Imagine Fawlty Towers without the ironic bits. Switch the jokes from Germans to Romanians or homosexuals and what you get is UKIP. Few times has a motley crew of bigoted lunatics provided more instances of involuntary comedy than UKIP. The EDL were close, and so were the BNP. But none of them got so many TV minutes. And yet, while Fawlty Towers was funny, there is nothing funny about UKIP. Nothing to laugh about. UKIP is worrying and if you are not worried about it it means you will probably be voting for them, in which case, you might as well stop reading now, because you might feel insulted, put me on a list, and send a couple of police officers to have a chat with me.
UKIP is worrying because of its popularity. In other words, UKIP is worrying not because of itself but because of the many who find their scapegoating – and lack of any realistically feasible political program – worth voting for. It is also worrying because it is almost too clear that any attempt to expose the party and their members as the bigots they are only reinforces their supporters’ convictions. That is exactly the reason why they vote for UKIP: because UKIP articulates – openly and unashamedly – what they fear or feel unable to articulate for themselves. UKIP is like the BNP in that sense, only that they have been a bit more intelligent in how they articulate their racist views. Just a little bit more. The tactics are the same.
UKIP might come across as ridiculous and extremely racist to anyone with a decent capacity to put 1 plus 1 together, to anyone able to have a quick look at their manifesto and realise that their supporters will be the first to feel the brunt of their politics. Their supporters, too mesmerised by Farage’s pint and fag antics, are clearly unable to put 1 and 1 together. They vote for the man, “one of the best political leaders we’ve ever had”, as many of them say. Needless to mention that they are voting for a character, a phoney, a man who slags Europe off and yet makes a living of being a MEP, a man who demonises immigrants and yet is married to one, and you know all the drill. And UKIP supporters know it too. They just don’t care about it. False consciousness is intoxicating. It provides easy answers to otherwise thorny questions. It is easier and less of a concern to blame the state of this or that on the first scapegoat available.
That there are people from minorities supporting UKIP is worrying too. Last week one of them, a “prominent British Asian” – as The Guardian put it – managed to put 1 and 1 together and quit. She quit because she felt UKIP had taken a right wing populist, racist, turn. The headline might as well have been “Prominent British Asian UKIP supporter quits UKIP over it being UKIP”. UKIP has not taken a nasty turn: it has always been nasty, a nasty and intelligent idea by a former banker passing for a common man, a performer, a good one, one loved by the British media – their number one endorser.
From their logo to their use of social media, to their attempt to come up with a carnival, with steel-band and all, everything UKIP does is a clear manifestation of their confused and conflicted mindset. For this, one has to give credit to their master puppeteer, Farage. It is not easy to keep the fools from sinking the ship, and Farage, through his calculated charisma, has managed to keep the ship of fools sailing, all the way towards whatever will be the coronation of their success.
It is certain that UKIP will do well in tomorrow’s elections. UKIP doing well will mean that the “traditional” parties will move further towards the right in their bid to recuperate lost voters. Immigrants, people of colour, gay people – anyone not likely to fit in their crooked idea of what the UK should be about – will have a harder time. The only consolation is perhaps that of the fool, knowing that nobody is in time more likely to be screwed than the common, scared, and angry, UKIP supporter. Who will be the scapegoat then?
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UKIP’s success is, in many ways, an inevitable outcome of two things. First of all the First Past the Post voting system which sees most people living in constituencies which are so safe that a) few bother voting and b) political parties don’t bother campaigning. Secondly the ‘default protest vote’ option always used to be the Lib Dems, consequently they did quite well in local council elections since that was the traditional opportunity for voters to give the two mainstream parties a kicking before returning to their traditional tribal loyalties for the general election. The European Parliament adds another fun twist to this by introducing proportional representation (albeit not a very good form of it) which allows UKIP and its like to do very well, particularly if the turnout is terribly low.
This makes Farage almost impossible to deal with since the more ‘crazy’ and ‘unlike all the others’ he is the better he will do. That’s why no amount of Sunday Politics interviews illustrated by quotations from racist, homophobic, sexist etc. candidates can break the spell. The more Cameron and Miliband line up to attack him, the better he will do.
Does UKIP’s success reveal an undercurrent of racism across the UK? To an extent yes, but it’s support is wider than that. It stems partly from the EU being everybody’s favourite scapegoat (voters have spent 20 years listening to everything bad being blamed on ‘the Brussels Octopus’, it’s not unreasonable that some would conclude that it’s a bad thing. It stems also from Farage’s charisma (although given his performance in recent interviews I’d be curious to see what it actually is) and his willingness to ‘say what we’re thinking’. That doesn’t mean that there’s a great number of people who’d want him as Prime Minister (just as the wind will be knocked out of Boris’ sails if/when he moves from his current Zaphod Beeblebrox type position to one where his finger is near the nuclear button) but he is the public’s ‘useful idiot’ at the moment. Unfortunately it’s allowed his core supporters to make a lot of noise and have their views made mainstream. The reflection of these views probably isn’t good for society as a whole as it validates them.
Don’t blame me. I voted SNP…
What actually fascinates me is to observe the extreme gullibility most of the people are in the UK, and how easily brainwashed and indoctrinated they can be on something just because it is made mainstream, without questioning and thinking. Obviously people who have different ethnic backgrounds, skin tones , sexual orientations and gender orientations see through the delusion because they are hardly ossciated with the enforced perception of “what is considered normal”.