Nigel farage

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

When Virginia Woolf’s husband ruled Sri Lanka’s jungles

Tucked away in the schedules, just before midday, just after midweek (on Thursday), just four lines in the Radio Times, was one of those radio gems. Nothing remarkable on the surface, but every so often sparkling with insight, or a different way of seeing. Woolf in the Jungle (produced by Dan Shepherd) took us to Sri Lanka (or rather Ceylon) in 1904 when a young Leonard Woolf arrived on the teardrop island, with his wire-haired terrier Charles, 70 volumes of Voltaire, and absolutely no political, business or legal experience. He had been sent out to work as an officer in the Ceylon Civil Service, and very soon was posted to

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Exclusive: Nigel Farage doesn’t want to lead the Out campaign

Nigel Farage has told The Spectator that he doesn’t want to lead the Out campaign come an EU referendum. In an interview, he said, ‘It needs a figurehead and I’m a warrior not a figurehead.’ Farage believes that if Ukip win the European Elections then a referendum will be inevitable. He says that come the referendum, he will play his part ‘I’m a fixed bayonet man, albeit that I don’t see myself as a private. But I see myself leading a division into battle, that’s where I fit in.’ The Ukip leader wants someone who ‘someone who has been very big in British politics’ to take charge of the No

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Joint Ukip candidates is Farage’s second best option

Nigel Farage has stirred up talk again this morning of joint Conservative/Ukip or Labour/Ukip candidates. This has been doing the rounds ever since the Ukip leader mooted it in an interview with James in the Spectator, but neither main party is keen. The reason is that this would effectively outsource candidate selection to someone outside the Conservative or Labour party: only candidates Ukip considered sufficiently ‘sound’ according to its own standards would get the Farage kitemark, and therefore local parties with Ukip breathing down their necks might be tempted to choose a more Ukippish type to stand for them than otherwise. But there’s another point worth making about the joint

Tuesday

Jonny Rose

Nigel Farage’s failed fightback in Croydon

Ukip held a carnival in my hometown, and I found myself caught up in it. They’d enticed us to the Whitgift Centre with talk of a steel band, their large number of local BME candidates and a chance to see Nigel Farage. After more accusations of racism, picking Croydon did make sense for the party. It is London’s most populous borough and the largest town in Europe. It can confidently describe itself as one of the ‘melting pots’ politicians love: 2011 Census data shows White British people make up less than 50 per cent of the population, with 18 different ethnic groups living in the borough. Ukip’s local candidates include

Ed West Ed West

Why people will be voting for Ukip this Thursday

Despite levels of media scrutiny and hostility unseen in recent political history, this Thursday up to 30 per cent of British voters will opt for Ukip. The odd thing is that the more outrageous the slurs made against them, and the wackier the members unveiled in the press, the more their popularity surges, perhaps out of bloody-mindedness; if a Ukip candidate was caught committing autoerotic asphyxiation dressed in a Gestapo uniform tomorrow the party would probably be on 50 per cent by the end of the week. One of the reasons is that Ukip is a product of lowered trust; the party’s supporters have noticeably less trust in politicians than

Monday

Rod Liddle

German or Romanian neighbour – which would you choose?

I would rather live next door to a German than a Romanian. I thought I’d just make that clear. I don’t mean I’d rather live next door to SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich than the humorously surreal dramatist Eugène Ionesco. I mean, in general, on average, given what I know about the people from both countries who have come here to live. Not all of them, obviously. Just as a generality, if you were to offer me the choice, without telling me any more about the respective merits of the people concerned, just here’s your choice, Rod – Germans or Romanians. I may be wrong, but I suspect most people in this country, if offered the same choice,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is he or isn’t he a racist? Why politicians don’t want to give a straight answer about Farage

