UKIP if you want to, but don’t get caught napping

UKIP’s Margate conference is over, but its election manifesto is yet to be published. We know what the party’s mood music is, and that it has two policies that the three major national Westminster parties plus the Greens find distasteful: withdrawal from the EU and a greatly tightened points-based system for immigration. Beyond that, what UKIP stands for – concretely speaking – is largely a matter of conjecture; of hope for some, yet apparent fear for others.

UKIP’s failure to define what it stands for and what it would wish to do were it to be in a position to influence policy, illustrates that it still has some way to go to define itself as a political party. As matters stand, it remains a vehicle of protest. A UKIP candidate on the ballot paper will effectively present voters with the opportunity to vote for ‘none of the above’, providing that the latter sentiment also coincides with voters’ opposition to EU membership and mass immigration. As such, a vote for UKIP can be said to be positive, as it increases the pressure on other parties to address these concerns, particularly in marginal seats where UKIP’s seizure of a few thousand votes will doubtless hobble the chances of many a ‘mainstream’ candidate. That said, a vote for UKIP should, given the party’s lack of clarity regarding direction and policy, be one that is loaned to it.

UKIP’s absence of a definite set of policies currently enables it to tap into the discontents of different groups of voters in both traditional Conservative and Labour seats, but as such, this approach is unstable. It may work for a while, but can UKIP function in this manner in the longer term, if indeed, there is a longer term? Douglas Carswell has already stated that he believes immigration “has been, overwhelmingly, a story of success.” How many UKIP voters believe that statement to be true? Carswell appears to have strayed into the wrong party, frustrated by Cameron’s commitment to EU membership. Farage may yet come to rue having allowed Carswell into his party. It may have raised UKIP’s profile and given it a brief fillip in the polls, but if one of UKIP’s two core messages that has great resonance with the public – its opposition to mass immigration – is abandoned, UKIP may as well disband and simply become a campaign group calling for an EU referendum. Then again, perhaps it was never intended for it to be anything other than the latter.

It seems likely that UKIP will stack up a large number of votes across the country in May, taking support from both the Conservatives and Labour, creating unpredictable electoral dynamics and consequences in many constituencies. However, it is unlikely to seize many parliamentary seats, and like the SDP, will come a good second in many a constituency. As to what readers of this blog think, the recent readers’ poll revealed that the greatest proportion of respondents – 25% - thought that UKIP would have 2-3 MPs in the new parliament, but only 3% thought that the party would have no MPs, the same percentage who stated that the party would obtain 51 seats or more (an unusual opinion, certainly). The majority of respondents – some 68% - thought that UKIP would have between 1 and 10 MPs, but surprisingly there was also a cluster of readers – 12% - who thought that the party would obtain between 21 and 25. However many MPs are elected under the UKIP banner, their influence upon this General Election is likely to be a significant and interesting one, but quite what it will stand for remains very much up in the air.

Channel 4’s Immigration Celebration

Channel 4 is seemingly going into overdrive in the run-up to the election, churning out a greater than usual stream of pro-mass immigration propaganda. Just over a week ago we had its defamatory hatchet job on UKIP with ‘UKIP: The First 100 Days’, whereas this evening we’re treated to an immigration double bill with ‘The Romanians are Coming’, followed immediately by ‘Immigration Street’. Its senior editorial staff are clearly hoping that they can assist in neutering UKIP’s influence on the immigration debate through endlessly repeating the mantras of ‘diversity is good’ and ‘mass immigration is good’, with an aim of making the UK ‘safely’ hyper-diverse forever.

Why is the channel doing this? Well, turning to ‘Immigration Street’, with a director named Afi Khan and a producer called Masood Khan, would we really expect to see a programme that was anything other than ‘celebratory’ about enforced ethnic hyper-diversity?

