"It's a culture clash": how VoteWatch frames Pakistanis as uniquely guilty of election fraud.

It seem innocent enough, even noble - VoteWatch they call it and it, we're told, does this:

Exposing ballot burglars, reporting on elections, opening-up politics & producing documentaries

What could be wrong with an organisation dedicated to exposing electoral bad practice and to hold the feet of those running elections to the fire? The answer is pretty simple, VoteWatch isn't really about any of this as a quick visit to its website would tell you - just on the 'UK' section of that website we see:

An attack on Labour MP David Lammy's expenses claims

More on David Lammy as they look at whether the hate mail he receives is self-generated

A report on the resignation of the UK ambassador to the USA

A nasty police siege in Peterborough - badged as in the 'Multicultural District'

Gordon Brown attacking Corbyn over anti-semitism

A tenuous link to a convicted vote fraudster describing his nephew in a 'drug fuelled rage'

Eventually we come to a video that says it's a 'guide to the Pickles Report'. And this is where we begin to see the real agenda of VoteWatch and why the Brexit Party (and the right of politics in the UK should be concerned). You can read the Pickles Report (here) and you'll find that it gives a series of proposals for tightening up the administration of of elections and the prevention of illegal and corrupt practices at the polls. This covers the location and management of polling stations, the intimidation of voters, postal voting, personation and the administration of the count. Pickles was critical of the Electoral Commission and strongly supported the use of an easier election petition system rather than that commission.

What Eric Pickles didn't say was that the problem was confined to places with concentrations of Pakistani or Bangladeshi population. Reference is made to concerns raised by people from those communities (over intimidation, family voting - where a man accompanies a woman into the polling booth, and political party access to absent voter lists) as well as to the shocking Tower Hamlets case where the failure of police and Electoral Commission to act was eventually exposed by a private petition. More than anything it was the scale of Lutfur Rahman's electoral fraud that shocked:

Lutfur Rahman was found personally guilty by the court of making false statements about a candidate, bribery, and undue spiritual influence. The court also found Rahman guilty by his agents of personation, postal vote offences, provision of false information to a registration officer, voting when not entitled, making false statements about a candidate, payment of canvassers, bribery, and undue spiritual influence. A finding that corrupt and illegal practices for the purpose of securing Rahman's election, and that such general corruption so extensively prevailed such that it could be reasonably concluded to have affected the result was also returned.

It remains a concern that, in general terms, public authorities are loath to take strong actions in investigating election offences but although Pickles alluded to 'political correctness' as a factor his main concern was that the Electoral Commission set itself up as both rule-maker and policeman. Nor can we dismiss - as my colleagues in Bradford know well - the malign impact of clan and birideri politics in some Asian communities.

It is clear, however, that VoteWatch is not interested in encouraging improvements to the way in which we ensure fair elections but rather to suggest that malpractice is a specific problem for Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities and for nowhere else. Here is a map and graphic showing where the organisation has set up branches and, I assume, an image of the sort of people (South Asians) who are doing the alleged fraud:



So we have an image of South Asian men (plus a child) and a list of towns with large Pakistani or Bangladeshi populations. Returning to VoteWatch's article on the Pickles Report, we find that a good part of it isn't about voting fraud but about the street grooming scandals in Rotherham and elsewhere that did largely involve Pakistani men. Challenged on this apparently racist targeting, Jay Beecher who runs VoteWatch said:

"...voter-fraud is carried-out predominantly by members of the Pakistani community..."

Given that Lutfer Rahman in Tower Hamlets is of Bangladeshi heritage and noting the constant references to street grooming, we can only guess that VoteWatch want us to join the dots and come up with the word 'Muslim'. By inference VoteWatch want us to believe that, were it not for Muslim voters, there'd be no problems with elections. Here's Beecher again:

It's a clash of cultures. Democracy is seen in different forms, with varying attitudes towards it in certain countries. Voter fraud is rife in Pakistan for instance, along with cultural voting, bribery etc. Those methods are now employed over here in the UK

I have some news for Jay Beecher - our laws on bribary, cultural voting, intimidation, impersonation and false registration date back to the nineteenth century when there were at most a couple of thousand Muslims in the UK and none of them from Pakistan because it didn't exist. This handy list of election petitions - filled with bribery, personation, intimidation and general skulduggery - gives a flavour.

This isn't to say that we have no problems with corrupt and illegal practices in our elections - false registration, dodgy nominations, postal voting abuse and personation - or indeed that some of these may be more prevalent in Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. Rather it's to notice that in the world of VoteWatch all the baddies are brown (or privileged white people too scared of the brown people to act).

Last year (2018) the Electoral Commission reported:

Of the 266 cases that were investigated, 191 needed no further action. A further 55 were resolved locally with informal advice given either by the police or the Returning Officer. 17 cases are still under investigation or are awaiting advice from the Crown Prosecution Service. We will continue to monitor these.

There has, to date, been just one conviction - for forging signatures on a nomination form - relating to elections in 2018. Even if the Electoral Commission could up its game this does not suggest that there are widespread problems with the administration of elections or with corrupt and illegal practices. Furthermore, half of the 2018 allegations related either to "allegations about someone making false statements about the personal character or conduct of a candidate" or for not including an imprint on a leaflet. And there's no obvious difference in investigations between years with metropolitan council elections (covering more than half of the Muslim population) and those without.

I've gone on at length here because VoteWatch and other organisations that focus on Muslims as peculiarly criminal or strangely 'culturally distinct' represent a real threat to politics on the right. You only need look at what became of UKIP when it turned itself from a centre-right eurosceptic party into an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim campaign group. With close associations between the Brexit Party and VoteWatch, it seems to me that there's a real risk that its noble cause of securing democracy gets compromised by these links to a campaign saying "Pakistanis are stealing elections - look at Peterborough" despite there not actually being much evidence that this is the case.

