, but not quite. The difference, of course, is that Google search results point to information on the internet that is still very much in existence and potentially of great importance. Forcing Google to remove search engine results is akin to a city deciding that a prominent building should be removed from local maps because it has fallen into disrepair and become an eyesore. The building remains, and it is in the interests of many people that its whereabouts remain public knowledge, whether or not it causes embarrassment for the city council or town planners.

Already a growing list of people with shady pasts are coming forward with petitions to Google, in the hope of wiping the digital slate clean of their past misdeeds, as the Telegraph reports:

Since it was introduced, more than 1,000 people have asked Google to remove links to unfavourable stories. They include a former MP seeking re-election, a man convicted of possessing child abuse images and 20 convicted criminals.

But more concerning than the granting people the ability to falsely curate the digital history of their lives for potentially nefarious purposes, the court’s decision places a human being at Google – or wherever the decision over which records should be removed is ultimately taken – in the role of moral arbiter of what information is still ‘accurate’ or ‘current’, and what information the public has a right to know. No human being or committee should be vested with such power, least of all one that hears petitions from people or institutions with overriding personal reasons to meddle with the perception of their past.

(Even the publication of false information, after all, becomes a matter of historical fact when it takes place, potentially an important one – such as cases of libel or political misstatement – which should be preserved for easy reference by future scholars, historians or lawyers.)

Furthermore, the court’s ruling shows complete and utter contempt for the ability of human beings to filter good information from bad, and accurate data from the misleading. Even if it were the case that erroneous information about a person’s criminal past or business dealings existed online, people are equipped with the mental faculties to check and verify the information before acting on it. The court’s opinion holds the human capacity to reason in such scant regard that it effectively decides it must be the job of someone – Google, the courts, the Truth Committee, anyone – to filter our reality before we observe it, lest we find ourselves being mislead.

Mark Weinstein forcefully sums up the argument against the ruling in the Huffington Post:

No company or entity should be able to build an online persona about us from the privacy of our actions and searches. Nor should anyone be able to erase legally documented history just because they find certain information unflattering. This is separate from the absolutely needed right to be able to remove my own personal posts or tagged photos of me posted by others.

One might expect that a ruling of this magnitude might prompt a response from the Prime Minister, but as is so often the case with matters of principle, David Cameron disappoints:

Asked by the Telegraph whether the ruling had any implications on freedom of speech, Mr Cameron replied: “I haven’t actually had a lot of time to look at this issue, so maybe I will have to get back to you on that.

“The basic principal that your information belongs to you is a good one, but I haven’t had a careful look at this, so I have to give you a considered answer another time.”

He added: “There you go – a politician who doesn’t know all the answers.”

It should not require many long nights spent poring over philosophical treatises and legal documents in order to form an opinion about the ECJ’s regressive ruling, but at least David Cameron is able to make a joke out of his total lack of conviction. For this blog, by contrast, the matter is quite clear-cut.

Our shared ideal of freedom and democracy requires as its aspiration (albeit never fully realised) the free and unfettered access to information on which to base our opinions and decisions. Establishing a precedent which says we cannot be trusted to distinguish current information from the obsolete, the relevant from the irrelevant, the true from the false, and setting up an intermediary system to do the job for us – which is what the European Court of Justice has so outrageously done – places the ECJ on the same morally repugnant ground as the internet censors of North Korea and the architects of the Great Firewall of China.

The people of Europe do not need the European Court of Justice, Google or anyone else to limit the scope of their information world. The justices wildly overstepped the mark, and should be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

Note: The Guardian has a good explainer on the case which can be read here.

Gunning For UKIP

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Guardian UKIP attack

 

This is a screenshot of the Guardian’s top political stories taken from their website at 00.54 on Thursday 15 May, one week before election day.

All three leaders are attacks on UKIP in one guise or another. The first article points out that UKIP has experienced an unusually high degree of defections and resignations from the ranks of its 2013 intake of local councillors. The second basically suggests that UKIP supporters are paranoid and ignorant hillbillies to the last man, while the third deconstructs UKIP’s talking points on immigration from Romania and Bulgaria.

The concern is not that the Guardian’s stories necessarily lack truth or validity. But it is glaringly apparent from the choice and placement of the stories on the homepage – to the total exclusion of any other coverage – that there is a concerted effort underway at the newspaper to chip away at UKIP’s credibility and support. Given the dearth of articles analysing Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat policies it is clear that the newsroom’s finite resources are being used disproportionately to undermine the insurgent party, whilst allowing the established parties (even the hated Tories) almost completely off the hook.

