UKIP: a blogger down, but the debate continues
Monday 19 August 2013
 The UKIP leader, we are told, warned that the EU was heading for "revolution" and "said violent protest could be the only way for southern European nations to save their democracies". The thing which marks this out though is that the story is based on comments made by Farage last year on the Alex Jones show – nut-job centre – yet they are now deemed of sufficient news value to put up on the Mail website. Whether they make the print copy, I can't say. But, if Farage is making the legacy media under such circumstances, then what he is, who he is, and what his party does is part of the more general debate, and is not thus one which is safe to leave exclusively to the legacy media. The blogosphere has an important part to play in it as well. And yes, that means this blog as well. Sadly, the blogosphere is one member less as of tonight as Autonomous Mind closes down his blog. He has had enough of the sort of feline sniping that we see on blog comments, and so we lose an effective and valued ally. Our only consolation is that he has not walked away from the battle ... only that he has temporarily vacated the blogosphere. AM starts his post by ruminating on the contrast between things which some people consider to be acceptable and beyond reproach and "which immediately sends them into a frothing, seething mass of indignation, aggressive self justification, vitriol and sneering sideswipes". The manifest failures of UKIP and the extremely dubious behaviour of some senior members are, on the one hand, for many a perfectly acceptable state of affairs. Yet, pointing out these failings, criticising them and exposing a variety of fixable shortcomings is considered to be completely unacceptable. The result, says AM, "is the bitter invective hurled about by those for whom supporting UKIP has become a belief system that reminds me of something like a political version of scientology. Anyone who fails the purity test and dares to challenge the party or its elders becomes the target for a barrage of intolerance. The aim is to silence the critic or better still destroy him". With this sentiment, I agree wholeheartedly. I still struggle to come to terms with the idea Nigel Farage's so often despicable behaviour is regarded indulgently by UKIP members, while my own attempts to draw attention to his campaigning deficiencies are treated in some quarters to a degree of invective that makes one feel dirty just reading it. AM and I are accused of mounting a malicious campaign against UKIP, but it is by no means just us who have been pointing out the shortcomings of Nigel Farage and his Party. Tonight, we see input from Dr Eric Edmond. Edmond, a former Bank of England official, was once a member of UKIP's NEC and he currently airs forthright views about UKIP. They are remarkably critical – but we don't co-ordinate. We don't even speak with each other. And we can't all be wrong. The point that AM makes is that the intent of so many UKIP supporters is to deny us the right even to debate the activities of UKIP – something I meet even on my own forum. The argument is that UKIP is the "only game in town" and this, for better or worse, we should all rally round it and give it our support. Earlier on Sunday, however, I addressed the problem of UKIP, on the forum, in response to a comment, suggesting that we we have to ask what the organisation is for, and what it is trying to achieve. Is it primarily a political party or is it an anti-EU movement - or is it both? If it is primarily a political party, one has to ask whether the organisation, in that role, helps us achieve our own goal of getting out of the EU. And the answer to that depends on current electoral dynamics, particularly as to whether UKIP is likely to achieve power, or whether its electoral success (or lack of it) will influence the Conservatives in a way advantageous to us. That is complicated enough, and the answers are not straightforward, but even in that calculus there is room for a scenario where UKIP as a political party, far from assisting the anti-EU movement, does more harm than good. Similarly, when one considers UKIP as part of the anti-EU movement, there is also a room for a calculus in which UKIP does more harm than good. The point here is that, if we take current YouGovfigures, UKIP's electoral support is 13 percent. If we assume that all UKIP supporters are anti-EU (not necessarily the case), that compares with the latest withdrawal poll, which has 43 percent wanting to leave the EU. The 13-43 percent figures suggest that 30 percent of those who want to leave the EU do not support UKIP. In other words, of the broader anti-EU community, UKIP supporters are the minority - less than a third of the total. Paid-up UKIP members are an even smaller minority. Thus, we not assume that what is favourable to UKIP is necessarily favourable to the anti-EU movement generally. There is also room for the possibility that what is to the advantage of UKIP as a political party is good for the broader anti-EU movement. In other words, support for UKIP is not necessarily support for the anti-EU movement. Is is in that sphere that I am operating. I am entirely indifferent to the success or otherwise of UKIP as a political party, except insofar as it may have