mauvais
on reddit or something
Can you expand on this? I'm not sure whether you're telling me I'm wrong about the people I encounter, but they're fairly easily demonstrated. Interested either way.
Characterising UKIP?
- Thread starter chilango
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Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
This is quite interesting. Database of political party donations.
https://pefonline.electoralcommissi...onReturnsSearch.aspx?type=basicDonationSearch
Off to the gym now. More later.
https://pefonline.electoralcommissi...onReturnsSearch.aspx?type=basicDonationSearch
Off to the gym now. More later.
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
No, I obviously have no idea about the people you know. I am just pointing out that your experience here isn't universal.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Ok. My wording wasn't quite right - you are right that they existed before as an anti-EU nationalist party. But as they present themselves to the public now, they are anti-immigration - that's the thing they want to show themselves as. And it's also the thing Farage has turned them into. I'd say that is mostly opportunistic - back in the 1990s, the UK had very low net immigration, coming off the back of decades of net emigration. It wasn't an effective stick to beat people with, and the identifiable bogeypeople - Eastern Europeans - hadn't started coming.
Farage sells getting out of the EU with the promise of controlling immigration, and he plays racist cards to do so - languages on trains, Romanians/Romanies. It's not much different in terms of rhetoric from Enoch Powell - attacking 'that lot', the most recent wave of immigrants.
andysays
Love and solidarity
So again, you're saying that all we need to look at is how UKIP present themselves to the public, there is no point in looking beneath the surface, because the real interests and purposes of a political party are always reflected perfectly by their stated policies and rhetoric?
Would you say that the Conservative Party or the Labour Party can be understood and explained in the same way?
Some of those most superficial bullshit I've ever read on Urban
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
You're being extraordinarily selective in the way you reply to me. I've said that they are a nationalist party, and that they don't necessarily represent a coherent set of interests. They represent an idea first and foremost - the idea of a sovereign British state. Beyond that, they are incoherent - they will both protect British jobs and curb worker rights; they are not internally coherent. The second bit is just absurd. If you want to understand their rise, you need to look at the rhetoric, yes. You also need to look at the people voting for them and why and to what extent that rhetoric is winning them over.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
This is the kind of thing that shows how UKIP are both setting the agenda and profiting from it. A poll from May this year showing that immigration is considered the top issue facing the country. 
Whether UKIP existed or not, that is an issue that needs tackling. Immigrants are being scapegoated.
Whether UKIP existed or not, that is an issue that needs tackling. Immigrants are being scapegoated.
andysays
Love and solidarity
It seems to me that you're being extraordinarily selective and superficial in the way you approach the question of how we characterise UKIP.
You seem determine to focus entirely on the surface and resistant to examining what might by underneath the surface, in a way I don't recall you ever being on any other subject, where you normally at least attempt a nuanced or more-than-superficial analysis, even if I don't always agree with everything you're saying.
Of course UKIP's position is incoherent in some ways, but the same can be said about the Tories or Labour. To mention UKIP's incoherence in this way as if it's something unique is to ignore that all parties are incoherent.
You wouldn't simply accept everything Cameron or Miliband says as being the whole story about their respective party positions and interests and ignore the idea that there is stuff underneath which is left unsaid (at least I hope you wouldn't), so I'm baffled as to why you do that with Farage.
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
This is the kind of thing that shows how UKIP are both setting the agenda and profiting from it. A poll from May this year showing that immigration is considered the top issue facing the country.
Whether UKIP existed or not, that is an issue that needs tackling. Immigrants are being scapegoated.
Immigrants have been scapegoated for decades. UKIP didn't make that. They may profit from it, but they aren't the ones spreading the myths. I seem to remember Michael Howard playing up to anti-immigrant sentiment in the 2001 election, it's been around as a political technique forever. It's not that alone that's driving their support.
Farage succeeds largely I think because he speaks in a way people understand, and seems less servile to focus group/media bullshit. The fact that he's posh and frequently contradictory is secondary to this in I guess a lot of people's view. They want someone straight-talking that isn't transparently faking it like Cameron. Someone that says 'so what' and shrugs it off rather than saying 'that's a very good question' then going off at a tangent. That and a desire for 'something different', which at least in terms of presentation they are. How that'll stand up as technocratic tory defectors start swelling their ranks will be interesting.
I don't think anti-European sentiment (people rather than the EU) has been that strong in general, living in what is becoming a bit of a Polish area of a big city I think I've only seen one bit of anti-Polish graffiti - they've settled in here without much bother. That may be less of a case in some towns, particularly some of the smaller towns out to the east where there's lots of agricultural workers and maybe people do feel more 'swamped'. I'd be interested in other people on this forum's perspective on this. More recently I think it's the long-demonised Roma that are getting the hostility, and allowing 'EU immigration' to be painted as a bad thing. Perhaps that's a factor in the rise of attention UKIP (or immigration in general) has got over the last year, that they now have some 'bad guys' to point at and say 'we can't stop this lot coming in'.
Are you not making a common mistake here? Is it not actually the case that UKIP aren't against immigration per se; rather they're against immigration that isn't controlled by the U.K.? And they're highlighting the uncontrolled immigration from other EU countries as a reason to leave the EU. Immigration is just a side-issue for them - granted it's a profitable side-issue.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Three preconditions for the rise of UKIP:
1. Economic problems, with contraction in wages for those in the bottom half of society.
2. Year-on-year rises in net immigration.
3. A Tory government.
1. is reflected in the demographic - average UKIP voters are below average income. They are struggling, and hit hard by cuts.