Note also what is entirely absent from The Guardian’s political coverage of the local and European elections, not just tonight but over the course of the campaign as a whole:

No coverage of the latest polling numbers and UKIP’s strength vis-a-vis the established political parties.

No probing or questioning of the Labour and Liberal Democrat stance, which is to refuse the British people a referendum on continued membership of the European Union, despite the widespread public support for such an in/out debate.

No discussion of the ‘state of the union’, i.e. the budget, the misuse of EU funds, the incidences of corruption and the increasingly pervasive influence of corporate lobbyists in Brussels.

No discussion of proposed EU-wide financial transactions taxes, their pros and cons and their likely impact on the City of London and the overall UK economy.

No discussion for the parallel campaign for the presidency of the powerful European Commission.

A visitor to the Guardian’s website might reasonably conclude that the main three national political parties in Britain have inexplicably gone into hibernation, and that UKIP have been given the run of the house. But while it is certainly the case that UKIP have consistently provided the most attention-grabbing stories (thanks in large part to policies with grassroots appeal and a leader who doesn’t have to practice looking genuine in front of the mirror every morning), it is unforgivable for a national newspaper to so thoroughly abdicate its responsibility to cover the also-rans.

The Guardian prides itself on having a readership that is a cut above the rest in terms of book smarts, education and general worldliness. But even accounting for their audience’s generally left leaning stance – let’s not deny anyone their political biases and preferences – you would think that among these luminaries there might be some basic level of curiosity about what the other parties (you know, the ones who actually have MPs and win elections) are up to this election season.

Not that this lack of curiosity provides an excuse – even in its apparent total absence, a political editor might think to include an article or two on the policies and strategic positioning of the other parties, just as a byproduct of doing their job properly. And yet the Guardian (and many others) are content to follow the heard and serve up a constant stream of anti-UKIP sentiment to the exclusion of everything else.

For anyone still wondering, this right here is the reason why UKIP remain in contention this election season, despite the unremitting volley of negative press coverage (yes, some of it self-inflicted) and attacks from all sides of the political spectrum:

The Guardian – not to mention the leaders of the three main political parties – seem to have forgotten two rather endearing truths about the British people for whom they claim to work and speak. Firstly, the British cannot abide a bully, and anyone with even a modicum of sympathy for any of UKIP’s positions is likely to feel that the party has been unfairly singled out for criticism.

But secondly and most importantly, we British love an underdog. You can sense Nigel Farage’s frustration and impatience every time one of his improperly-vetted candidates or publicity-seeking spokespeople says something outrageous or defects in a blaze of negative publicity. One gets the impression that UKIP’s leader is fighting a solitary David and Goliath-style battle against the establishment and against the odds, very much alone. And as the immature party apparatus creaks and groans around him as it tries to fight a national campaign, one catches oneself rooting for the man. Or at least, 31% of the voters do.

When the European elections have taken place and the dust settles, much will be written and wondered aloud about how UKIP performed as well as they did given the unified forces ranged against them. Responsibility will be parcelled out, to the great recession for making people dissatisfied, to the expenses scandal for making people distrustful of mainstream politicians, to the people themselves for being credulous fools with borderline racist tendencies.

In short, the blame will be placed everywhere but the one place that it most belongs – at the feet of the smug, left-liberal bloc and their terrified counterparts on the right, who are witnessing a groundswell of legitimate dissatisfaction and demand for change from the British people, but see only a pesky political mosquito to be swatted out of existence.

The Other European Election

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

 

EU British flags

You may not realise it, but there’s an election campaign in full swing at the moment.

No, not the one in the news where everyone screams about immigration and take turns accusing one other of being either fascists or traitors – that campaign is certainly happening, but it’s an exclusively British affair. The rest of Europe, on the other hand, is engrossed in quite a different campaign, focused on the policies and initiatives to be pursued by the European Union.

There’s a cuddly-looking German chap named Martin Schulz running for José Manuel Barroso’s soon-to-be-vacated job as President of the European Commission – in fact, Schulz is quite likely to win. He has been busily campaigning for the job, holding events in cities throughout Europe, but you won’t see him talking to prospective voters anywhere in Britain. People here would be bemused to see him even if he came, failing to understand the significance of the role he seeks or the details of his specific policies (such as they are).