VoteWatch link voting fraud with street grooming and use reports of criminal activity by Asian men to reinforce a message that in Beecher's words - it's a clash of cultures. What lies behind this is the worrying - and too widespread - view that, in some way Islam is incompatible with British life and culture. It is this lie that marginalised UKIP and it will do the same for the Brexit Party if it allows Jay Beecher and people like him to set the agenda. What's also important is that my party - the Conservatives - set clear water between the racially-tinged campaigns of groups like VoteWatch and our response to legitimate desires to ensure voting is safe and fair.

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Taking us for mugs - Labour, immigration and a panic about kippers

Seeing this delightful mug I thought back through all my years of active involvement in politics - from smuggling Monday Club Tory, Sir Patrick Wall into a meeting of Hull students (in his own constituency) through any number of local and national elections all of which have featured at some point the implication, nay insinuation, that saying we need to 'control' immigration is tantamount to racism. Indeed that we didn't really mean 'control immigration' but rather that this was code for something worse, something nasty and sinister, something racist. Saying we needed less immigration was always portrayed by Labour as but a short step from 'send the blacks home' or some other similarly unpleasant and bigoted policy.

That was until UKIP arrived on the scene. Up to this point Labour had stuck to its guns on immigration - pointing out that, mostly and most of the time, it's good for the nation and good for the economy. Whatever we may have thought about the issue, Labour's approach and its policy while in government was very clear - even when confronted with popular concerns about too much immigration:

It is the duty of government to deal with the issues of both asylum and immigration. But they should not be exploited by a politics that, in desperation, seeks refuge in them.

There is a position around which this country can unify; that we continue to root out abuse of the asylum system, but give a place to genuine refugees; that we ensure immigration controls are effective so that the many who come, rightly and necessarily, for our economy, to work, study or visit here can do so; but that those who stay illegally are removed; but that we never use these issues as a political weapon, an instrument of division and discord.

This view - that people come here 'rightly and necessarily' - was widely supported across the country and especially welcomed by a business community struggling for skilled recruits. In simple terms Labour was pro-immigration but against the abuse of the system. Today this has changed - the Party's position (albeit a little vague) has shifted noticeably away from 'follow the rules, play by the system, and you're welcome' towards the point where control - for which we will always read reduce the numbers - outweighs and rational discussion of migration. Labour is in a panic about kippers.

Labour got things wrong on immigration in the past. But Ed Miliband has set out a new approach: controlling immigration and controlling its impacts on local communities. Britain needs immigration rules that are tough and fair.

The Tories have let people down on immigration. David Cameron promised to get immigration down to the tens of thousands, “no ifs, no buts”, but net migration is rising, not falling. It’s now at 260,000, higher than it was when David Cameron walked into Number Ten, and the Tories’ target is in tatters.

The position here is rather different - it is the Conservatives that have failed because of those (rather dumb) net migration targets and Labour will, by implication, stop the tide. But the real drive in the Labour Party for this dramatic shift in immigration policy hasn't been some sort of Damascene conversion - or maybe just a cynical one - but rather the threat perceived in some Labour heartlands from UKIP.

Ukip are not about to overturn dozens of Labour’s northern heartlands. But the result in Heywood is further evidence of the threat that Ukip poses Labour. It is one rooted in much more than the charisma of Mr Farage, but the disconnect between Labour (and all main parties) and the working-class. In 1979, there were 98 manual workers and 21 people who worked primarily in politics in Parliament. In 2010, 25 manual workers were elected to Westminster - and 90 people who had worked primarily in politics before becoming an MP. Average turnout was just 58 per cent in Labour’s 100 safest seats in 2010.

I say the threat is perceived because I see little prospect of UKIP winning any seats - they've an outside chance in Grimsby but it's a long shot - from Labour in May. But Labour activists feel the challenge - the local councillors in Bradford who saw their majorities in safe seats dwindle to a handful, the activists who get berated by ex-Labour UKIP supporters at the working man's club or the trade unionists reporting how many of their manual labour members are making UKIP sort of noises at work.

Last year in Rotherham UKIP won 10 seats in that classic Labour rotten borough of Rotherham. We know the reasons but we overlook the wider reality - across those rotten boroughs like Barnsley, Wakefield and Doncaster UKIP moved into second place and became the main challenger to Labour. And the traditional response to the "far right" (as Labour folk insist on calling nationalists) didn't work. People didn't think UKIP were racist - or at least no more racist than the Tories - and did think they had a point about immigrants, about political correctness and about local community.

The Labour people in these places had never been challenged. Or rather the challenge came from that nice bloke who owns a garage and always stands for the Conservatives. Now Labour felt threatened - branch meetings were dominated by people talking about what UKIP were doing. The poor quality (if shiny) leaflets from that party were give to councillors by folk with slightly shaking hands - "look, look - what are we going to do" exclaims the leaflet-finder. The MP is involved and, while reassuring local activists, heads off to London where he meets others with the same tales.

"We have to respond" these MPs say. "We can't be caught out on immigration. UKIP can win where the Tories never could". Party strategists (knowing full well that there's little or no chance of UKIP winning and that it's the Tories and SNP that Labour should worry about) sooth fretful MPs and dutifully inform higher-ups about their concerns. With the result that proper working-class policies are developed about 'controlling immigration' - local campaigners can point to the policy and persuade those disgruntled folk in Rawmarsh or Royton that they're best sticking with Labour.

Plus a mug. A mug that means people like me can point to Labour and say "you bunch of no good, low down hypocrites - after all those years of attacking Conservatives for wanting to control immigration, you come up with a policy important enough for you to emblazon it on a mug."

Or as someone called it - the racist mug.

The odd thing is that Labour know the numbers. They know they're not threatened by UKIP - indeed that in some places that Party's support holding up increases the chances of Labour winning. But because lots of ill-informed and panicky local councillors and activists are on about it, the Party has placed immigration controls at the heart of its election campaign. And of course on that mug.