Channel 4 has also been giving the Green Party a fair amount of airtime. Part of it this evening was perhaps not that welcome, owing to Nathalie Bennett’s earlier bungled radio interview in which she made a fool of herself by being unable to answer basic questions about the Green’s much-vaunted flagship housing policy. The channel’s ‘Political Slot’ after the Channel 4 News allowed Caroline Lucas to talk about the Green policy of renationalising the railways and the goal of cutting rail fares by 12% (although she did not say over what period). How was this to be paid for? By cutting the road budget, apparently. One also harbours the suspicion that the Greens would introduce a swingeingly punitive set of taxes against motorists, being enemies of the car and individualism. Moreover, one must not forget their ridiculous policy of introducing a 20mph speed limit in all urban areas, which would increase pollution and decrease fuel efficiency.

Still, at least it can be hoped that an increase in support for the Greens will damage the Labour Party, although it seems more likely that it will hoover up more former Liberal Democrat voters.

What are your thoughts on ‘Immigration Street’? How has your neighbourhood changed since Tony Blair vowed to destroy the ‘forces of conservatism’? How many of us realised that by ‘forces of conservatism’ he was referring to the very existence of the nation and its continuity of history across the generations?

Who will govern after 7 May 2015? Readers' opinions

This year’s General Election promises to be the most unpredictable in living memory. For months, as assiduously documented by UK Polling Report, opinion polls have shown a narrow gap between the two leading parties – Labour and Conservative – with the former generally maintaining a narrow lead over the latter. However, this promises to be no typical General Election, for politics in the UK is no longer the traditional two-horse race that dominated the twentieth century after the demise of Lloyd George’s Liberal Party. Old party loyalties have frayed, with many voters displaying an increasing willingness to lend their votes to newer smaller parties, despite the limitations placed on their likely success imposed by the first-past-the-post system (with the exception of the SNP in this respect).

Labour, having sowed the seed of devolution, are shortly, it would seem, about to reap the whirlwind. Following the SNP’s defeat in the independence referendum but subsequent victory in Scottish opinion polls, we could be about to witness the death of the Labour Party as a national force as its MPs in Scotland are swept away by a rising nationalist tide. The Conservative Party has already undergone this process, having effectively become a party restricted to England and Wales. Given the projections relating to the SNP’s likely share of the vote in Scotland, with its rise in popularity being largely at the expense of Labour, Miliband’s party could be heading for near electoral wipeout north of the border in May. Nonetheless, it is clear that the SNP would make for natural bedfellows with Labour rather than the Conservatives. A minority Labour administration propped up by the SNP is a highly plausible scenario, as well as the least desirable, for Labour has indicated that it is in ‘principle’ against the concept of English votes for English laws, which whilst anti-democratic, plays into the narrow self-interest of the Labour Party. We could well therefore witness a situation in which Scotland effectively holds the rest of the Union to ransom, with the SNP exacting as many financial concessions as possible from Westminster, whilst facilitating the implementation of policies not supported by the majority of the electorate in England or Wales. The SNP leadership probably realises that such a tactic would also cause such an adverse reaction in England that it would prompt mass English support for Scottish independence, so as to be rid of an interfering deadweight. However, quite what the recent OPEC-engineered slump in oil prices will do to the long-term fortunes of the SNP and their budgetary credibility, remains to be seen.

A couple of weeks’ ago, a poll was opened to blog readers to gauge their opinions as to the likely shape of our next Government. Unsurprisingly, few believed that a majority Government will emerge on 8 May: some 7% stated that they believed we would have a Labour majority, whereas 14% thought that a majority Conservative administration would be returned. Readers were presented with a wide range of coalition options to choose from, as well as ‘some other configuration’. A total of 14% of respondents opted for this latter category, so perhaps they are placing their faith in the rather distant prospects of majority Liberal Democrat, UKIP or Green administrations.

Readers clearly did not share the view of the pollsters which currently indicate a Labour-SNP coalition as the most likely outcome, as only 7% selected this as the likely result. Even more surprisingly, perhaps, is that nobody thought that there would be the likelihood of a continuation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition. The second most likely outcome of the General Election was adjudged by 21% of respondents to be a Labour Coalition with the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Greens. Topping the list of likely outcomes, securing 28% of this poll’s vote, was a Conservative Coalition with UKIP.

The only clear conclusion that can be drawn either from this readers’ poll, or from national opinion polls, is that there is massive uncertainty around the outcome of the next General Election. A new poll opens today, gauging readers’ opinions as to how many MPs they believe UKIP will have on 8 May.