In short – Britain is continuing its introspective (and perpetually unresolved) debate over whether or not to remain a member of the European Union, while the the twenty-seven other member states discuss how to shape and influence European policy, having already decided (or resigned themselves) to their secure place within the EU club. Guess whose voices are heeded and turned into tangible actions, and whose voice is either politely ignored or never heard at all?

He's running for President of something...
He’s running for President of something…

 

There is plenty of blame to go around for this wretched and depressingly familiar state of affairs.

The lions share of the blame must rest with successive British governments and prime ministers who failed to check back with the British people as the European Community (which won 66% approval in the 1975 referendum) slowly morphed into something much grander and more far-reaching than the common market that so appealed to the voters in Harold Wilson’s day. Each subsequent treaty and tightening of the ever-closer union served only to increase the disquiet and pushback against what was happening, and rather than hold a fresh debate over Britain’s membership or make ratification of the new treaties subject to a national referendum, the British government cut the people out of the loop on fundamental matters of sovereignty.

There is plenty of blame to be lavished on the europhiles, too. For decades now, their mantra has been that “of course Europe needs reform”, but that this can only be achieved with Britain as an active and participating member, not as a surly observer from the sidelines. Unfortunately, by continually fighting the eurosceptics to a draw, Britain’s negotiating stance has barely budged in all that time – we neither became deeply committed members at the vanguard of European policymaking, but neither did we leave our continental neighbours to their own devices.

But there is also blame for the eurosceptic movement, whose chief advocates have often been their own worst enemy when it comes to advancing their agenda. Doom-laden apocalyptic predictions of Britain’s demise within a suffocating EU were revealed time and again to be overblown. The EU was certainly a drag on economic growth and job creation, but  it was not the nail in the coffin of the UK as an independent entity that some insisted it would be.

More recently, eurosceptics – particularly UKIP – have been at fault for focusing so much of the debate on immigration, specifically the number of economic migrants entering the UK from eastern Europe in order to work. In their effort to ride the tiger of British anti-immigration sentiment, UKIP has become a lightning-rod for criticism about their real motivations (read: accusations of racism) and the immigration debate has drowned out many of the other eurosceptic points about loss of sovereignty, burden of regulation and misspent money.

In all of these failings, the British media have been complicit. Given the choice between explaining the technical workings of a byzantine EU organisation structure and policy debates or playing exciting footage of Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage ripping chunks out of each other in a televised debate, the press has consistently taken the low road, abdicating any real responsibility to inform and educate.

And so it is that with the European Parliament up for election and powerful EU positions also in play, the campaign in Britain is being fought almost exclusively along domestic political lines. If you like the Labour Party and plan to vote for them in the concurrent local council elections, chances are you will vote the same way when you fill in the European election ballot paper. Complex issues such as regulation or taxation of financial transactions, and other contentious policy debates that will occupy Europe in the months ahead, are covered only from the topmost level of detail (regulation good / regulation bad) with none of the detail and nuance that makes for informed decision-making.

This blog is unabashedly eurosceptic, appreciating what the EU has done to forge links between the nations of Europe and prevent further twentieth century bloodshed, but balking at the fact that the goals of ‘ever-closer union’ and the creation of a supra-national and undemocratically accountable superstate are being so vigorously pursued without the full cognisance or permission of the people of Europe. Nonetheless, given the extent to which EU laws, regulations and institutions are currently intertwined with the fabric of Britain, on balance it could well be better for Britain to enthusiastically embrace the EU than to maintain the current harmful ‘half-in, half-out’ status quo.

Today we in Britain truly do enjoy the worst of both worlds – subject to all of the rules and requirements of EU membership but only half-committed to the decision making process, and alarmingly ignorant of the European institutions and how they work. While a negotiated and amicable secession would be the best option, better to join France as the EU’s co-head cheerleader than remain dissatisfied on the margins any longer.

This is why David Cameron’s proposition to the electorate – that we vote Conservative in exchange for an in-out referendum in 2017 after certain nebulous ‘concessions’ have been negotiated for Britain – is so unappealing. Putting aside the fact that promises to hold referenda are routinely discarded by politicians without a second thought, endorsing this policy only condemns Britain to two more years of limbo and unnecessarily limited influence over EU policy while any potentially fruitless renegotiation takes place.