an effect on my ultimate objective. And, as I see it, if UKIP is abandoning or weakening its original anti-EU posture in order to achieve electoral success, I have to take that into account. In particular, I have to take into account the possible impact of an electorally successful UKIP on the majority anti-EU sentiment that does not support UKIP. There is then another complication. The current 43 percent of the electorate which supports leaving the EU is not sufficient (or firm enough) to win an "in-out" referendum. We need to attract voters who are currently neither in favour of leaving, nor supporters of UKIP. Furthermore, we have to prevent current anti-EU supporters deserting and joining the other side - or abstaining - in a referendum. Here, the effects of UKIP on these groups is not known, and may be unknowable. But there is a distinct possibility that some voters in those groups are actually hostile to UKIP, and/or may be adversely influenced (in terms of their anti-EU sentiment) by what party does or says, or by its electoral performance. Whatever the effects, the points that emerge are that support for UKIP does not necessarily advance the anti-EU cause, and that there are possible scenarios where support actually damages it. Therefore, to argue that we should all get behind the Farage party, come what may, may be overly simplistic and even counter-productive. Furthermore, it is vital that we discuss such issues. Arguing over them brings forward ideas, and developing good ideas, thence to implement them, will help us get out of the EU. On the other hand, any amount of blind activity, based on bad ideas or a poor appreciation of the tactical situation, can actually hinder us in our task of leaving the EU. Supporting UKIP is not a zero-sum game. Thus, an open and frank discussion about the role of UKIP, and its effect on the anti-EU movement as a whole, is both healthy and necessary. The fact that some UKIP members are opposed to such a discussion is neither here nor there. They do not "own" the anti-EU movement and their party is not even the majority. Nevertheless, as long as UKIP is an important player in the EU debate – and no one sensible would deny that it is – then this blog will conduct its own brand of analytical evaluation. Of course, for me, there are also personal issues, but I will try to keep these out of the main blog. The issue of record is whether UKIP is an asset or handicap, and that is one which I intend to continue exploring. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 19/08/2013 |
UK politics: immigration the key?
Sunday 18 August 2013
 Despite this risible approach, the Independent on Sunday tells us that UKIP support in the latestComRes poll is standing at 19 percent, reflecting, it says, "the rise of Euroscepticism among the electorate". The findings appear to give some endorsement to Mr Cameron's attempts to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU, the paper adds. Actually, it does no such thing. Inasmuch as UKIP still has a policy on the EU, secret or otherwise, it is about leaving the evil empire. But, more to the point, since the ComRes survey itself focuses on immigration, the probability is that UKIP is capturing the neo-BNP anti-immigration vote, part of its transition from a dedicated anti-EU party to a general protest vote dustbin. Of some interest, though, are the headline figures on voting intentions. These show Labour's support up to 37 percent, while the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have slipped back to the share they registered last month, at 28 and eight percent respectively. The support for Labour as a party, though, contrasts with Mr Miliband's dire personal performance. He net personal rating has plummeting 17 points, with only one in five Britons – and fewer than half of Labour voters – now saying he is turning out to be a good leader of the Labour Party. Mr Cameron's rating also fell slightly, with three in 10 people saying he is turning out to be a good prime minister, but more than half saying he is not. Nevertheless, that keeps us in a position where Labour is more popular than the Conservatives, while the position is reversed for the respective leaders. That adds to the complications of predicting any election outcome, especially when we see a collapse of the Lib-Dem vote and the neo-BNP UKIP polling strongly. Ed Miliband, in fact, is facing a torrid week. Two Labour "heavyweights" (if there are such things) have "mauled his leadership". John Prescott has said that Labour had "massively failed" to hold the Conservatives to account or make its own case, and Lord Glasman, a guru to Mr Miliband, said that the Labour leader needed to prove that he was a "grown-up politician" capable of leading the country. Meanwhile, a YouGov poll for the Sunday Times has it that 69 percent of voters feel Mr Miliband is "failing to provide an effective opposition to the government". That is a rise of three points since the same question was asked early last month. That compared with 55 percent disapproving of the government's performance, with only 28 percent approving. With the voters effectively opting for "none of the above", it is relatively easy for demagogic politicians such as Mr Farage to hoover up the protest votes, so it would be a mistake to think that UKIP's