I was shocked to read that prominent Ukip member Steven Woolfe has had a brain scan following a fracas with a fellow kipper, but even more shocked to find he had one at all. Diane James must have been very relieved to find she had one, so she resigned as party leader after an impressive 18 days in charge. Her reasons for resigning? Someone in her family was ill and she had no idea what the job entailed. Jesus Christ: did no one tell her? In order to lead Ukip, you need to be Nigel Farage.
Predictably, Farage is once again the leader of Ukip, the most poisonous leader of the most poisonous populist party in the land, alongside the Conservatives. Of course he is. When he stood down after his greatest victory, almost single-handedly taking Britain out of the EU, he wanted to get on with his life. Having realised he has no life without Ukip, he’s back.
I expect he has been attracted by Theresa May’s astounding lurch to the right whilst at the same time talking centre. The whole Tory conference was, as ever, an irrelevance in policy terms but it was a case study in xenophobia and borderline racism. I would never seek to compare the Tories with Hitler’s Nazi Germany because the triumphalism was of the grey rinse brigade. There were no blackshirts or May-youth marching up and down, but here was the nastier party at work.
I suspect much of the Tory conference was aimed at attracting “ordinary working class people”, as Theresa May calls us, who worry about the effects of immigration and couldn’t see what use the EU was to them, the sort of people who left Labour in droves last year to support Farage’s BNP in blazers party. With Labour having all but given up trying to win elections, May has shrewdly moved to attract some of their voters. I suspect it will work, too.
Ukip, I sense, is now a busted flush, its life work complete. Now we are on the way out of the EU, what is left for them? Obviously they can continue with the bigotry and racism for which they are renowned, but voters may conclude that if they want bigotry and racism, it’s once again okay to Tory.
One thing May has done is to stoke up all the hatred that suddenly picked up once the EU result was announced. Not everyone, of course, but some people, too many, have seen the result as being an invitation to racially abuse people who don’t conform to their idea of Britishness. The lengthy, tortuous route to Brexit has only just started and politicians who care about stability would do well to think about their language, but they won’t because political advantage always comes first. May is riding on a tide of Europhobia because it suits her to do so. It is the job Ukip formerly carried out.
One thing I was not expecting of Mrs May to come after Ukip from the right because it seemed scarcely possible. But that’s exactly what is happening and we have reason to be afraid. Very afraid.