There are two parties who proudly distrust the British people to make an informed decision and advocate for continued membership of the European Union, public opinion be damned – but since the Liberal Democrats are likely to be wiped out as an electoral force at these elections based on current polling, Labour is the party to choose if you adhere to this vantage point. And this essentially makes it a two-horse race.

UKIP vs Labour. Amicable secession from the EU vs continued membership and slightly more enthusiastic engagement with Brussels. At this point either option will do. What we cannot, must not do is continue to have the same navel-gazing debate for another wasted decade.

If Britain is to continue going to the trouble and expense of sending elected representatives to Brussels (and Strasbourg), her people deserve a real European election campaign.

UKIP Take The Low Road

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

UKIP protest

 

Perhaps it was inevitable, given the relentless barrage of attacks on the party in recent days, but today marks the day that UKIP made a mistake, took a page from the conventional political handbook and played into their opponents hands. Their folly? Allowing three of their European election candidates to go running to the police, demanding that any demonstrators who call them ‘fascists’ or hurl other insults be arrested for committing a hate crime.

The Huffington Post reports:

Ukip has asked police officers to arrest demonstrators for a hate crime if they call their supporters “fascists” at a public meeting held by the party.

Three of the party’s European election candidates said, in a joint statement, that they had asked Sussex Police to arrest “any protestors who call our supporters ‘fascists’, hurl other abuse or any physical assault, for ‘hate crime’ or under the Public Order Act” at the Hove meeting on Tuesday night.

It has become fashionable in left-wing circles to talk about how UKIP represents next great fascist threat to the United Kingdom, and that its leader Nigel Farage is the reincarnation of Oswald Mosley with a sprinkling of Enoch Powell. Such outraged left-wing hysteria is only fuelled by the propensity of organisations that really should know better – such as Unite Against Fascism – to picket and protest UKIP’s political gatherings under the (either incredibly stupid or breathtakingly cynical) pretext that opposition to economic migration automatically equals racism.

That UKIP have been taking fire – often unfairly and excessively – from all sides is incontestable. But by doing what they claim to loathe, running to the government for protection and redress every time they get their feelings hurt in the rough and tumble of British political discourse, UKIP are undermining one of their most endearing aspects – the ‘no nonsense’ individualist approach that scoffs at today’s entitlements culture and the right to live life unoffended and unchallenged.

This impulse to hit back is partly understandable. For months, UKIP and their supporters have been heckled and jeered and accused of unpleasant things by every left-leaning organisation with a megaphone, while mainstream politicians rode the wave of anti-UKIP hysteria and stood in front of television cameras cynically repeating many of the same allegations and unpleasant talking points. For some in the party, used to seeing their own ‘kind’ on the receiving end of police harassment – for skirting too close to the wrong side of the law when speaking about immigration or gay marriage, for example –  it must be cathartic to imagine the police handcuffing and carting away the person who has heckled their every campaign stop or policy launch.

But just as opposing economic migration does not automatically make one a fascist, calling someone a fascist is not close to being a hate crime – fascists not being viewed as an especially sympathetic or endangered minority, for one reason. And if we as a country do decide to expand the (already overly-long) roll call of groups entitled to hate crime protection and the list of words whose utterance will prompt a police visit – to include new additions such as ‘hypocrite’ or ‘idiot’ for example – before long there will be no politicians, journalists or bloggers left.

One of UKIP’s core strengths – the thing that made them a breath of relatively fresh air in the very stale British political system – is the fact that they always pushed back against the growing nanny state-ism that values freedom from being offended over freedom of expression. What’s more, they have done this at a time when the bulk of British elite opinion has trended strongly in the other direction, almost sanctifying the ‘right’ of the individual to coast through life without ever being shocked or offended or insulted. Their motives for supporting free speech have not always been pure, but this is yet another indictment of the major political parties – the fact that it has often been left to a strident outlier party to speak out in defence of such a core British value.

At present, UKIP remain well placed to triumph at the upcoming European elections, but the result will be close and even the smallest missteps or scandals could tip the balance. If Nigel Farage’s party choose to surrender their successful and appealing ‘happy warrior’ image and replace it with the outraged snarl of the perpetually wronged victim, the danger is that they will start to resemble the very thing that their opponents accuse them of being – a sort of British National Party Lite, full of little-Englanders nursing a grudge.

UKIP have come too far – and enliven the British political debate too much – to allow this to happen.