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In which the left remind us they hold the electorate in contempt (if they vote the wrong way)

 

I've no time for UKIP at all. Not only are their policies confused, swaying from gung ho libertarianism to proposing frightening degrees of state control, but the Party's strategy is entirely defined by Nigel Farage's desire to damage the Conservative Party. I find UKIP's approach almost as opportunistic as the old Liberal Democrats - chap down the pub complains about the smoking ban and UKIP want to scrap it. And when he moves on to not liking gay people getting hitched UKIP bounce onto that bandwagon.

But it's not the bloke in the pub's fault that UKIP act as an echo chamber for his prejudices, he's just doing what he has always done - sounding off about the ills of the world. And some of what he says is right - the smoking ban killed thousands of pubs along with the jobs of people who worked in those pubs, the EU is an undemocratic and unaccountable nightmare we'd be better off without and there are too many jobsworths at the Council.

But disagreeing with that bloke isn't a justification for being rude about him, for treating him with contempt. Yet this - and the poster above reminds us - is exactly how the left think we should campaign against UKIP. By calling the people who vote for that party "thick". Now I know this is the default view that the typical Guardian reader has of the working class or lower middle class voter, perhaps it reflects a deep disappointment that some of those voters no longer dutifully vote Labour as they're supposed to do (this may reflect the fact that the Labour candidate they're given - middle class, university educated, full of fancy words - doesn't hold or respect those voters' values). But it displays an utterly appalling arrogance.

If the left really want to respond to UKIP (rather than hope enough damage is done to the Conservatives that Ed Miliband gets to be PM on the votes of a third of the electorate) then they need to start listening to what the bloke in the pub is saying. Responding to his concerns about immigration, trying to understand why he's bothered about gay marriage and discussing what's wrong with the EU. Calling him thick is to guarantee that he'll carry right on voting UKIP. Why on earth should he vote for someone who thinks he's an idiot and isn't prepared to listen to what he's saying?

These are ordinary voters who are worried about things they see around them. They aren't stupid, they're not thick and they deserve our respect. If the left can't do that it deserves to be wiped out.

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A very brief comment about Rochester and Strood...

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In the 2005 general election 20, 315 people voted Labour in the Harwich constituency in north Essex. Almost all of this constituency - everything but the town of Harwich itself - now makes up the Clacton constituency so spectacularly caputured by UKIP defector Douglas Carswell. In 2010 Labour still took 25% of the vote - which if you've been to Jaywick or St Osyth shouldn't really be a surprise. Yet Labour made no effort at all to fight the recent by-election with the result that its vote sunk to less than 4,000.

It seems to me that Labour is about to repeat this approach in Rochester and Strood - a place that had a Labour MP up to 2010. And the media seems set on letting Labour get away with fighting a seat that, were this a normal by-election causes by death or resignation, the party would have had every expectation of winning or coming close to winning. The truth about Rochester and Strood is that it's not a sort of Kentish version of Buckingham or Wokingham - it's a pretty working class place and Labour is hanging its support there out to dry, handing it over on a plate to UKIP.

If I were a cynic, I'd suggest that Labour essentially giving up on contesting seats where iit had MPs in the last decade reflects their running the dangerous game of wanting UKIP to damage the Conservatives. The problem is that, across much of the South, the consequence of this approach will be that UKIP will become - for the time being at least - the main opposition to the Conservatives.  And along the Thames estuary - perhaps the few places in the south where Labour remains strong - the party will die out.

Odd really.

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Is the EU more Holy Roman Empire than nascent super-state?

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I've thought something like this for a while:

These attitudes suggest that the EU could be devolving from a nascent super-state to something that increasingly resembles the Holy Roman Empire, a fragmented landscape of small, unimportant states wrapped in a unitary, but ephemeral crepe.

If this is so - and I fear it is, the need for a sustainable reform of EU institutions become imperative. Without this Europe as we know it could well collapse into the sort of bickering autarky that organisations like UKIP and the Front National increasingly present as their preferred future.

We need to begin presenting an internationalist alternative to both petty nationalism (UKIP, SNP, FN, etc.) and to the fortress Europe policies of the EU elite. Only Britain has the desire right now to have that debate and, in the UK, only the Conservative Party dare challenge both those sclerotic EU institutions and isolationist nationalism. And that referendum is essential as the lever to make Europe change.

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Why part of the Conservative Party's soul is in Jaywick (and Cullingworth)

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There is, I'm told, a battle raging over the soul of the Conservative Party. This week's Spectator (which I've yet to read) splashes 'Tory Split' across the front cover. And I'm confused because I simply don't see the split. Maybe I'm wilfully blind, too tribal to notice the terrible divisions that stand out for left-wing pundits like Andrew Rawnsley and Polly Toynbee.

But if there's a battle over the Party's soul perhaps it would be a good idea to try and understand what that 'soul' is all about? Neither of our left-wing pundits are remotely qualified to do this - their understanding of the Conservative Party and conservatism is limited (which makes their penchant for parading their ignorance rather entertaining). Talking about the Corn Laws or Empire Preference doesn't help unless you're planning a sixth form history essay and neither does trying to portray the 'eurosceptic' right as some sort of Tory version of the Militant Tendency.

Instead we should try to understand that the divisions aren't about economics. Nobody in the Conservative Party disagrees with our support for essentially liberal economic policies and, more importantly, with the view that it is business, commerce and industry that provides our wealth not government. The most pinko Tory Reform Group member will accept that as an essential tenet of conservatism, as something setting us apart from socialists and social democrats.

So rather than economic disagreement, we need to look instead at social and cultural differences - the distinction between working class and lower middle class values and the values of an urban cultural elite. It is here that we can perceive division - it isn't David Cameron's words that agitate but the suspicion that he doesn't understand. This division isn't simply a problem for the Conservative Party but represents a wider division in society. The split is reflected in Matthew Parris's article about Clacton where his distaste for the tastes of that seaside town's residents is so palpable. But Parris's rant simply captures the same spirit that blames McDonalds for obesity, bans cheap lager and turns its nose up at plastic reindeer and the X-Factor.

