Nationalism, immigration and racism in the EU

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
If right-wing papers are having a dig at UKIP, surely it's just because the party is going to be taking far more votes away from the Tories than from Labour? So they get to ostensibly distance themselves from a quite openly bigoted party while quietly welcoming its inevitable effect of pulling Tory policy (further) to the right to try and staunch the steady trickle of voters to UKIP.
 

droid

Well-known member
Yes, absolutely. But still, it must be galling to be forced to rubbish a party that essentially embodies everything you stand for.
 

droid

Well-known member
"What of Farage's suggestion that Ukip will hold the balance of power after next year's general election? "He's a fantasist. They always do well in Euro elections because they're the obvious party of protest, but the idea that they're going to come from nothing to be holding the balance of power is ridiculous. I don't expect them to get any seats."

Any vote for Ukip in the European poll, says Sked, was wasted. "If you elect a Ukip MEP, you're just going to elect another incompetent charlatan that you're going to turn into another millionaire. They go native in Brussels, take the expenses and the perks and do fuck all."

http://www.theguardian.com/politics...-alan-sked-party-become-frankensteins-monster
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps

"Behind that image is someone who isn't bright," says Sked, who recalls trying to give the public school-educated Farage remedial grammar lessons: "I spent two hours trying to explain to him the difference between 'it's' with an apostrophe and 'its' without and he just flounced out the office saying, 'I just don't understand words.'"

Haha! Thanks for that link, very informative (and amusing). This Sked guy sounds pretty reasonable, considering what his party's turned into.
 
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hucks

Your Message Here

Yup. But that was before the elections, as was the hilarious multi cultural festival UKIP threw in Croydon (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...s-ukip-fights-racism-accusations-9404231.html)

People on twitter who would never vote UKIP anyway may have got very excited about both of them, but they seem not to have made any impact at the polls. I suspect what will matter more will be their utter incompetence as local councillors. People really don't like that.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
I suspect what will matter more will be their utter incompetence as local councillors. People really don't like that.

I read that every time they've had to defend a council seat in a by-election they've lost. Similar story as BNP in that respect – they tended to do better in places where they hadn't done well before.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
What an odd thing to do. Sunder Katwala's one of those "don't call UKIP racist" guys, isn't he?

Yup.

His think-tank British Futures is very consensualist, very feel-your-pain, whether it's people who don't like living next door to immigrants or those who think they should all be sent back... pardon, encouraged to leave.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
What exactly does anyone - who isn't a member of UKIP or openly a supporter - have to gain by saying "UKIP isn't racist" at this juncture? Farage is clearly a massive racist, and every time one of his crowd of cretins opens their mouth you start to wonder if he isn't in fact the least racist member of his whole party.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
What exactly does anyone - who isn't a member of UKIP or openly a supporter - have to gain by saying "UKIP isn't racist" at this juncture?

Because their immigration policies are aligned with anywhere from half to a quarter of the population and the "Fuck me, we're all just a massive bunch of racists" option isn't a popular one with certain think tanks and social scientists.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
In the ghettos themselves (I work in one, Butetown in Cardiff Bay, formerly 'Tiger Bay') the assimilation argument happens within the communities and quite often between generations. This is a more interesting and aposite place for it to happen, and it is the younger generations who are the more radical, and recent immigrants, from say Somalia and Yemen, are dealing with some of the same shit they dealt with where they came from.

Cardiff jihadis in Syria
 

Patrick Swayze

I'm trying to shut up
so UKIP have an MP now

their new policy on blocking HIV positive people from entering the UK reminds me of this clip from Children Of Men


In fact it wouldn't surprise me if their party political broadcasts looked something like this, esp. given the fear of Ebola spreading and the picture painted by the media of the swathes of welfare leeches and NHS tourists massed at Calais.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I was right, sadly. The Euro elections were not a one off, and I do think this will be reflected in a general election. And even if it is not quite I will add:

1) The idea that the SNP/Labour dominance in Scotland is a reflection of the death of Scottish conservatism is wrong: if you look at general election results in the last two decades, the Tories haven't won, but they've been second in many constituencies, and often not that far behind. So my contention was that in an indepedent Scotland, there is no reason to write off a Scottish Conservative (non-Tory) revival in a decade or two, and therefore the vote was not (ultimately) about party politics.

2) The idea that a UKIP defeat in a general election, that is if they got no MPs, would be irrelevant if they came second in safe Labour or Tory seats, smashing the traditional opposition. I think that would be very worrying.

Also, the other night, after finishing Charles Moore's Thatcher biography, the whole thing came to me in an early morning dream. What is UKIP (now)? Taking into account its libertarian, anti-European, anti-intervensionist stance? Ultra-Thatcherite? Well, Thatcher was not against welfare on principle, she had some sympathy for Beveridge. Also, UKIP seem to be anti-Atlantacist. Who was more pro-America and pro-NATO than Thatcher? (She would not have been pro-Putin, like Farage clearly is.) It didn't stack up...but then. Of course. They are Powell-ite. UKIP are the party of Enoch Powell, in every respect, from his early adoption of free-market ideas to his latent racism to his later incarnation in the Ulster Unionists.

This should be the way the Tories and Labour attack UKIP. Except that Powell popularised a trashy racism and jingoism in the British working class psyche. We are seeing the fruit of that now.

Sorry: forgot to add: Powell was deeply suspicious of America, even in his last ditch paranoia about American interests on Irish territory. Thatcher was less pro-Unionist than anti-IRA, which is a bit different.

Also: Powell was a soft anti-semite, which also chimes with UKIP's rogue troops, and divorces them from Thatcher's internationalist neoliberalism, and her adored Jewish Finchley constituency.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Oh, fucking hell, why did I write that?

Huh? Why the regret? It's an interesting and informative post. I know sod all about British political history and find these kinds of threads and these kinds of posts really useful, just as you do with CrowleyHead's potted socio-cultural history of rap.
 

trza

Well-known member
I don't pay much attention to the flavor of the month political story, but anti-immigration in America is a movement. Its been around since the independence of the country, it never goes away, it only goes up and down in popularity. It changes shape with the economic uncertainty or cultural identity and partisan positions but its just always there.
 
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