Ukip

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: How schools fail boys, Jonathan Croall answers Keith Baxter, and why atheists should love the C of E

Why girls do better Sir: Isabel Hardman notes that girls now outperform boys at every level in education (‘The descent of man’, 3 May), implying that this is a symptom of a wider cultural malaise. In fact, boys lost their edge in 16+ exams in 1970, long before their advantages in other areas began to disappear. ‘Child-centred’ reforms were already well advanced when the infamous Plowden report was published in 1967, and informal practices such as ‘discovery learning’ and ‘whole language’ gave girls a decided edge. This was conclusively demonstrated in trials conducted between 1997 and 2005 by the Scottish Office. Children who were taught to read with a rigorous

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Complacent Cameron slips on Miliband’s bananas

Easy triumphs soften victors. Cameron demonstrated this truism today as he took two unexpected blows from Ed Miliband at PMQs. The Labour leader led on his new policy of rent controls. Cameron, rather weakly, seemed amenable to the reform but offered no concrete proposals of his own. Miliband struck. ‘That was a pretty quick U-turn, even for him.’ Miliband then asked about the preparations to surrender AstraZeneca, trussed and bound, to Pfizer – with all the attendant risks to jobs and investment. Cameron flushed as red as a rhubarb crumble and accused Miliband of ‘playing politics’ while the government was ‘getting stuck in’ and defending the national interest. What irked

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Roger Helmer is a gift to CCHQ, so the Tories need to do really well in Newark

Well, the Ukip constituency association in Newark has certainly considered Nigel Farage’s musings on the success of appointing an unknown local candidate in a pivotal by-election… and completely ignored it. They’ve picked Roger Helmer, who, as Seb says, is not known for his mollifying centre-ground views. His selection as the party’s candidate for the Newark by-election is a gift for CCHQ, which now needs a teaspoon rather than a spade to dig out awkward comments the MEP has made. Perhaps it also suggests that Ukip have decided there’s not much hope of winning so why bother to field a good candidate who the party’s opponents would lay into. Or perhaps

Sebastian Payne

Ukip selects Roger Helmer as candidate for Newark by-election

As expected, Ukip has announced that Roger Helmer will be the party’s candidate for the upcoming Newark by-election on 5 June. The 70-year-old MEP is a former Conservative who defected to Ukip two years ago, citing an ‘increasing disillusion with the attitudes of the Conservative Party’. Farage said of Helmer’s selection this afternoon: ‘He is a massively experienced and respected figure on the national political stage and on the local political stage as well. I know that the UKIP membership will rally to the cause of making Roger our first directly elected MP.’ Helmer is a colourful character, whose past remarks will be undoubtedly dug up by his opponents in Newark.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Modern England: a triumph of immigration and integration.

In a better, more sensible, world David Cameron would make a virtue of the opportunity UKIP has given him. He would appreciate that defending his party’s record is actually an opportunity for a counter-attack. UKIP complain – loudly – that 4,000 people arrive in the United Kingdom from the EU each and every week. This, they suggest, is awful and Something Must Be Done to limit the number of people coming to the United Kingdom. The Conservative party appears, in its dark heart, to share this concern. It suspects the Kippers might have at least half a point. There’s something nauseous about all this immigration, isn’t there? No wonder the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Was William Henwood’s comment about Lenny Henry racist?

My colleague Hugo Rifkind has been bien-pensanting around the issue of racism, to interesting effect. His thesis, in last week’s mag, seems to be that Ukip is a racist party because it says it isn’t a racist party. I suspect Hugo could show you racism in a handful dust. He also refers to the case of Ukip party candidate William Henwood, who according to Hugo ‘declared that Lenny Henry should “emigrate to a black country” and “does not have to live with whites.”‘ On the BBC’s Question Time, meanwhile, Yvette Cooper (14.00) alleged that Henwood had said that Lenny Henry should emigrate to Africa because of the colour of his skin.

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

Saturday

Sebastian Payne

Revealed: Nigel Farage’s path to Parliament

Now that Newark is a no-go, Nigel Farage will be turning his thoughts to where he will stand as an MP. He said this week that returning its first MP will be a huge breakthrough for Ukip, so choosing a seat that he can win is vital. After declining to stand in the 15 by-elections that Ukip have contested since 2010, it looks as if Farage will wait until 2015 to run for Parliament. Coffee House understands that, ideally, Farage would like the seat to fit three criteria. Firstly, it needs to be a marginal seat. Secondly, he wants to have some local connection — he feels his lack of

Friday

Rod Liddle

Is Nigel Farage trying to distract us?

