Are you fit to be British? Take the Ukip test

If you believe that Ukip supporters love Britain and cannot abide Europe, look at the report by the pollster Peter Kellner in the current issue of Prospect. Ukip fears Britain has:

‘gone off the rails. Hence the fact that 57 per cent of Ukip supporters would prefer to migrate to mainland Europe if they could.’

To put it another way, no one hates his country more that the bawling patriot. The reasons for Ukip’s loathing are many, and in some instances understandable: falling living standards, politically correct double-standards, mass immigration, poor public services, political corruption and the timeless complaint of the old and disappointed that ‘things ain’t what they used to be’. I am all for a conservatism that preserves the best of the past, but to pretend that Ukip isn’t home to the worst of Britain is to be either self-serving or delusional. To then bend over backwards and say, as so many of our mainstream commentators do, that Ukip may be rough around the edges but is still a respectable movement is just asinine.