During last week’s election coverage, one of the truest comments ever uttered came from UKIP.
Discussing the party’s relatively poor performance in London on Radio 4, [Suzanne] Evans [the Party Spokesman/person] seemed to agree with the host that they had difficulty appealing to the “educated, cultural and young.”
It has been described as “a sound bite UKIP would rather forget”. But you can’t help seeing the truth in it – UKIP and its policies appeals to the kind of person who is likely to start every conversation they get involved with by saying “I’m not a racist, but…”, but who then launches into various illogical explanations about why immigrants are bad. So it is quite true that educated and more tolerant people might not vote for them.
What IS worrying, therefore, is how many people across the country appear to be so uneducated and intolerant if you go by UKIP’s showing in the election.
Like it or not, Britain is not a balanced country as far as racial tolerance (or attitude to being a part of Europe) goes. To try and counter that, there is a lot of artificial bias – positive discrimination, if you like – but all this does is add fuel to the fire for those who already hold nationalist views. Without some of that positive discrimination (and laws prohibiting it, of course), bonfires of burning immigrants would be a commonplace thing on our streets.* As a result, the pent-up frustration at not being able to take such action means that one way or another parties like UKIP will always have support.
Worryingly, such support appears to come from places you would least expect it to. I note that in today’s papers, it is reported that the BBC has received almost 1,200 complaints about its “biased” election coverage. I must say that on election day last week the way the BBC was reporting the results on its election web site made me wonder if I was missing something. Labour had made significant gains, and yet this was being reported in such a manner that you got the distinct impression they’d lost everything (there were 73 complaints about this). Tory and LibDem losses were huge, and yet were skimmed over somewhat. It was only later in the day that Labour’s improved performance compared to the last General Election started to be acknowledged in any way, even though the numbers hadn’t changed. I was certain then – and even more so now this story has emerged – that the BBC had responded to complaints and changed their tack.
Apparently, it is the highest number of complaints the BBC has ever received over its coverage of any party during an election. However, as you’d expect, the BBC denies everything, saying its coverage was proportionate and fair. From what I saw, it wasn’t. The BBC’s interpretations and headlines did not represent the numbers actually coming from the counts.
Another story from today shows how unpleasant political correctness of all kinds (not just that involving politics) can be when it crops up in the midst of such a bias-fest. Newsnight, a BBC political programme, has been dumbed down over the years along with much of the BBC’s other output. These days, Newsnight likes to invite celebrities on to the panel to comment on questions put forward by the audience. It did this last week, and featured footballer Joey Barton alongside yet another UKIP member, Louise Bours. When asked to comment on the UKIP showing, Barton responded as outlined in these two paragraphs:
The footballer said last week’s outcome – when UKIP won 27% of the overall vote – was far from a ringing endorsement of the party, since only 34% of the eligible electorate had voted.
Describing UKIP as the “best of a bad bunch”, he added: “So if I am somewhere and there were four really ugly girls, I’m thinking, ‘Well, she’s not the worst’, because that is all you are, that is all you are to us.”
Now, anyone with any sense would have stopped at the “bad bunch” part. But this is Joey Barton we’re talking about, and he didn’t.
Bours then:
…accused Mr Barton of “ignorance” and having his “brains in his feet”.
Barton’s comment could have been made far more eloquently, and with much more humour. As it was, it was clumsy and immature given the setting. But any reference to a woman or girl in anything other than a context implying female superiority is always going to provide a political correctness card the size of a skyscraper to any politician appearing on TV if they needed to belittle someone’s beliefs or opinions. Of course, if a female (or gay) person had likened something to picking the best looking of four ugly blokes at a bar, there’d be no case to answer. See how positive discrimination works?
In actual fact, if you look at Barton’s comments without any blinkers on, Bours’ comments to Barton were actually far more offensive, and show how easily such attitudes come to the surface when UKIP is challenged. They were personal and specific, whereas Barton’s were generic. But it’s funny how UKIP and its policies can border on racism, and yet become so sanctimonious when sexism is detected.
Their policy on immigration is what sold UKIP to the majority of those who voted for them. Tony Blair has recently referred to what is behind the UKIP facade as “pretty nasty and unpleasant”. It seems that not a day goes by where the truth in this comment is highlighted. In December last year UKIP politician, Victoria Ayling, was criticised for a video, made while she was still a Tory. In it, she says:
…multiculturalism doesn’t work, Britishness does,
…multiculturalism is dead, I’m allowed to say that, but maybe Britishness is waving the National Front flag a bit.
…We must control immigration. We cannot sustain the numbers coming in; the strains on our infrastructure are enormous. Control should be done fairly and the points system like they have in Australia and all those coming here should be encouraged to speak English so they can integrate,
…I just want to send the lot back but I can’t say that.
Elsewhere in the footage, she says:
Do we want the French to order our troops?
Sod that. Just think of Waterloo, bastards.
She claims that her comments were taken “out of context”, but I think we have the context just right. UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, made some extremely slight noises of concern, but I note that Ayling may stand as the UKIP candidate for Great Grimsby in next year’s general election.
Only a few weeks ago, Farage himself was criticised for his comments about Romanians. He said:
Any normal and fair-minded person would have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door.
UKIP says he was “tired” when he made the comments, so I guess they’re suggesting that he meant exactly the opposite of what he said. Of course he did! And then there was a more recent radio interview, where he was quizzed over his previous comments when:
…he said he felt “uncomfortable” about the fact so little English was spoken on a train journey he took from London to his Kent home.
Still more recently – and quite probably after the realisation that its performance in the latest election was Serious Stuff – it seems that UKIP has sacked a newly-elected councillor for “racist and homophobic remarks”. Unfortunately, the councillor in question is an extreme example of the sort of thinking that attracts people to UKIP, and you can’t help wonder if he would have been sacked 12 months ago if he’d have made similar comments. In many respects, what he said was merely an extremely crude rendering of what others have been saying (for example, that one above about foreign speakers on the train).
* Note that this is a joke. Unfortunately, I have to explain this sort of thing for the hard-of-understanding types out there (like that crazy woman in Manchester who wrote to me a while back).
Well done to Fabienne, who passed today – at long last – with just 3 driver faults. She’s one of my (now ex-) serial failers, and this was her ninth test, albeit only her fourth with me.