What UKIP has done successfully is tap into the dissatisfaction with the cultural direction of the Conservative Party that Parris's article champions - it is the grumpy bloke in the saloon bar transformed into a political movement. That grumpy bloke articulates a set of gut feelings - too many immigrants have changed the place, gays are odd (usually accompanied by bad "jokes" about not bending over), that we 'don't make anything any more' and anyhow the country is going to the dogs.

Yesterday I was talking to a Cullingworth native - one of the sort who make a village a village having been born here to parents who themselves were born here. This resident ranted about how people move into the village, buy a nice house and then want speed humps everywhere - "don't they know it's a village" was the conclusion. This is the problem for that London-based elite - they simply don't understand how someone can be three generations in a village and see nothing better than knowing that will become four, five and six generations. And that such people really don't want a great deal to change about the place they live.

If, because we have no cultural point of reference (and this is Matthew Parris's problem, I suspect) we decide that the opinions of people in Clacton or Cullingworth are best ignored then what we do is create the opportunity for others to come along and take advantage - here in Bradford we had the BNP and down in Clacton they have UKIP. Now UKIP are a sight better than the BNP but have still adopted the process of deciding policies based on that grumpy old bloke's gut feeling rather than on the basis of his culture.

If we listen to the UKIP supporter we'll hear an interesting analysis of why they aren't in the Tory Party. And I don't mean Douglas Carswell's slightly self-serving explanation but the typical UKIP member. This person will tell you that they don't trust politicians, that they're all the same and that government is filled with people who want to stop them doing and saying the things they want to do and say. That UKIP supporter won't have a consistent political philosophy (any more than the typical Labour or Conservative supporter does) but so far as it goes it is essentially a set of views that should fit perfectly well inside the Conservative Party. Indeed, as Cullingworth's MP demonstrates, they do fit just fine in the Party.

None of this means the Conservative Party should go back on things like gay marriage but it is to say that we need a dialogue with the people our party was set up to serve - ordinary working men and women. And this means talking about the things that really bother those people. Some of that's already in place - the economic recovery and associated jobs growth is what ordinary people want to see and the decision to focus tax cuts on the least well off is also great (although sad that we needed our Libe Dem partners to oush us there).

But we now need to look as closely at some of those cultural things - there's a lot to be gained by defending working class pleasures like gambling, a pint down the local and the full fish supper with extra bread and butter.  Instead of harking to the incessant chitter of the London media with its obsessing about nannies, the latest health fad and house prices, we should listen to a different Britain.

Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin describe the UKIP-inclined voter as being of a Britain 'left behind' which rather echoes Matthew Parris's view (although it's not meant that way, I'm sure).  Ford & Goodwin's analysis is helpful here since they noticed that the UKIP demographic isn't the core Conservative demographic - it's less well off, less well-educated and concentrated in places that have seen a steady decline over recent times regardless of the nation's economic performance. It shouldn't be a surprise to us that the Clacton seat includes the country's most deprived ward.

What should surprise us is that these places - seaside towns like Clacton, slightly crusty rural exurbia - haven't become places where Labour voting is the norm. Jaywick - that most deprived place near Clacton - has a Conservative County Councillor. This is because Labour became the party of the inner city, the champion of the politically correct and the enthusiast for "don't do that, you mustn't do that, we'll stop people doing that, that is wrong".

If the Conservative Party wants to find its soul again, it will do so by stepping back from the idea - snatched from the trendy left - of judgemental social action, from the world of nudge and control. Instead of  trying to out social engineer the left, we should start with how things are and provide for people those things that they actually want. Above all the Party could stop aping the left and begin to treat the working class and lower middle class as regular human beings rather than as a set of folk to alternately patronise and indulge as if they were some sort of meercat colony.

The Conservative Party stopped being the party of the rich in the 1990s and became a party for the middling sort working in the private sector. The party - probably for reasons of financial sustainability - has tried to chase itself back into the pockets of metropolitan wealthy sorts but perhaps (for reasons of winning elections) it should consider its original mission and address its policy-making and campaigning to improving the condition of the ordinary people. In the end that is where the soul of the Conservative Party lives - in the idea of nation, in the concept of duty and in the view that we should give people the tools to be independent, self-reliant and rooted in community.

When Matthew Parris writes about the Derbyshire Dales or about the hills of Catalonia you get a sense that he loves these places, that they and the people who live there, matter to him. What he needs to do is see that the same is true about Clacton - it might not be for him but for the folk that love the town it's more than home it's a place to be proud of. Rather than suggest Clacton is finished, we should rather say that we want to help those who love the place find a new purpose and a new future for the town. For me that is the defining characteristic of being a Conservative - that love of the ordinary, the regular and the place we live. That and a continuation of that mission - improving the lives of those ordinary people.

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The Labour Party: Patronising working people since 1900

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Chuka Umunna, a Labour Party frontbencher is continuing the champagne socialist tradition of patronising ordinary people. In this case ordinary people who (wrongly in my view - they should vote Conservative) chose to vote for UKIP:

UKIP voters are disconnected because many cannot send and receive emails, use search engines or browse the Internet, Labour’s shadow business secretary has suggested.

Chuka Umunna said that ‘a lot’ of people who voted for the party in its European elections victory were not computer literate and did not have basic online skills.

He promised that a Labour government would be ‘absolutely focused’ on connecting people who have been alienated from the wider economy.

Judging by my blog comments, email in-box and Twitter feed, UKIP folk seem only too well acquainted with the joys of the online world!

Essentially Chuka, in his £1000 suit, is telling the proles that they're too thick to understand. But then his party has been doing this for 114 years so far.

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On the need for liberalism...