performance can be directly translated in anti-EU sentiment. Incidentally, YouGov has UKIP's polling at 13 percent, as opposed to the 19 percent ComRes, perpetuating the wide spread in results between polling companies. But, whether you take the high or the low estimate, potential UKIP voters only represent a fraction of those who, in polls, are prepared to say they would vote to leave the EU. What is intriguing though is that the last time YouGov did an in-depth analysis of Labour supporters voting patterns, it found that immigration, far more than "Europe" was likely to trigger a switch in allegiance. On that basis , from a purely electoral perspective, Mr Farage is right to push the immigration button. That is best calculated to bring in the votes. But whether that advances the anti-EU cause is less clear. Certainly, the "secret squirrel" plan to leave the EU isn't going to help greatly, which means we are probably right to wonder what the real agenda of UKIP really is. Richard North 18/08/2013 |
Booker: delusion about the Middle East
Sunday 18 August 2013
 Booker is a brave man today, therefore, to pick up on the contemporary story of Iran and our "self-deceiving attitude towards the theocracy" in that country, which perfectly illustrates our inability to grasp the realities of Middle-Eastern politics. Quite apart from its ruthless oppression of its own people, writes Booker, the Tehran regime has a finger in pretty well every nasty pie in the region – as chief backer of the Assad regime in Syria and of Palestinian terror groups; as the shadowy presence behind the corrupt al-Maliki regime in Iraq; and even supposedly as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Yet again, recently we saw the West’s endless gullibility over Iran in the response of politicians and media to the election as president of Hassan Rouhani, hailed as a "moderate" and a "reformer" who might open the door to better relations between Iran and the West, not least over the ever-vexed issue of Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power. What so many in the West seem unable to grasp, Booker avers, is that Rouhani, like his predecessor Ahmadinejad, is just a creature of the real power in Iran, centred in the country's "Supreme Leader", the Ayatollah Khamenei. Rouhani may have been one of eight candidates (out of an original 800) allowed to stand in a horrendously rigged election by the Supreme Leader, but for more than 20 years he has been a key apparatchik of the regime, serving at the heart of its military, security and intelligence system. As far back as the 1980s Rouhani was deputy commander-in-chief of Iran's armed forces, before serving for 16 years as secretary of its Supreme National Security Council. In 1999 he led the ruthless suppression of a major student uprising, in obedience, as he said, to a "revolutionary order to crush mercilessly and monumentally any move of these dissidents". Between 2003 and 2005 he led those famous and futile nuclear negotiations, boasting of how he had fooled the West by "taking advantage of talks with Britain, Germany and France to forge ahead with the secret atomic programme". No sooner was he elected in June than he made clear that there is no way Iran will halt its nuclear programme. He has equally made clear that Iran will continue to give every support to Assad's murderous efforts to stamp out the Syrian uprising. His new defence minister, Hossein Dehghan, was a founder member of the Revolutionary Guard, Iran's equivalent of the Soviet KGB, responsible through its Qods Force for spreading terror across the Middle East, and he was one of those responsible in 1979 for the US embassy siege and the seizure of 44 hostages. His justice minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi played a key role in the 1980s in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, most of them members of the People's Mujahideen of Iran, part of the countrys largest dissident movement, the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI). Since Rouhani's election, thousands more Iranians have been imprisoned and scores hanged, many publicly, as a warning to any other potential dissidents. Yet this is the man we are told is a "moderate" and a "reformer". As the head of the NCRI, Mrs Maryam Rajavi, in June, told a rally of 100,000 Iranian exiles in Paris that their country cannot be described as moving towards "moderation" until its people have been given freedom of speech and the right to form political parties. All political prisoners must be freed and Iran must stop its "war-mongering meddling in Syria and Iraq" and abandon its wish to become a nuclear power. But the mullahs cannot allow any of this to happen, she went on, because it would bring their downfall. So the most dangerous and evil regime in the Middle East floats on. It is spreading terror at home and abroad, concludes Booker, but misrepresented in the West as a "moderate" new government with which we can hope to do business. Not least, it is misrepresenting its plans to acquire its own nuclear weapons, about which Rouhani has already deceived us once and doubtless has every intention of continuing to do so. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 18/08/2013 |
Monday 19 August 2013
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