Last Saturday I wrote for my newspaper a column whose drift was that it was time for the sane majority of the Conservative party to repel those elements on the Tory right who plainly wish the Prime Minister and the coalition ill, and who would never be satisfied with his stance on Europe, however much he tried to adjust it to please them. I dealt at some length with Ukip, explaining why I and many like me would never support a Conservative candidate who made any kind of a deal with these people. The same went (I said) for the party nationally: ‘I will never support a Conservative party that has made any kind of national agreement with Ukip. Blackmailed by extremists, it could be blackmailed again.’
A friend (we’ll call him Ronald) sent me a courteous email in response, ending: ‘What btw do you think are Ukip’s “extremist” views?’
I mulled over Ronald’s question; then, after reading every one of the responses already posted beneath my column, many of them from Ukip supporters to Tories who were contemplating defecting to Ukip, I replied. This is what I wrote:
Been giving this much thought.
It’s an important question. Reflecting on my choice of the word ‘extremist’ I reflect that I wrote it without pondering its applicability. It came naturally to me as I pictured the party I was describing.
Why? I’ve just spent a (for me) affirming hour reading the online comments beneath my column, from more than 100 predominantly Ukip-sympathising readers. Affirming because they’re just as extreme as I’d assumed.
There are two classes of extremism: the extremism found in (1) actions, threats or promises; or in (2) a distorting view of the world, narrow to the point of fanaticism, that fathers (or in the future is likely to father) those actions, threats or promises.
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