Mainstream politicians, never known for giving a straight answer, have been giving particularly wibbly and unclear responses to one particular question today. Is Nigel Farage a racist and was what he said about Romanians moving in next door racist? Ed Miliband did pick a particularly tortured definition of what Nigel Farage had said when asked about it on the Today programme. It was a ‘racial slur’ but Farage is not a racist, or at least, Miliband didn’t want to make politics more ‘disagreeable’ by accusing Farage of being a racist. But he did say that Farage was right to apologise. Helpfully, Nick Griffin pitched in to tell BBC News that

Douglas Murray

The smears against Nigel Farage and Ukip have reached spectacular depths

Inevitably the lowest attacks have been saved until the week of the election. For months now the neat drip-feeding of anti-UKIP stories from Conservative Campaign Headquarters direct to the UK press has done everything possible to depict UKIP as a racist, xenophobic, bigoted party. This has been significantly ratcheted up ahead of Thursday’s vote. Today’s pages include the Times repeating a story from last year in the hope of successful guilt-by-association. The story is that Geert Wilders (the ‘Dutch Xenophobe’ as the Times headlines him) would like Nigel Farage to join him and Marine Le Pen in an anti-EU Brussels voting bloc. What neither the Times nor any other newspaper wishes

Ed West Ed West

What’s the difference between German and Romanian immigrants?

Nigel Farage is in the papers again today – unbelievably! – this time with a full-page advert in the Telegraph responding to his remarks about Romanians on LBC radio. Such was the universal media condemnation over his interview with James O’Brien that on Saturday even the Sun had an editorial on anti-Romanian racism. You couldn’t make it up. Farage was stereotyping, and his tone of ‘you know what the difference is’ hit the wrong note, which lost him the argument over a fairly reasonable point; that is, the typical profile of a German migrant is very different to that of a Romanian migrant. For example, recent figures released showed that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

UKIP’s biggest problem is stupidity, not racism

Let me be clear, any time you feel the need to write “Let me be clear – UKIP is not a racist party” you are in a pickle. Parties shunned by actual, honest-to-goodness, copper-bottomed, ocean-going racists don’t usually need to make these things clear. There is a protesting-too-much vibe here, too, in which the more strenuously the Kippers reject the accusation so they only succeed in substantiating it. This might not be fair but it’s also life. The precise point at which a party for racists or a party in which racists feel at home becomes a racist party is a metaphysical question the pondering of which need not detain

Hamish Macdonell

How a Ukip victory could hasten the break-up of the UK

In a sense it could be the political version of the law of unintended consequences. There is Nigel Farage insisting that he is a British unionist, that he opposes Scottish nationalism and does not want to see Scottish independence. Yet success for Farage and Ukip in the Euro elections this week could possibly do more to hasten the break-up of the UK than almost anything else. That is the implication of a startling new poll published in the Scotsman this morning. ICM found that almost one in five Scots were more likely to vote Yes in the independence referendum if Ukip does well this week. A total of three in five of those

Sunday

James Forsyth

Westminster still expects Ukip to win

The polls are all over the place this morning. Ukip is either on course for a thumping victory, going to be edged into second by Labour or has fallen into third place depending on which is your preferred pollster. But all three Westminster parties are operating on the assumption that Ukip will win, as I say in the Mail on Sunday. Certainly, Labour are getting their excuses in early. Those close to Miliband are quick to point out that Tony Blair never won a European Election and that the party machine will be concentrating more on Thursday’s council contests than the European Elections as having a strong council base will

Friday

David Blackburn

Ed Miliband – as clear as mud on immigration

Ed Miliband visited Airbus this morning, where he gave a clear headline message on immigration: never again will Labour abandon people who are concerned about immigration.  Alas, he became less clear the more he spoke. At various points in an interview with The World at One earlier this afternoon, Miliband described immigration as a “class issue”; a concern of those people who are not getting a fair chance or those who are being undercut by cheap foreign labour exploited by predatory bosses. This fits neatly into his pre-packaged narrative about the evils of the modern market economy. listen to ‘Ed Miliband on the World at One’ on Audioboo