Dire: 'UKIP: The First 100 Days'

Should national broadcasters be permitted to run 'docudramas' with the intent of interfering in the political process during the run-up to a General Election?

Last night's Channel 4 offering, 'UKIP: The First 100 Days', was as predictable and dull as it was woodenly acted and blatantly partisan. How could a review conclude anything else? (Admittedly, I've not read the Guardian review, so it may well praise it for its 'objectivity' and great 'public service'). From the outset, it was obvious that this programme had been commissioned and screened with no other intent than to portray UKIP as the new 'nasty' party; a party of not-very-closet 'racists', frightfully white and not very bright. Although Channel 4 sometimes commissions and delivers excellent documentary programmes, such as Dispatches, last night's drama could not be adjudged to meet the broadcaster's often high standards, falling instead into a knee-jerk pantomime Leftism, that characterised anyone with concerns about mass immigration, the undemocratic nature of the EU or globalism, as racist, xenophobic and innately stupid. If it was intended to be political satire, it was about as funny and cutting edge as David Cameron delivering a stand-up routine, or George Osborne shoving an unexpected tax demand in your face.

That its central character - a fictitious female MP of Sikh extraction - should eventually 'see the light' and turn on UKIP, was a known given of the drama as soon as the camera first alighted upon her. What else could such a character do? The writer evidently thought that both she, and the programme's viewers, needed to be awakened from their state of false consciousness.

Although, obviously, the UKIP platform - so far as we can make it out - being anti-EU, anti mass immigration and anti-multiculturalism, lies in direct opposition to Channel 4's pro-EU, pro mass immigration and pro-multiculturalism editorial stance, should this fact alone allow the broadcaster to screen such a programme at this time? If so, surely for the sake of political balance, we ought to see analogous documentaries dealing with the other 'major' political parties operating across the whole of the UK? Channel 4 could portray Ed Miliband as an out-of-touch elitist intent on wrecking the public finances, or David Cameron as a friend of transnational corporate capital selling off the country's economic assets to hostile foreign investors; Nick Clegg as . . . Nick Clegg, or Nathalie Bennett of the Greens as a vegan totalitarian with a soft spot for ISIS (not the Egyptian goddess) and a desire to extinguish Britain in an immigration tsunami from Africa and Asia? That would strike me as being both as fair and as objective as the 'docudrama' that we saw last night.

That complaints should have been submitted to Ofcom in the wake of 'UKIP: The First 100 Days' is perfectly understandable. Will Ofcom take any notice? What do you think?

SNP: ‘The more seats we have here, the more powers we’ll have in Scotland.’

Thus runs the slogan on the first welcome image (reproduced below) displayed on the SNP’s website landing page. However, for the English this statement, given projections regarding the possible composition of the next House of Commons, would be better displayed next to the SNP’s peculiar logo, which looks for all the world like a noose.   

Opinion polls indicate that we are heading towards a second Parliament with no party possessing an overall majority. For a number of months, the national polls – at the headline level – have remained relatively static, but what has changed, as widely noted by commentators, is the situation in Scotland. As matters stand, the SNP is on track to oust Labour as the leading parliamentary party in the country, routing the latter in a number of its historic strongholds. Rather than laying to rest the question of Scotland’s constitutional status within the United Kingdom, last September’s Independence Referendum has bequeathed a situation in which the Scots have come to perceive themselves as very much separate to the rest of the UK, albeit whilst remaining part of it.

Much of this change in national self-perception can, perhaps, be attributed to the Westminster panic over the possibility of a ‘Yes’ vote, and the associated granting of additional concessions to the Scottish Parliament which amounted to the ‘Devo Max’ that had previously been denied as an option to Scots. Having woken up to the efficacy of voting SNP in leveraging additional powers and privileges from Westminster, Scottish voters seem intent to play the nationalist card in pursuit of further concessions from the rest of the UK, to pay for policies that are deemed unaffordable in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Doubtless, Ed Miliband’s lacklustre leadership of the Labour Party and absence of a coherent political vision also plays poorly with Scottish voters when contrasted with an SNP, which is making a direct play for the traditional Labour vote north of the border. 