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Jeremy Browne is a Liberal Democrat MP. He has written this in The Spectator and I agree with him:

An unambiguous liberalism best captures the spirit of our era – freedom and opportunity. Free people, free speech, free markets, free thinking. It is egalitarian, internationalist and healthily subversive. A new generation – both economically and socially liberal – is looking for inspiration.

The problem for Jeremy is that most of his party don't agree with him - they agree with tepid, smiling sort-of-socialists like Tim Farron. Indeed - as James Delingpole observed in the same publication - there is a gap in the market for a classical liberal party.

All the other terrain on the political map has already been fully occupied. Classical liberalism has not — and it’s about time it was. It’s the only political philosophy which acts genuinely in the interests of the ‘many, not the few’. 

On the face of it (and given the public debate between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage over the EU) is seems odd that two writers identify the same need for a genuinely liberal political party but one finds the answer in the Liberal Democrats and the other in UKIP.

The problem for James and Jeremy is that neither of the two parties in question are interested in being that real liberal party. UKIP are becoming a very different and essentially socially reactionary party, unconvinced by free trade, tempted by protectionism and distrusting of anything foreign. The libertarian moment for UKIP has passed as Nigel Farage realises that his audience are nationalist and conservative not liberal and internationalist.

For Jeremy the problem is just as stark. The rump of the Liberal Democrats will reject any more moves towards economic liberalism preferring instead to paint a smiling face on big government social democracy.  The Liberal Democrats here in Bradford oppose free schools, support rent controls and are enthusiasts for the nanny state - I cannot see them embracing Jeremy's four freedoms.

I wrote not long back about searching for that real liberalism where I asked for a party with an international focus, a preference for the local over the national and markets over planning. Above all I want a party that prioritises personal choice rather than social prescription. The market doesn't offer such a party in the UK.

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Newark and the angst of tactical voting

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Yesterday the Conservative candidate romped home in the Newark by-election. In one respect this should have been entirely predictable. A safe seat (albeit one that elected a Labour MP in 1997) shouldn't be a problem for even the occasionally creaky Tory by-election machine. But there are a couple of factors that make the outcome especially pleasing for the Party - the reason for the by-election in the first place and the populist surge that is UKIP.

I'm sure lots of people will analyse the result to death. Comment will be made about how UKIP's tornado (or is it earthquake, I get my natural disaster metaphors mixed up) turned out to be nothing more than a stiff breeze. And others will point and laugh at the Liberal Democrats. Wise observers will also ask how it was that Labour did so badly in a seat like this? Surely an opposition heading for government would be winning by-elections like this not coming a distant third?

But I'm not going to do such an analysis. I'm going to talk about tactical voting. Mostly because there's some folk saying that non-Tory residents of Newark voted Tory to keep out UKIP. Now I've never voted tactically but I recall the endless machinations on the centre-left about the practice. Indeed the Liberal Democrats made it into something of an art form completely with creatively presented bar charts (sometimes illustrated with jolly little cartoon horses) - lend us your vote Labour folk, the Lib Dem chap would say. And those previously Labour voting people would weigh up their options and vote tactically.

When Stephen Ross won the Isle of Wight for the Liberals in 1974, the Labour vote dropped from 23% of the vote (and second place) to just 11% of the vote and a poor third. This was in an election that Labour (more-or-less) won nationally. And we'll see that pattern repeated again and again in subsequent years with the main beneficiaries being the Liberal Democrats.  This became such a significant campaign that the Mirror could publish a guide to tactical voting ahead of the 2010 election:

This is a Labour paper with a long tradition of supporting Gordon Brown's party, but we are urging some of you to vote Lib Dem this time.

Below is a guide which shows how Labour and Lib Dem supporters can vote tactically in 71 key marginal seats to stop the catastrophic cuts Mr Cameron would begin if he wins the General Election.

It is perhaps ironic that the Mirror's campaign might have led in part to the circumstances that resulted in a coalition as Labour voters in Solihull and Wells prevented Conservative gains in those towns. But that's as maybe - yesterday we're told that some people who'd regularly vote Labour or Liberal Democrat chose instead to vote Conservative so as to prevent a UKIP MP being elected. For the former, the angst must have been painful. Can you imagine that, having been weaned on the utter evilness of Tories you find your pencil hovering over the Conservative candidate's name on the ballot paper! The agony!

It's different for Liberal Democrat voters - the party was built on protest, on not being the other two, on tactical considerations. This means that most Liberal Democrat voters are voting tactically - either because the local MP is such a nice chap (the Tim Farron method) or else because they hate the other party, be it Labour or Conservative, enough to want to stop them winning by voting for someone you disagree with.

In the run up to this Newark by-election, to the extent that Labour and Lib Dem folk were engaged at all, I'd read twitter comments agitatedly pondering tactical voting - for a Conservative. I suspect this is a massive breakthrough for the Conservatives - UKIP has succeeded where sleigh rides and hugging hoodies hasn't and has made the Conservatives seem decent, honourable centrist politicians. That Labour voters are even considering a tactical Tory vote is a major shift in outlook and, I suspect, very bad news for Labour in places where UKIP are strong. If stopping UKIP becomes the theme will voters plump for the sitting MPs in Thanet, Thurrock and Great Yarmouth?

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When local isn't local - Bradford's UKIP story

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This isn't a post about policies. It's not a post about whether Ukip are good, bad or the spawn of Beelzebub. Nor is it a post-mortem on this year's local council elections in Bradford. Elections that saw Labour (just) take overall control of the Council.

It's an observation on the nature of local campaigning and the exploitation - without the offer of solution - of people's worries and concerns.

In Bingley Rural and the Worth Valley the massed troops of Ukip's 'People's Army' are few in number. Judging by attendance at the count, they are no better served for activists than Conservatives or Labour. In truth there are probably fewer.

Yet they managed to deliver four different pieces of literature to some parts of Bingley Rural, similar numbers of different leaflets in Worth Valley, and have the time to fold, stuff and mail up to two personalised letters for some residents. Trust me, dear reader, I know how much time and effort this takes.