Sebastian Payne

Watch: Nigel Farage’s car crash interview on LBC

So much for Nigel Farage’s image as a straight-talking politician. On LBC this morning, the Ukip leader went head-to-head with James O’Brien, covering a range of topics including some of the ‘idiots’ in his party, living next door to Romanians as well as the party’s recent poster campaign. The interview became particularly heated at around 15 minutes in, when O’Brien quizzed him on immigration and his wife, who apparently does not speak German on trains. But when it came to discussing his EU expenses/allowances, and why he hasn’t signed up to a transparency agreement like Labour MEPs, the party’s head of communications Patrick O’Flynn interrupted the interview to halt the car crash. As you

Thursday

David Blackburn

Ed Miliband needs a strategy more than he needs a makeover

David Axelrod has parachuted into London to give Ed Miliband a ‘makeover’. Miliband needs all the foundation and blusher he can get; but a trip to the battleground in Newark might have been a more productive starting point for Axelrod: Labour’s greatest problem is its strategy, or lack of one. Newark has huge significance for the Tories – a chance to recover from their likely drubbing at the local and European elections, an opportunity to put Ukip to the sword and a way to build momentum towards next year’s general election. The party is well organised on the ground. A strong base of activists and councillors is operating out of

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

Nigel Farage ties himself in knots over Ukip manifesto — again

Ukip may be sailing towards first place in the European elections, but Nigel Farage unwittingly revealed today how the party is still a long way from becoming a mature political movement. During his interview on the Sunday Politics, Farage didn’t seem to know what was in Ukip’s local election manifesto — in particular whether the party was promising to make any spending cuts. This is a transcript of what he said: Andrew Neil: You have promised these tax cuts, how much will they cost? Nigel Farage: No idea. I’m not here to talk about, I’ve read the local election manifesto and it doesn’t make those promises. AN: It does NF: We do

Thursday

Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson’s diary: Boris would make a great PM – but he must strike now

I feel an intense antipathy for Vladimir Putin. No one on the international scene has aroused in me such dislike since Stalin died. Though not a mass killer on the Stalin scale, he has the same indifference to human life. There is a Stalinist streak of gangsterism too: his ‘loyalists’ wear masks as well as carry guns. Putin also resembles Hitler in his use of belligerent minorities to spread his power. Am I becoming paranoid about Putin? I hope not. But I am painfully aware that he would not matter if there was a strong man in Washington. As it is, President Obama is a feeble and cowardly man who

Monday

Tom Mludzinski

Ukip faces its toughest test yet over the next 12 months

The European election creeps closer and the smart money has switched from Labour to Ukip topping the poll. A Labour win would be spectacular in its own right as it would probably require a doubling of their 2009 vote share. I confess there was an intake of breath in the ComRes office when our ITV News poll results were in showing an 11-point Ukip lead over Labour. But the naysayers were confounded by a second poll released on the same day showing a nine-point Ukip lead. The ramifications of a party with no Westminster MPs topping a popular ballot within a year of a General Election puts us into new territory. What

Sunday

James Forsyth

Ukip aren’t just David Cameron and the Tories’ problem anymore

How the Tory party will react if, as excepted, Ukip pushes the party into third place in the European elections is one of the most discussed topics in UK politics. But overlooked in all this is how Labour will react if Farage’s party beats them on May 22nd. If Ukip come top in the European Elections, as the polls indicate they have a very good chance of doing, Labour will be thrown into a panic. No opposition has ever triumphed at a general election having not won the previous European Elections. A failure in the European Elections would be a big blow to the idea that Ed Miliband is going

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Health diktats, rail renationalisation – Labour’s leftwards lurch continues

The evolution of Ed Miliband’s Labour Party continues today with a letter in the Observer from candidates demanding that the party renationalizes the railways to lower the fares. It would be popular in commuter towns, they say – no wonder, as this would pass the costs from commuters to the general taxpayer. When challenged about it on this morning’s Andrew Marr show, Miliband didn’t rule it out. ‘We’re looking at all the options,’ he said. His only concession was that he is ‘not going back to old-style British Rail,’ – he plans a new form of state intervention. Miliband then went on to accuse Cameron of being a ‘cheerleader’ for