On location for The Sunday Times in the exciting by-election town of Newark-upon-Trent, I asked a nice local woman about her voting intentions. What way do you think you’ll be voting, I asked. This is what she said. “Um, yes, the poll. Well, I will turn right out of my house and walk down the road and then there’s usually a what-do-you-call-it, poll thing, in St Leonard’s Church, on the corner. I think that’s right..” I just thought I’d share that response with you. It is interesting that the leader of UKIP. Nigel Farage, who is of course somewhat Eurosceptic, apparently believes that contesting a poll for election to the

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 1 May 2014

Home The British economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2014, disappointing hotheads who’d expected 1 per cent. It was 3.1 per cent bigger than a year earlier, but 0.6 per cent smaller than in 2008. Pfizer, the American pharmaceutical company, said it wanted to take over AstraZeneca, with a £60 billion bid that would make it the biggest ever foreign takeover of a British-based company. The Labour party said it was leaving the Co-op Bank and taking its £1.2 million overdraft elsewhere. UK Financial Investments, which manages the Treasury’s 81 per cent stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland, blocked a plan for 200 per cent bonuses. A film version of Dad’s

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes: Max Clifford’s conviction vindicates juries. But so did the acquittals

The conviction of Max Clifford for indecent assaults feels like a vindication of the jury system, as did the acquittal of the many other showbiz characters charged under Operation Yewtree. One reason I keep raising questions of justice about the current obsession with paedophilia is out of suspicion that those most zealous in their accusations are unhealthily interested in the subject. This was the case with Clifford himself and, of course, with the newspapers with which he did business. Celebrity culture is, in essence, a form of pornography which incites powerful people to exploit unpowerful people. It acquires an extra twist of perversion when it turns on those it has

Steerpike Steerpike

Nigel Farage joins the political greats

Nigel Farage has been ‘egged’ while on the campaign trail. He was pelted by a protestor as he left his car. The protestor was dragged away by police. Mr S can’t help but notice that Farage has joined a list of political greats, including such lights as John Prescott and Ed Miliband, who have been ‘egged’ while out on the stump. Truly, Ukip has arrived.

Charles Moore Charles Moore

One way to persuade me to vote Ukip

So far, I am disinclined to vote for Ukip in the forthcoming Euro-elections. Our area has been represented for many years by the great Daniel Hannan, the leading practising Eurosceptic of our times, so I have resisted the Faragiste temptation. But I felt a bit wobbly after reading an interview with Nigel Farage in the Guardian. According to its author, Decca Aitkenhead, Ukip supporters — though not the libertarian Nigel himself — want to make dressing up for the theatre compulsory. They are so right. It is now almost compulsory not to dress up for the theatre, even in the West End. This has had the predictable result that theatre-goers pay less attention, eat and

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Ukip isn’t a national party. It’s a Tory sickness

It can happen that something ought to feel wrong yet somehow doesn’t; and you wonder whether this means that in some deep way it could be right. Take for example a discussion on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday last week. The subject was the rise of the ‘Teflon’ United Kingdom Independence Party. I ought to have found the programme’s handling of this to be inappropriate; yet it felt both appropriate and natural. In this column I shall discuss why. Radio presenters do not give explanatory headlines to political interviews. At about 8.20 a.m. Evan Davis simply said ‘Let’s talk about Ukip’ and off they went, ‘they’ being himself

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Nigel Farage is just Russell Brand for old people

Yes, yes, yes, some young ‘uns support UKIP. Just as a few black people do too. But come on. We all know – because the polling tells us so – that UKIP supporters are likely to be older and whiter than the average voter and, most importantly, also more certain that the whole bleedin’ country is going to the dogs. The sodding dogs, I tell you. It isn’t. Of course there are problems. Of course there are great injustices that need correcting. Of course there are difficult, often intractable, policy debates that resist easy answers. There always have been and always will be. Change is always alarming and always unavoidable.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why Farage isn’t standing in Newark

I always thought that it was unlikely that Nigel Farage would stand in Newark. When I discussed the prospect of a by-election there with him on Monday, he seemed drawn to the idea of a local candidate; pointing out how the Canadian Reform Party had secured their key by-election breakthrough with ‘a completely unknown geography mistress, who lived in the town, who had lots of relations there’. Farage’s decision not to stand is a recognition that the Tories are bound to pick a local candidate and that their campaign would paint him as someone who is interested in what Newark could do for him, not what he could do for

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Why Nigel Farage might not stand in Newark

Nigel Farage told me on Monday how closely he was watching the situation in Newark. He introduced the subject by saying, “there’s one other thing that could change everything”. But Farage’s comments to me yesterday make me think that he’s unlikely to stand in Newark. He said that he’d ‘been looking at candidates’ and mused on how just one MP would make such a difference. He pointed to how the Canadian Reform party had won a seat in a by-election in 1989 and then go on to become the largest opposition party in at the next election. What struck me about this anecdote was how taken Farage was by the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Patrick Mercer quits as MP and triggers awkward by-election in Newark

Patrick Mercer has quit as an MP. The Sun has the story, with the former Conservative saying: ‘It is clear to me that the constituency of Newark needs to be represented properly. I will not argue will the findings of the committee and I can only humbly apologise. “My military background has taught me that you must never let down the people who depend on you, and those people are my constituents of Newark. If that becomes the case, you must go without any argument.’ listen to ‘Patrick Mercer resigns as the MP for Newark’ on Audioboo Now the question is when the Newark by-election will take place. It is

Ed West Ed West

One solution to revenge porn: ‘cad-shaming’

I’m kicking myself because back in 2011 or 2012 Paddy Power gave me odds of 66/1 on Ukip topping the 2014 poll, which I chickened out of taking. It was perfectly likely that Ukip would win because their views on a range of subjects are close to the median British average, while the three main parties (or LIBLABCON as I call them when posting on messageboards under the name ‘Sword of Odin’) are often in a world of their own. But I also thought that the party brand could be made toxic by media exposure of its most extreme members, and great denunciations from the commentariat. As it is Ukip’s