UKIP

UKIP Spring Conference Is Not The Hotbed Of Intolerance That Their Opponents Claim

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

 

As protesters gathered in Margate to protest the UKIP spring conference, bringing with them their predictable and intellectually lazy accusations of racism and bigotry, quite a different scene unfolded inside the Winter Gardens conference venue: thousands of delegates stood and cheered as transsexual former boxing promoter Kellie Maloney, a long time UKIP supporter, gave an emotional address to the party.

From her speech:

“I am delivering a message about a group of people in society that I don’t believe are fully understood. Some people see us as very brave people, some see us as freaks. I see us as neither. I see us as human beings.

I don’t see myself as a transsexual, I see myself as a woman that had a [problem at birth, I have had it all my life and I am trying to help others.

I came here to deliver a personal message, and I was given the opportunity by Nigel Farage and Paul Nuttall, who has previously sent me messages of support. They are the only party that have invited me to speak.”

Listen to the supportive wave of applause from the conference delegates as Maloney struggles to fight back tears while giving her speech.

Nigel Farage, in his closing remarks, then claimed with reasonable justification that “This party is open to everyone. Our only pride, our only prejudice is that we are patriotic.”

Compare this scene from the UKIP spring conference with the Republican presidential debate in 2011 where GOP delegates openly booed a gay soldier who asked whether gay people should be allowed to serve in the military. The response of that Republican audience in America betrayed a far greater level of antipathy toward equal rights for gay or transgender people than was in evidence at Margate today, and yet the perception of UKIP as a bigoted and homophobic party persists – sometimes fairly but often not so.

Is there an unwelcome, abhorrent element of racism and homophobia within UKIP? Yes, and it should be opposed and rooted out wherever it appears. But where it most definitely did not appear today was on the main stage or in the hall at the UKIP spring conference in Margate.

Racism, sexism and homophobia are problems within our society as a whole, not specific to any one political party. Hopefully we will remember this fact as the 2015 general election campaign unfolds.

Kellie Maloney UKIP spring conference 2015

We Need A British CPAC

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

CPAC merchandise

 

As UKIP’s spring conference gets underway, The Spectator makes lighthearted fun of the patriotic, themed merchandise available for delegates to purchase. And fair enough – some of it is quite kitschy. In fact, some of the trinkets remind one of the gaudy offerings you might find displayed for sale at the annual CPAC conference, currently underway in the United States.

Bloomberg reports:

The CPAC exhibition floor is about marketing, and advertising to conservatives is the same as marketing to anyone else: everything has to be unique, free, or superhero-themed. 

On the free stuff front, there are dozens of buttons, posters (including one celebrating the day President Obama leaves office), pens, steel water bottles, and other knick knacks people want more than need. The libertarian group Young Americans for Liberty gave out free “Stand with Rand” t-shirts to anyone who filled out a political philosophy form, with questions like “There should be no restrictions against law-abiding citizens owning firearms.” Each response (agree, maybe, and disagree) comes with a score, and the higher the score, the closer the attendee’s political philosophy is to Ronald Reagan.

All of which leads to some pressing questions: Why is there no equivalent of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee, in Britain? And are not British conservatives and big government sceptics greatly in need of one?

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UKIP: The First 100 Days

Samuel Hooper13 Comments

UKIP The First 100 Days

 

If the Allegretto from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 starts to play in the background of the film or television programme you are watching, you can bet good money that something sad, terrible or otherwise wrenchingly significant is about to happen, if it isn’t already unfolding on screen.

What better piece of music to choose, then, when crafting the soundtrack for the scene in your fake documentary where a future UKIP government MP takes the stage at a conference to announce Britain’s tough new immigration policy?

One can guess the bias of Channel 4’s fictional UKIP: The First 100 Days by the mere fact that it was produced and shown on television at all. It continues a noble tradition of “what if” mockumentaries imagining what would happen if some terrible catastrophe were to befall Britain – a smallpox outbreak, major terrorist incident, and now, apparently, the election of Nigel Farage as Britain’s next Prime Minister. That the filmmakers consider a (thoroughly inconceivable) UKIP general election victory to be a calamity on the same scale as a global smallpox pandemic tells you everything you need to know when judging their level of impartiality.

In the opening montage, we are treated to the sight of a bald, white, working-class market trader casually referring to British Sikhs as one of “your lot” when greeting UKIP’s new Asian woman MP for Romford. Because that is just how all white working class people think and talk, rubes that they are, according to the received wisdom of the London-based middle class liberals who make these programmes.

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The Overcrowded Centre: Tory MP Attacks Labour From The Left On NHS Privatisation

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Tory Conservative Labour LibDem Liberal Democrat Rosettes

 

2015 is already proving to be a difficult year for those of us who would defend politicians from the accusation that they are “all the same”.

Nobody, save the most ardently partisan Kool-Aid drinkers, is seriously excited by any of the main political parties as they jostle for position in the overcrowded political centre. And as blue merges with red, and red pretends to be blue, who can blame voters for wanting to be rid of any candidate sporting a Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat rosette?

Case in point: Robert Halfon, the incumbent Conservative MP for Harlow (this blogger’s hometown constituency) is now openly attacking his Labour challenger for – of all things – being too supportive of private sector involvement in the NHS.

Round About Harlow reports:

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It Will Take A Far Better Comedian Than Al Murray To Make A Laughing Stock Of UKIP

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

 

Do you recognise this man?

You may remember him from a short-lived television sitcom a few years back, in which he played the self-important, somewhat sexist and xenophobic proprietor of a scruffy, down-at-heel pub. Yes, this is Al Murray the Pub Landlord.

Murray’s career has consisted primarily of wringing the same laughs out of the same jokes involving the same character, over and over again, year after year; if you’ve seen one of his television or stage shows, you have more or less seen them all. But Al Murray’s latest reinvention comes with a political twist – he is running for election as the Free United Kingdom Party (FUKP) candidate in South Thanet, the same constituency that UKIP leader Nigel Farage is contesting in the general election this May.

Murray’s apparent goal is to win a few more laughs (and a much needed publicity boost) by melding his stereotypical pub landlord persona with Nigel Farage’s pro-British populism, a process that is aided by their shared love of real ale; this is not complex, thought-provoking comedy.

The Spectator provides a taste of FUKP’s manifesto:

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