Plus of course, Ukip took advantage of the Yorkshire wide free delivery available to all political parties for the European elections.

I'm saying all this because the reality, of course, is that Ukip didn't deliver all those leaflets. They - quite legally and legitimately - paid private delivery companies to do it for them. Lots of nice, hard-working people (quite a few of them from assorted parts of Eastern Europe) earning a few quid an hour tromping along the streets delivering. I followed one such deliverer while getting out the leaflets in Cullingworth for Bingley Rural's now re-elected Cllr Ellis and my Worth Valley colleagues met similar in Oxenhope.

Nothing wrong (assuming the election expenses allowed are not exceeded) with all this of course. But think how much it costs. And compare this to how most of those wicked 'mainstream party' local candidates get their literature out. We do it the old fashioned way - either ourselves by plodding up and down dropping each leaflet in a letterbox or by asking other local residents very nicely whether they'd mind delivering a hundred or so leaflets for us. For all the criticisms of us, the reality at the local level is that our campaigning is absolutely local and dependent on the availability of volunteers to do the leg work.

If we replace legs with money (which is what Ukip did in Bingley Rural and Worth Valley) the nature of local politics changes. In the simplest of terms it stops being local. For sure, you need to have a local candidate and ten electors. But that's it - the rest is done centrally using targeted leaflets, mailings and so forth. And the message is no longer one about campaigns for a new village hall or the options for traffic calming along a dangerous stretch of highway. Instead it becomes a more general appeal based on national or international issues - a negative camapaign, anonymous and exploitative.

This might be the future of local elections especially if the numbers of activists dwindle. But, if it is that future, we will be poorer for it and will expose ourselves to the buying of elections. The good news is that, for this time at least, Ukip's attempt to buy its way into Bradford politics failed - all that effort and just one seat. Nevertheless, there will be a future attempt by Ukip - or some other party - to do likewise.

One thing I do know is that my election address next year will include the words - "written in Cullingworth, printed in Bradford and delivered to you by volunteers from your village."

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We need change but won't get it with a protest vote

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In today's Daily Telegraph, Alistair Heath explores some of the reasons for the dissatisfaction being expressed by Europe's voters. Building on a recently published book - The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State (which I haven't read so can't really comment) - Heath argues that government is overmighty, that it does too much and much of this badly, and that this stands as a barrier to economic progress. I broadly agree with Heath's analysis but am struck by the fact that the logical place for these ideas to be translated into action - centre-right political parties - are as much of a barrier as the 'progressive' parties of the centre-left.

Across Europe an odd collection of political parties will take advantage of this failure by the centre-right parties. They'll range from the studiously considered anti-Euro, Alternative für Deutschland through the slightly manic MoVimento Cinque Stelle of Italian comedian, Beppe Grillo to varying degrees of nationalist parties ending with the openly Nazi, Golden Dawn in Greece. Plus of course, our dear friends in Ukip. These are the parties of dystopia.

All of these parties adopt - as do one or two left-wing parties in Spain and Greece - a 'plague on all your houses' positioning. The endless repetition of 'LibLabCon' by Ukip supporters is intended to capture the essential sameness of centrist parties. And nowhere is this sameness most starkly displayed than in the European Parliament where the policies, outlook and programmes of the two big blocs - the EPP and Socialists - are almost impossible to untangle.

The problem is that these insurgent political parties simply do not offer any coherent vision of a better government. By way of parallel, here's a quote from Neal Stephenson, the SF writer on how dystopian fiction is cheaper:

...it is much easier and cheaper to take the existing visual environment and degrade it than it is to create a new vision of the future from whole cloth. That’s why New York keeps getting destroyed in movies: it’s relatively easy to take an iconic structure like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty and knock it over than it is to design a future environment from scratch.

What these parties do is paint the worst picture possible - a world of unwashed foreigners arriving to take our jobs, of corrupt officials and venal businessmen. If some truth exists in these pictures (and it does) then that acts to substantiate the argument - that the 'established' parties and 'mainstream' media are culpable. The problem is that, while the need to destroy is clear in these insurgent parties' agendas, what comes after isn't. There'll be grand, sweeping statements about 'getting our country back' or 'protecting jobs' but there is no coherent programme for government. And certainly no indication that the 'fourth revolution' described by Heath will be set in train by putting these parties into parliament, let alone government.

The task for centre-right parties is to understand that they must stop being 'conservative' and start being 'radical' - there's a few people in the UK's Conservative Party who recognise this but they are stifled by the majority who opt for a safe,'lowest-common-denominator' approach. And the centre-left cannot get all smug here - it offers nothing new or different, Green politics aside. There are little glimmers of a future post-fourth revolution world - the idea of localism, 'Big Society', free schools and digital government. But these haven't yet described what has to change in the wider economy or started to challenge a welfare system designed for a very different world.

Until this vision is articulated better we will be at risk of two things - voters protesting by electing the parties of dystopia and government (and millions of government employees) putting its interests before those of the people it serves. And unless the vision is articulated and right-wing politicians are brave enough to promote its positive message, we will remain trapped in a world of big government run badly and in the interests of government not the people.

We will vent our anger at the beast by voting in protest - just as many will do tomorrow across Europe. But it will change nothing. Oh, there'll be some tweaks to policies but the main message will be business as usual. Worse still the odder opinions of the parties of dystopia will make it easy to dismiss them as nutters, racists and opportunists - the process of change will be associated with the mad or the bad and the change won't happen. In a strange way, allowing people to vent their rage by electing Ukip MEPs - members of a parliament with no powers and no sovereignty - rather suits those who want to protect big, badly run government. It doesn't affect what actually happens at all but gives people the grand illusion that they've stuck it to the man!

