Letters: sheep pay for themselves

Why Ukip aren’t extremists

Sir: I don’t wish to be rude to Matthew Parris (‘Why Ukip is a party of extremists’, 1 June), but he should think carefully before labelling civilised citizens as extremists. It’s a silly word to use given what real extremists get up to these days, but the important point is that a growing majority of perfectly sane voters see current UK politics as baby steps meandering around a leftward-curving path to decline; and long for some good old-fashioned radicalism to wake everyone up.

For many ordinary people, the real lunacy lies not in the Ukip manifesto but rather in our courts’ slavish submission to the ECHR, in the government’s ludicrous ring-fencing of health and foreign aid budgets, the bonkers taxing of workers earning less than the minimum wage, and our masochistic refusal as a nation to make a stand against the nonsense that emerges from Brussels. Ukip supporters, prospective (like me) and actual, feel muzzled by the smug certainty of the bien pensants.