It is not often that I feel a touch of sympathy for Nigel Farage, leader of the far right political party UKIP.
His party conference is being held at Doncaster during the same weekend as the Ryder Cup. Can you imagine his distress as the cry of ‘Europe, Europe’ echoes around Gleneagles?
One of the first slogans of his conference was a call for further immigration. Pardon me, more? Yes, more. UKIP wants to scrap overseas aid for the poorest people in the world. And what happens when the poor get poorer? Why, they emigrate, of course. If you have watched the TV pictures from Calais in recent weeks, you will soon realise where they are trying to get to.
So, quite apart from doing the right thing by helping our fellow world citizens by donating what in overall terms is a very small figure to save and improve their lives, overseas aid plays a crucial role in stopping mass emigration. Farage and his fellow xenophobes won’t want you to hear that bit though. They are opposed in principle to, well, foreigners.
UKIP is basically one man, Nigel Farage, a shrewd political operator from the hard right and without doubt the face of the establishment, although he pretends to fight the establishment. His policies are essentially populist slogans and rhetoric, as worthless and empty as the Trotskyists of the far left. Ugly nationalism and isolationism are really what he represents.
How Farage must hate the idea of people from all over Europe cheering on people from other countries in Europe? Loud roars of approval for Germans, Scandinavians, Spanish and, for god’s sake, French people. What’s the world coming to? Whatever next? The Royal and Ancient Golf Club will soon be force-feeding us Chorizo, Vin de Pays and Bratwurst. Whatever happened to good old traditional British food like Chow Mein, Chicken Tikka Masala and Paella?
And whenever I go abroad, to Greece, to the Netherlands, to France, I never think to myself: we really must put up the shutters, the drawbridges and bring back our workers from these dreadful foreign lands. Apart from speaking different languages, I don’t see a lot of difference between us.
I don’t want a political union in Europe but I see little to be lost in a reformed EU that works for the people rather than big business. I keep hearing we need to get powers back from Brussels but no one seems to know which ones apart from the ability to worsen people’s working conditions.
I don’t feel ruled by Brussels either. But apparently we are being according to Farage.
David Cameron once described UKIP as being full of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.” I think he was right, apart from the closet bit.
Because of UKIP, the BNP has tanked in popularity terms and they now occupy the right wing of politics; Farage is our Le Pen, our Wilders.
UKIP is indeed a one man band but what a one man. A charismatic right wing politician with no real policies and no real answers to the problems we face.
The sort of man you’d want to have a beer with? Nah – I’d rather have a few beers with the European Ryder Cup team, thanks.