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it is much easier and cheaper to take the existing visual environment and degrade it than it is to create a new vision of the future from whole cloth. That’s why New York keeps getting destroyed in movies: it’s relatively easy to take an iconic structure like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty and knock it over than it is to design a future environment from scratch. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/dystopian-science-fiction-is-cheaper.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29#sthash.VKRMKfJN.dpuf

it is much easier and cheaper to take the existing visual environment and degrade it than it is to create a new vision of the future from whole cloth. That’s why New York keeps getting destroyed in movies: it’s relatively easy to take an iconic structure like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty and knock it over than it is to design a future environment from scratch. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/dystopian-science-fiction-is-cheaper.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29#sthash.VKRMKfJN.dpuf

UKIP's cynical focus on immigration is handing victory in any in/out referendum to pro-Europeans

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We were discussing anti-social behaviour at a Bradford Council scrutiny meeting. I forget whether this was in the context of us reviewing policies and strategies around alcohol and drugs or merely the periodic receiving of crime statistics from West Yorkshire police. Now, my views on these matters are pretty well-known - the idea of 'anti-social behaviour' was created to provide a means to criminalise behaviour that hitherto wasn't criminal and police crime statistics are a work of fiction.

Given that this is multicultural Bradford, matters related to ethnic minorities arose - from recollection on the back of a remark from a police officer that Roma families liked to gather together outside and drink. And that this caused a problem for the, largely South Asian, communities into which they had moved. This view was endorsed by the Committee chairman - a Labour councillor - in a set of remarks littered with "they" and "these people".

Now I don't for a second think Cllr Malik meant ill by his remarks - he was echoing genuine community disgruntlement. It isn't clear whether this is about the behaviour - a community that doesn't drink (or at least not openly) might understandably be disapproving of public drinking - or about the arrival of a new, culturally-distinct group into a mono-cultural place. But the reality is that the arrival of people for whom drinking beer sat on a town centre bench or walking down the street is normal behaviour proved a shock (as an aside, on a recent visit to Cologne I was struck by how many young - and not-so-young - people could be seen drinking in public).

It's easy for me, sat in a village ten miles from inner city Bradford, to dismiss such stereotyping - to clamber manfully up onto the moral high ground and shout "you racist" at people like Cllr Malik. But does that help? Should we not rather respond to the concerns themselves - not, as some seem to want, by heavy-handed policing targeted at these obviously criminal gangs (I mean they drink in the street and walk about in family groups - definitely criminal behaviour there) but by being clear about the boundaries for behaviour. Spending a bit of time talking to them about what's allowed and what isn't allowed - and suggesting that they try to respect their neighbours.

It won't be easy managing the integration of these new communities into the weird place that is Bradford - there'll be fights, there'll be misunderstandings, there'll be cries of racism galore - but at some point in the future, just as happened with the past arrivals from Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic States, these groups will be part of the place, will be talking with Yorkshire accents and cheering on English football teams. Young men whose families are from Slovakia, from Moldova and from Romania will be seen drinking lager in curry houses and chasing girls whose Mum was from Ireland or grandfather from Pakistan.

To get there we've got to stop calling people racist at the drop of a hat, we've got to stop pretending that everyone from a place is a criminal (or indeed, not a criminal) and we've got to recognise that it's a messy process littered with ignorance, assumption and the use of political power to prefer one group above another. At the end we'll be a better place - better for Polish sausage and beer, better for Romanian wine and better for another extension to Bradford's tapestry adding these latest arrivals to Germans, Jews, Pakistanis, Poles, Indians and Africans. Plus of course the immigrants from elsewhere in these isles - from Ireland, Scotland and, in my case, London.

The European Parliament elections have seen a set of national campaigns hi-jacked by this debate - instead of a discussion about the EU, we've had a series of staged rows about immigration with loud asides alleging racism in all directions. Or rather "I'm not calling it racism because racists might not vote for me but it's a bit off colour". Perhaps the most egregious was from the Green Party who seem to think it clever or cool to blame a minor (and alleged - remember that police crime statistics are a fiction) rise in 'hate crime' on another political party.  All this does precisely nothing to help us deal with the influx of immigrants - and dear reader, they're here and they're staying.

I don't win any political friends for saying that our attitude to immigration is antediluvian but I do think that this EU election campaign, by making out that opposition to the EU is somehow about racism, hasn't helped the campaign to leave. If the only reason for getting out of the EU is that we won't have those pesky foreigners coming here any more, then we can give up on any hope of leaving - the British people aren't so intolerant. And we now know that those of us who want a free trade nation looking to sell our genius wherever it is wanted, and know that the EU stops this from happening - we'll be painted as racist authoritarians by the enthusiasts for the European project.

I recall Ted Heath telling a story from the 1976 referendum about a well-known left-wing opponent of the Common Market. This socialist grandee arrived at a televised debate to see the pro- and anti- Europe speakers, his eyes scanned across the panel and he said something like: "the camera will pan across Heath, Callaghan and a man from the CBI speaking in favour and then the other side - Powell, and Teddy Taylor. I'm not appearing with those nutters."

This sums up the problem in any referendum campaign - because UKIP has made it, for reasons of cynical political expediency, a debate about immigration plenty of people will do what that socialist grandee did and sit the campaign out. With the result that the real debate, the one about free trade, free speech and free enterprise, won't happen. And the pro-Europeans will win.

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Advice on free speech for UKIP

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If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; For you will heap burning coals on his head, And the LORD will reward you. (Proverbs 25:21/22)

One of the UKIP candidates for the 'South East of England' (easily the least coherent of the EU 'constituencies') has been moaning about the antics of Unite Against Fascism and Hope not Hate:

Janice Atkinson, as Ukip SE chairman, and MEP candidate, has raised concerns about the way the police may deal with the protestors at the Ukip Margate public meeting, on Sunday,18th May. She has formally asked the chief constable to arrest any protestors who call Ukip's supporters 'fascists', hurl other abuse or any physical assault, for 'hate crime' or under the public order act. 

