Achilles Heel
Instead of throwing eggs at Nigel Farage, metaphorical or otherwise, I wish more people tried to follow the example of Matthew Parris by tackling the politics of UKIP head on - rather than shouting their arguments down.
Not everything that Farage says is barking mad, but much of it is and the key issue to get across is that UKIP is not a serious party of government which is the party's real Achilles Heel.
A rather silly 'blame game' seems to have broken out in Scotland over who is responsible for UKIP winning their first Euro seat, but the voters are responsible of course having found UKIP more convincing and credible than any of the other parties, strange as it seems.
Yet UKIP's share of the vote in Scotland stands at 10% which is an awful long way short of its support which topped 30% in parts of England.
Fight Ukip. Fight their lies. Fight them now
By Matthew Parris - The Times
The Tory leadership must stand up to Nigel Farage and persuade voters not to fall for his dangerous populism
By the knowing, this column will be laughed at for playing straight into the hands of my enemies. I realise that. I realise it pays them the ultimate compliment: it takes them seriously. I don’t care. There are moments in life and in politics that are too important for tactics. Such a moment arrived for me this week when on to the doormat in the flats where I live in London’s East End, dropped the UK Independence Party’s election leaflet.
And, no, of course it isn’t the first piece of idiotic political literature I’ve ever encountered: I’ve seen plenty in my time, including from my own party. And delivered it too.
And, no, it isn’t the first time I’ve written about the wrongheadedness of Ukip’s approach, or the danger it poses to Britain’s centre-right. The reasoned case needs to be made again and again, and I’ll keep trying.
And, no, this won’t be my first or last column to berate the sly nastiness skulking beneath the covers of the party’s pitch. The Ukip phenomenon provides in itself a case study for psychiatrists as well as politicians.
But it’s the first time I have felt just a little bit frightened. This thing has a bad smell. I picked up that leaflet, read the lies and saw the menace.
As it happens, a young woman of Eastern European origin — always so pleasant and conscientious — who sweeps and cleans the entrance and staircase in the block, had arrived before I left. I wondered how the purple and yellow leaflets on the doormat would strike her, were she to look down.
Put yourself in her shoes.
She’s here legally, working legally, working hard, working for wages above the minimum that Parliament has laid down, in a job that any young British person is also free to take, and some do. On the doormat she reads purple-highlighted phrases from Nigel Farage’s declaration: phrases such as: “4,000 people a week come to live in Britain from the EU . . . the damage done to our national sovereignty, our pride and — dare I say it — our patriotism is immense . . .” Finally: “Enough’s enough”.
How wouldyou feel? I think she might feel insulted: insulted and threatened — almost physically threatened — by the response this appeal had been carefully phrased to trigger. When a few hours later at an almost empty Derby railway station I passed a little posse of youths with purple badges and pound-sign stickers and (probably because of what I’d been thinking about their party) felt just momentarily menaced. My reaction was irrational. They were no more a “posse” than groups of Tory canvassers of which I’ve often enough been part. But I was starting to look at the Ukip phenomenon with new eyes. I’ve always known it was nasty, hypocritical nonsense but now, for the first time, I’m wondering whether it might catch on.
A word, first, about the nonsense. There’s nothing like reading an untruth about yourself for bringing its brazenness home with copper-bottomed certainty. When I read (in a Ukip attack on this newspaper) that I was “privately educated” there was no need to fact-check the five government schools I remember attending before, at 15, being sent to a “private” non-apartheid school. And Mr Farage presumably does know that he himself went to a top public school, and does remember that he set up the Farage Family Educational Trust in an offshore tax haven — to confer (one supposes) similar privileges on future Farages.
Or take those “4,000 people a week” who “come to live in Britain” (says my leaflet). Or the “£55 million a day” that the EU “costs the UK”. If I told Mr Farage that Britain gets £8 billion a year from Brussels, or that people are emigrating from the UK at the rate of 131,000 a year, would he call that honest? No, he’d expose furiously my removal from my sums of the amount we were paying in to the EU, and my omission to mention the number of immigrants coming in to this country. My claims would deserve to be called lies. So do his.
You may think my purpose here is to take the attack to Ukip. Only in passing. Anyone with a mind of his own can see what kind of people they are without any help from me. I expect nothing of Ukip’s leadership and am not disappointed by them.
It’s the leaders of my own party who disappoint me. Ukip are not a political party; not really. They’re an unpleasant mutiny within the Conservative party. Having placed themselves outside the party they pose as an external foe; but they have many friends within it, willing them on.
My side in the Conservative party needs to take a stand too: vigorously, unapologetically, and soon. I’m ashamed that the cleaning woman on our East London staircase finds nobody among the Conservative leadership to speak up for her in public. I’m ashamed that Ukip’s provocations litter doormats across Britain, without my own party countering the falsehoods or protesting at the hatefulness. I hear the Tory voices murmuring that the “strategy” is not to give these rascals the oxygen of publicity. I hear the nervy assurance that “this will blow over” if we keep our heads down and walk by on the other side.
I hear the warning that voters attracted by Ukip need our love, not our insults, and must not be branded as racists. I hear the knowing chuckle that columns such as this are music to Ukip’s ears.
Stop these calculations, I say to self-respecting Tories, and fight. Let’s have an end to “understanding” dangerous populists. Many racists are attracted to Ukip; many foreigner-hating feelings are inflamed by Ukip. Many with feelings of personal disappointment or inadequacy are sucked into the comfort of blaming someone Other, something from over the water.