Amongst the SNP’s pledges is to continue to ensure that ‘There will be no tuition fees for Scottish students’. This situation understandably makes many English students envious and resentful, particularly so when considering that whereas English and Welsh students studying in Scottish universities have to pay fees equivalent to the maximum chargeable to domestic students in England and Wales - £9,000 per annum – if you happen to come from anywhere between Lisbon and Tallinn that happens to be part of the EU, you pay nothing. Not only that, but even ‘if you’re the child of a Turkish worker in the UK’ you can apply to have your tuition fees paid in full. You could not devise a more unjust anti-English system if you tried. Alongside this remarkable pledge, is a statement that the party wishes to see ‘a minimum income of at least £7,000 for the lowest income students’ (although presumably not for sub-Turkish English students).

This SNP approach to policy, with its pronounced anti-English tenor, spells trouble ahead. According to today’s UK Polling Report rolling average of polls, Labour stand on 33%, Conservatives on 31%, UKIP on 15%, the Liberal Democrats on 8% and the Greens on 6%. The others, amongst whom are included the SNP, account for the remaining 7%. However, whereas UKIP are highly likely to end up with far fewer seats than the Liberal Democrats, possibly winning a handful in total, the SNP, because of their natural concentration in Scotland, look set to play the role of power brokers, just as the Liberal Democrats have done since 2010. Such an electoral outcome will doubtless fuel pressure for both constitutional and electoral reform, given the far higher number of votes that will accrue to UKIP, but failing to yield electoral MPs. 

On 3 February, UK Polling Report reported that the four opinion polls carried out thus far this year in Scotland revealed the following stated voting intentions: Labour 27%, Liberal Democrats 5% and the SNP 47%. This represented swings of 21% from Labour and 20.5% from the Liberal Democrats to the SNP. However, swings are never uniform, so although the polls suggest a near if not complete wipe-out for Labour in Scotland this May, most pollsters believe that Labour will retain some seats. Nonetheless, it is generally anticipated that the SNP will take upwards of 40 Westminster seats if current voting intentions hold firm. This raises the spectre of a Miliband minority administration propped up by the SNP, possibly, depending upon the precise distribution of seats, also being reliant upon a cobbled together coalition including one or two Greens and the Liberal Democrats. This would probably be the worst possible outcome for the UK, running the risk of fracturing it irrevocably, whilst ceding further sovereignty to the EU and sinking ever further beneath the weight of near-untrammelled mass immigration. Who would pay for Scotland's spending spree, particularly during a time of likely declining North Sea oil income? 

A Labour minority Government with SNP support could sound the death knell for the United Kingdom. Wouldn’t Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon et al be delighted with the anti-democratic havoc that they could play with the Sassenachs! 

Readers’ General Election Poll Results

In the best tradition of John Snow’s “just a bit of fun”, I am about to introduce readers to the results of the past week’s readers’ poll as to their voting intentions in the forthcoming General Election. It may not come as a huge surprise that the results here diverge somewhat from the national opinion polls, but one characteristic is shared by both: the unpopularity of the Liberal Democrats. If this blog’s readers were to determine the future composition of Westminster the Liberal Democrats would be wiped out, for in total, 0% of this blog’s readers voted for them. Likewise, nobody declared in favour of either Respect or Plaid Cymru.

Turning to the ‘don’t knows’, readers are rather more likely to know whom they wish to vote for than the electorate as a whole, with only 9% stating that they do not yet know which party they will vote for on 7 May. Next come four parties with 4% apiece: Conservatives, the English Democrats, Labour and the SNP. Securing the support of 9% of readers are the Green Party, which would become the official opposition in the House of Commons elected by Durotrigan’s readers. However, storming home with a landslide majority are UKIP, who secured the support of 61% of poll participants.

Thus, if we omit the ‘don’t knows’ for the time being, blog readers would return a Parliament looking as follows: on the government benches, led by Nigel Farage, would be 445 UKIP MPs, whilst leading the opposition would be Natalie Bennett with 69 Green MPs. The Conservatives, English Democrats, Labour and the SNP would each ‘boast’ 34 MPs. Somewhere, in a far distant galaxy, perhaps this will be the outcome. As for here, well, we’ll have to wait and see. Watch this space for election commentary.

