eublues

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...006724,00.html

Ukip goes Independent

Michael White
Tuesday February 6, 2007
The Guardian


It is hardly surprising that Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence party, wants to broaden Ukip's appeal by changing its name a bit. All the Frequently Asked Questions on its website turn out to be about the dreadful European Union.

As Nick Lowles of Searchlight, which monitors the British right, observes with understatement: "Ukip finds it hard to have an identity outside the European election cycle."

Hence Mr Farage's determination, ratified by his party's executive last night, to campaign as the Independence party before the May 3 local elections while retaining the Ukip name on the ballot paper, much as New Labour remains Labour.

His purpose is to build on David Cameron's unsettling overtures to middle ground opinion, and C-list defections among Tory peers and supporters, to move his party away from its anti-EU and immigration agenda towards wider themes: personal and local independence from Whitehall, lower taxes and deregulation.

Should this worry the Tory leader, as rightwing Tories keep telling him it should? Restless MPs in the socially conservative Cornerstone group, who have been "patient" with young Cameron, are publishing their own mini-manifesto next month, to head off the perceived Ukip/BNP challenge.

The official Tory line is that the real challenge is defeating Labour. ("A fringe party is not going to distract us.") There are plenty of re-defectors from Ukip and Jimmy Goldsmith's Referendum party in Tory HQ, so that familiarity breeds cheerful contempt.

There is justification for that attitude. Lift the stone on any micro political party and it is riven with petty feuds and personal rivalries, defections, splits and infiltrations. Ukip, now based on an industrial estate in Newton Abbot, is no exception. The Guardian last week received a long, libellous email accusing the party of being down to 1,700 core activists and on the verge of disintegration.

It also suggested the party's accounts were pretty rackety, to put it mildly, and that Mr Farage was a "terminally insecure" one-man band. "I am old enough to be his father and I am not in the business of being his nanny," Ukip's ex-research director, Richard North, is quoted as saying.

Mr Farage last night denied all such claims, said the 2005 accounts were filed with the Electoral Commission and that membership was 17,000, compared with its 2004 Kilroy-Silk peak of 27,000, before the "former daytime TV star" split the party. He blames the email on extremists on "the Christian right".

Another rival for disaffected Tory votes is the BNP, though Searchlight's Nick Lowles (the email incorrectly accused Ukip of getting Searchlight to vet its membership for Nazis) says the BNP is less respectable and attracts Labour defectors. Despite some bizarre and ugly EU allies at Strasbourg, Ukip's 10 MEPs are deemed more respectable to grumpy Victor Meldrews.

But the next election could be very tight. In a hung parliament all micro-party defections may matter.

Petrina

I find it interesting that the Guardian use Searchlight for their info on us
bearing in mind the admitted links between it and our own Press Office in the past (whatever may be being said now).
I trust that our membership lists are now known only to our own HQ.


As to the comments re "Christian Right" -no prizes for guessing who that is aimed at ! Frankly if NF knows who is responsible for sending such an email he ought to take the appropriate action and not smear a grouping which may contain a large amount of perfectly innocent indivduals .

arden forester

Michael White is an interesting TV pundit and liberal elite journalist. I get the impression most times he's on TV that he is economical with the truth. He probably knows UKIP has a libertarian non-rightist element, but what good would that do him. He's very much a smear merchant with a cheesy Hampstead grin! 8)

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Oliver

As a christian who could be fairly described as right-ish.

I am sick of the jibes that regularly pop up. The "Christian right" is one of those conspiracy theories that roll on and on.

There are certain "christians" who make a big play of it and have rocked the boat but they are and always have been capable of being negotiated with.

I have always appealed to christians to keep evangelism and desire to teach some pet doctrine in the bounds of their church, and leave UKIP to be a political party made up of all types of people.

This type of sniping cannot continue NAME NAMES & TAKE ACTION. I want this cancerous nonsense stopped. I just hope the person persons involved read this. You are dishonouring Christ and every christian involved with UKIP, I disown you. I urge all christians to pray that this nonsense stops and ceases to cause the party any damage.
If there is an enemy within let us locate it and root it out.

Lets not change the party's name without some real substance nor make feeble accusations. Put Up or shut up.

Britannist

He is part of the 'liberal elite' as Arden rightly states.

I don't think what Michael White writes about UKIP carries too much significance.

The Guardian is a lefty student rag - hardly a newspaper bought by likely UKIP voters or 'floating' voters who might be persuaded to switch to UKIP next time.

The circulation of the Daily Mail, for instance, is at least four times larger than that of the Guardian.

mkpdavies

I'd be more worried if the Guardian was supportive.

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My ignore list

Labour, Lib Dems

Robin

Was it in the jobs section or the arts section ?