It is not wrong to stigmatise the party that is doing this. It’s not wrong to warn those voters that they would be idiots to fall for these hate-mongers. Whatever is to come, nobody who today takes arms against this pernicious new force will be less admired one day for doing so.
I finish as I started: there comes a time when you recognise something as bad: simply, unambiguously bad. This is the moment to put aside your calculations, tear up the strategists’ advice, decide which side you’re on, and shout it loud.
The Tory leadership must stand up to Nigel Farage and persuade voters not to fall for his dangerous populism
By the knowing, this column will be laughed at for playing straight into the hands of my enemies. I realise that. I realise it pays them the ultimate compliment: it takes them seriously. I don’t care. There are moments in life and in politics that are too important for tactics. Such a moment arrived for me this week when on to the doormat in the flats where I live in London’s East End, dropped the UK Independence Party’s election leaflet.
And, no, of course it isn’t the first piece of idiotic political literature I’ve ever encountered: I’ve seen plenty in my time, including from my own party. And delivered it too.
And, no, it isn’t the first time I’ve written about the wrongheadedness of Ukip’s approach, or the danger it poses to Britain’s centre-right. The reasoned case needs to be made again and again, and I’ll keep trying.
And, no, this won’t be my first or last column to berate the sly nastiness skulking beneath the covers of the party’s pitch. The Ukip phenomenon provides in itself a case study for psychiatrists as well as politicians.
But it’s the first time I have felt just a little bit frightened. This thing has a bad smell. I picked up that leaflet, read the lies and saw the menace.
As it happens, a young woman of Eastern European origin — always so pleasant and conscientious — who sweeps and cleans the entrance and staircase in the block, had arrived before I left. I wondered how the purple and yellow leaflets on the doormat would strike her, were she to look down.
Put yourself in her shoes.
She’s here legally, working legally, working hard, working for wages above the minimum that Parliament has laid down, in a job that any young British person is also free to take, and some do. On the doormat she reads purple-highlighted phrases from Nigel Farage’s declaration: phrases such as: “4,000 people a week come to live in Britain from the EU . . . the damage done to our national sovereignty, our pride and — dare I say it — our patriotism is immense . . .” Finally: “Enough’s enough”.
How wouldyou feel? I think she might feel insulted: insulted and threatened — almost physically threatened — by the response this appeal had been carefully phrased to trigger. When a few hours later at an almost empty Derby railway station I passed a little posse of youths with purple badges and pound-sign stickers and (probably because of what I’d been thinking about their party) felt just momentarily menaced. My reaction was irrational. They were no more a “posse” than groups of Tory canvassers of which I’ve often enough been part. But I was starting to look at the Ukip phenomenon with new eyes. I’ve always known it was nasty, hypocritical nonsense but now, for the first time, I’m wondering whether it might catch on.
A word, first, about the nonsense. There’s nothing like reading an untruth about yourself for bringing its brazenness home with copper-bottomed certainty. When I read (in a Ukip attack on this newspaper) that I was “privately educated” there was no need to fact-check the five government schools I remember attending before, at 15, being sent to a “private” non-apartheid school. And Mr Farage presumably does know that he himself went to a top public school, and does remember that he set up the Farage Family Educational Trust in an offshore tax haven — to confer (one supposes) similar privileges on future Farages.
Or take those “4,000 people a week” who “come to live in Britain” (says my leaflet). Or the “£55 million a day” that the EU “costs the UK”. If I told Mr Farage that Britain gets £8 billion a year from Brussels, or that people are emigrating from the UK at the rate of 131,000 a year, would he call that honest? No, he’d expose furiously my removal from my sums of the amount we were paying in to the EU, and my omission to mention the number of immigrants coming in to this country. My claims would deserve to be called lies. So do his.
You may think my purpose here is to take the attack to Ukip. Only in passing. Anyone with a mind of his own can see what kind of people they are without any help from me. I expect nothing of Ukip’s leadership and am not disappointed by them.
It’s the leaders of my own party who disappoint me. Ukip are not a political party; not really. They’re an unpleasant mutiny within the Conservative party. Having placed themselves outside the party they pose as an external foe; but they have many friends within it, willing them on.
My side in the Conservative party needs to take a stand too: vigorously, unapologetically, and soon. I’m ashamed that the cleaning woman on our East London staircase finds nobody among the Conservative leadership to speak up for her in public. I’m ashamed that Ukip’s provocations litter doormats across Britain, without my own party countering the falsehoods or protesting at the hatefulness. I hear the Tory voices murmuring that the “strategy” is not to give these rascals the oxygen of publicity. I hear the nervy assurance that “this will blow over” if we keep our heads down and walk by on the other side.
I hear the warning that voters attracted by Ukip need our love, not our insults, and must not be branded as racists. I hear the knowing chuckle that columns such as this are music to Ukip’s ears.
Stop these calculations, I say to self-respecting Tories, and fight. Let’s have an end to “understanding” dangerous populists. Many racists are attracted to Ukip; many foreigner-hating feelings are inflamed by Ukip. Many with feelings of personal disappointment or inadequacy are sucked into the comfort of blaming someone Other, something from over the water.
It is not wrong to stigmatise the party that is doing this. It’s not wrong to warn those voters that they would be idiots to fall for these hate-mongers. Whatever is to come, nobody who today takes arms against this pernicious new force will be less admired one day for doing so.
I finish as I started: there comes a time when you recognise something as bad: simply, unambiguously bad. This is the moment to put aside your calculations, tear up the strategists’ advice, decide which side you’re on, and shout it loud.