In the meantime, please feel free to take part in the new readers’ poll ‘What will our Government look like after the 2015 General Election?’ which has now opened and will run until next Sunday evening. 

Suzanne Evans pulls out of Question Time

This is disappointing news, that caused George Galloway to issue a tweet stating 'UKIP have pulled out of tonight's Question Time. Cowards.' Hardly fair, given that Evans is ill. Galloway was therefore forced to eat his words.

Question Time: George Galloway versus Jonathan Freedland?

Tonight’s Question Time will be broadcast from Finchley, and judging from the panel it seems that it has been set up to engineer a confrontation between George Galloway and “Liberal Zionist” and Guardian journalist, Jonathan Freedland. Presumably, Tower Hamlets would have been Galloway’s preferred London location, taking into account his ethno-confessional predilections, but instead he finds himself in rather different territory where the local residents are not likely to be so . . . how can I put this? Receptive to his message?  

So, prepare yourself to sit back and watch a lot of ranting and raving about conflicts in faraway lands which really shouldn’t be any of our concern. Unfortunately, however, it turns out that they are our concern, insofar as we now have so many millions of residents from the said faraway lands that they have brought their bigotries with them and their hatreds are being played out on our soil.  

I anticipate that Nicky Morgan and Tristram Hunt will make for very dull viewing, dutifully and mechanically trotting out their respected party lines, but quite what to expect of UKIP’s Suzanne Evans, I’m not sure, but as she has taken on Tim Aker’s policy brief for the party, I will be keen to hear what she says and reveals, if anything, about UKIP’s forthcoming manifesto. Once the programme moves away from the inevitable ding-dong between Galloway and Friedman over Palestine/Israel, I am hoping that Evans will shake things up a little. Will any members of the audience or panellists pick up on Galloway’s recent Bradford speech, in which he attacked Charlie Hebdo and effectively called for a global blasphemy law to protect Islam? I hope so. If you haven’t heard his speech, or are curious to view a summary, click here.  

UKIP's Call: Siren, or Clarion?

UKIP appear to have two solid policy objectives: to leave the EU, and to introduce a points-based immigration system. All well and good, but beyond that, what do we really know? Granted, these two issues are very important, and the three mainstream parties - along with the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru - all possess the same policies regarding these themes:  they are pro-EU and pro-mass immigration. In this respect, UKIP is clearly the party of choice for those voters who dislike the EU political project and a de facto open borders immigration policy.  

In 2009 following UKIP’s strong performance in that year’s EU elections, Lord Pearson approached David Cameron and offered to disband UKIP if the latter would commit the Conservative Party to a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Although this never occurred, it was suggestive that UKIP really was a single-issue party. Subsequently, Nigel Farage has described UKIP’s 2010 General Election manifesto as “drivel.” So, what do UKIP stand for? 

We have yet to discover the party’s manifesto for the May 2015 General Election, so it is not yet possible to discover whether or not it should be classified as “drivel”, but a posting on the UKIP website from earlier this week, entitled ‘100 days till the election, 100 reasons to vote UKIP’, appears to forward a list of 100 concrete policy suggestions, but will they translate into policy pledges? Upon an initial reading, the majority of these suggestions are ones that I would support, but it is hard to discern how UKIP proposes to tackle the deficit and finance its pledges which involve additional public expenditure. Simply leaving the EU, slashing the foreign aid budget and ending mass immigration would not in themselves plug the budgetary black hole. Then again, nothing offered by the established political parties regarding tackling the deficit, let alone the national debt, appears to be overly credible.

It therefore remains to be seen if UKIP can successfully transform itself from a single- or dual-issue vehicle of popular protest shouting “none of the above!”, into a fully-fledged political party with a cohesive set of policies that move beyond a populist cry of frustration and discontent. From an initial reading, its ‘100 reasons to vote UKIP’ suggest that the party has moved away, to a certain extent, from its earlier Atlanticist Thatcherite bent, which is encouraging. Whether or not UKIP is offering a siren or a clarion call, well, I shall reserve judgement until the manifesto is published.