2. This is their trump card. They are the only party that can honesty say they can do something about it. They also link 2. to 1.
3. Under a Labour govt, the tories can, and did, take the UKIP position. UKIP pointed out at the last election that the tories would not be able to live up to the limits they set. UKIP was right. They couldn't. In opposition the tories could, and did, position themselves as the anti-immigration party. In power, they cannot - immigration continues to rise under their watch. UKIP can now very credibly take this space, and point very credibly at how they pointed out at the last election that this would happen.
I would add a 4. Nigel Farage. If Farage had been killed in that helicopter crash, UKIP would not be the force they are today. Under the likes of Neil Hamilton, they would not be winning by-elections. The necessary preconditions need to be there for him to exploit them, but he has had the skill to exploit them. He's probably the most impressive mainstream politician in Britain today.
1. Economic problems, with contraction in wages for those in the bottom half of society.
2. Year-on-year rises in net immigration.
3. A Tory government.
1. is reflected in the demographic - average UKIP voters are below average income. They are struggling, and hit hard by cuts.
2. This is their trump card. They are the only party that can honesty say they can do something about it. They also link 2. to 1.
3. Under a Labour govt, the tories can, and did, take the UKIP position. UKIP pointed out at the last election that the tories would not be able to live up to the limits they set. UKIP was right. They couldn't. In opposition the tories could, and did, position themselves as the anti-immigration party. In power, they cannot - immigration continues to rise under their watch. UKIP can now very credibly take this space, and point very credibly at how they pointed out at the last election that this would happen.
I would add a 4. Nigel Farage. If Farage had been killed in that helicopter crash, UKIP would not be the force they are today. Under the likes of Neil Hamilton, they would not be winning by-elections. The necessary preconditions need to be there for him to exploit them, but he has had the skill to exploit them. He's probably the most impressive mainstream politician in Britain today.
coley
Well-Known Member
If not the best, certainly in the stakes for the best liked, as is Boris, not the publics fault when you look at the alternatives
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
The only way to limit immigration from the rest of the EU is to leave the EU. On this basic point, of course, he is right. So he is able to present himself as a politician who is speaking the truth. By contrast, Cameron is shown to be a liar - he said he would limit immigration and he did not. And Farage is right in saying that it was not in Cameron's power to do so.If not the best, certainly in the stakes for the best liked, as is Boris, not the publics fault when you look at the alternatives
On his terms, Farage is right to focus on this basic fact.
So this is why UKIP have risen. What is to be done against them? Hard, as anti-immigration is hardly new. It is a storm we must weather, as we weathered it before. Each new wave of immigrants must win a new battle, it seems.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
He does fall apart a bit under a proper grilling, but then I think the others would do the same.
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
The UKIP members I know (and they're the comfortable (retired) demographic more like Mauvais noted) tend to have a particular bee in their bonnet about islamic immigration, all that 'Britain is under Sharia law now' crap. Most of that migration is nothing to do with the EU as it tends to originate outside it, and something I guess that could be more 'controlled' without leaving. Recent proclamations that they want more 'commonwealth migration' rather than EU migration seem to go against this type of view. Is 'banning the burqa' still UKIP policy, or something they mention/pledge? Are they just standing against the 20 million Romanians coming here or whatever it was, or is there a wider hostility to all immigrants that's either expressed or hinted at?
It seems that anti-immigrant sentiment just moves from one group to another, I remember when it was all 'thieving asylum seekers'. We've had years of this.
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The BBC Panorama 'expose' including allegations of possible corruption seemed to have done him no harm at all.
mauvais
on reddit or something
Fair enough, never sure on here. No of course it's not universal, and I didn't mean to express it as such. Perhaps it's inevitably a set of disparate groups when the whole idea is a party that recruits defectors from anywhere it can.
Here's an example of the kind of demographic I'm on about, albeit in vast and probably impenetrable form. Here's a bit of context to explain what that site actually is - the comments are interesting.
I'm interested though in what you say about the people you know who match that description being anti-UKIP - what is their political outlook, then?
I'm not sure you're right on this one: the BNP rose when Labour were in power.
And collapsed when the tories came to power, like the national front before them.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Not in the way UKIP have risen. Like UKIP, they got MEPs but unlike UKIP they didn't come close to UK parliament election. UKIP have taken pretty much all of the BNP's extra voters gained under Labour, but there are also plenty of people voting UKIP who I would suggest would never have voted BNP.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Lo Siento.
Second As Farce
Bit of a historical rewrite here, to say the least. It wasn't Griffin's roasting on QT that did for the BNP but mainly their own internal stuff.
gosub
~#
And marmite
The roasting on QT was just the most obvious example of their vile views being made public, and thus causing the public to desert them in droves. Most people don't care two hoots about internal party politics unless we're talking a major split in a major party, like the Tories & the EU or Labour & Militant Tendency.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Their vote went up after question time.
And if internal disputes lead to the party disintegrating - as happened with the BNP - then it doesn't matter whether voters give two hoots for them or not, as there simply will not be any candidates to vote for.
edit: and split parties are the biggest electoral turn off. This is democratic ABC.
Really?, that seems to go against all the social media discussion/liberal opinion that states QT was a disaster for the BNP, intriguing.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
I wasn't sure where to post this. According to this Guardian article, UKIP high command has instructed its members not to "go on" (sic) Twitter.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Well I think the first thing to ask is what do you want to achieve with your anti-UKIPism?
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Well seeing as polling shows that UKIP voters/supporters are more pro-nationalisation than those of any other party bar Labour perhaps your encounters don't tell us much about UKIP or their supporters.
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