UKIP: Far From Sensible

Further to Nigel Farage's Times article yesterday saying that if Thatcher had still been in power then UKIP would never have been considered necessary, Ken Bell writes:

UKIP should be the perfect party of protest for the people of this country, but unfortunately this seemingly trivial incident involving me suggests that instead the party really is the Thatcherite wing of the Tory Party in exile. If that is the case, then why would any working class person cast a vote for such an organisation?

It is quite possible that the party has decided that a retreat into a kind of  suburban heartland makes sense, but I think that such a strategy makes for very bad tactics. At the end of the day, such people are like cousin Reg, in that they are all tongue and trousers.

You want to know about Reginald I suppose. Back in 1977 I found myself in Rhodesia as it was then called. More importantly I found myself the guest of the country's special branch who had it in their minds that I was a type to question. One of the plods told me that Rhodesia was going to survive because it had support in the UK. He went on to explain that his cousin Reginald had just written to say that he had moved a motion in support of the place at his local Conservative branch.

I replied that Rhodesia's only chance of survival was if Cousin Reg and his mates got off their lardy arses and came and picked up rifles. Since I did not see any signs of that happening, I suspected that Rhodesia was heading for the toilet. Needless to say, I was right, wasn't I?

Now then, Britain is full of this type of person who may sound off about leaving the EU, but when referendum day dawns are more than likely to chicken out for fear of the economic consequences that withdrawal may entail.

In the case of the unskilled and semi-skilled working class, the people who flit between a McJob and a benefit claim, that is less likely to happen as their conditions are already so bad that a punt on independence may very well appeal to them. These are the people that I was helping before I even joined UKIP and they would have been the bedrock of my support, had Fred McGlade not suffered from his funny turn.

I am not suggesting that UKIP moves lock, stock and barrel to the left. What I am saying is that candidates should fight individual campaigns based upon what they feel is right for the people in that particular area. What will play in a depressed mill town in Northern England is not the same as what the people of Surrey want to hear. So long as we all stay under the same umbrella, it should allow the party to grow in all the regions. Obviously in the long term the compromise would not hold, but then again in the long term we are all dead. If it holds long enough to force a referendum on the future of our country then we will have succeeded in our aim.

That would be the sensible strategy to follow, but as I have seen over the past week, UKIP is far from being a sensible party, which means that the people that I most wanted to represent will remain voiceless.

Nice work, Fred.