Now I understand why Janice has gone off like this (presumably under instructions from her fellow SE UKIP candidate one Nigel Farage). After all it's exactly the behaviour we would expect from left-wing political parties, student unions and the like when faced with robust debate from the likes of UKIP. So the naturual response is to fight fire with fire, to take Boromir's advice and use the weapons of the enemy 'for good'.

And the response is wrong-headed - just as reporting a green activist in Cambridge for fact-checking Labour's attempt to damn UKIP's policies was stupid. Indeed if UKIP actually believe in free speech (and Nigel keeps telling us they do) then the party should be welcoming UAF and Hope not Hate into their meetings. OK there's a risk but UKIP would be better served treating UAF and its ilk with the contumely they deserve rather than playing the same anti-free speech card that these left-wing groups so love.

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UKIP. Prejudiced? Yes. Illiberal? Certainly. Racist? No. Should you vote for them? Absolutely not.

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UKIP launched some posters. As cynical political campaigning goes they are premier league. Indeed, they have achieved exactly what UKIP wanted - best captured by Dan Hodges, top grumpy, lefty cynic:

It would be wrong to call Ukip’s brand of racism subliminal. There’s nothing subliminal about giant billboards claiming 26 million “Europeans” are about to arrive on our shores in the hope of stealing the jobs of every honest, hard-working Brit.

Now I'm pretty sure there's a fair smattering of racists supporting UKIP. But then I met a couple of ex-BNP Labour supporters recently. They were pretty racist.

The reality here is that, just as has always been the case with effective political communications, there is no room for nuance or subtlety. We 'say it like it is' meaning that we strip out any qualification, remove any caveats and say that there are 26 million unemployed Europeans and they could come and get your job.

This is rubbish, has no evidence to support it, is prejudiced and reveals again that (like all our political parties these days) UKIP see illiberalism as the way to get votes. The posters are only 'racist' if you believe that wanting to reduce levels of immigration is 'racist'. I simply don't accept that argument and Hodges' secondary argument that we'd think it was racist is the posters said Asian or African is equally daft - the posters are for an election to the European Parliament so focusing on things that are, in part, a consequence of EU membership seems reasonable (even when what is said is utter twaddle).

UKIP is a prejudiced party - making sweeping judgement and generalisation about EU residents coming to work in the UK. I think they're wrong but I don't think their policy is racist.

UKIP is an illiberal party - for all the tabloid libertarianism of Farage's rhetoric, UKIP's immigration policy, response to same sex marriage and economic policies are deeply illiberal. But they are not racist.

I detest the EU. It is anti-democratic, controlling, interfering, unaccountable, lying and unjust. I will vote to leave with enthusiasm when I get the chance to do so. And I will argue the case against from an absolute belief in free trade, free speech and free enterprise. So I won't tack along with UKIP's prejudiced illiberalism. Indeed, if we want that referendum, that chance to leave, then the very last thing we should do is vote UKIP.

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Quote of the day: On London (and UKIP)

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From a quite brilliant article by Alex Massie:

And of course in many respects Farage is right. Britain, and London especially, really is an unrecognisable place these days. It’s just that most of the changes have been for the better, not the worse. There is little comparison between London 2014 and London 1974. The latter was a tired and failing place, the clapped-out capital of a clapped-out country.

Forty years later and London, remarkably, is once again one of the world’s greatest cities. A place, as it has always been, for Britons to seek their future but also a global city in which what you did before you reached these shores  - and where you came from – matters vastly less than what you do now you’re here. A city, in fact, that rejects the idea of inevitable decline. A city that has the kind of dynamic optimism we more commonly associate with the United States than with little old Britain.

We want to spread that excitement, optimism and change across the rest of the nation. And we don't achieve that by stopping people moving around, by enforcing petty language rules or by playing cynically to xenophobia by talking about being "uncomfortable" around foreigners.

Moreover, if the rest of England wants to succeed it needs to be more like London and less like the land  Nigel Farage's grumpy old bloke party wants.

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Freedom, choice, Nigel Farage and the unpleasantness of The Guardian

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The nannying fussbuckets have been in full cry what with plain packs, banning smoking on hospital grounds and the, almost certainly untrue, estimate that 600 children a day start smoking. Indeed the good thinking folk who advocate that public health is good for us are bouncing around all chipper as government slips down the slope to a controlled, constrained and, incidentally, crime-filled future of health intervention.

This brings me to an especially unpleasant piece of ad hominem in The Guardian. Don't get me wrong, I think Nigel Farage has become something of a self-parody, a sort of avatar for the pub know-all but this attack is unpleasant and incorrect in equal measure:

Nigel Farage's cigarettes are often depicted as one of the most appealing things about him. To date, his deployment of crafty or, occasionally, cheeky ciggies, while all around him conform to public health advice, has been a remarkably well-received token of his libertarian vision.

So the article begins, continuing in this vein with the author (in her left-wing nastiness) seeking to imply that not only does Nigel want us all to die but that this is the essence of 'libertarianism'. The word is used in almost every paragraph until the author realises her argument is pretty thin and decides to deepen it by invoking 'Godwin's Law'  - suggesting that Nigel is really a 'fascist' (on the basis of a couple of uncorroborated stories about his youth).

What depresses me most isn't that The Guardian is publishing an attack on Nigel Farage that is so shallow as to be almost dried up but that the basis of this attack is that he is a libertarian. Not just because - as his party's policies on immigration and gay marriage show - Nigel is anything but a 'libertarian' but because the author suggests that there is something terrible about a belief in personal choice.

And this is the divide. The Guardian and its friends (that, in this matter, include The Daily Mail) do not believe in personal choice and personal consequence. They believe - completely without evidence - that the dark evil of Big Tobacco, The Drinks Industry, The Food Industry and their accomplices in Advertising are combining to force children into smoking, drinking and eating the sort of food a Guardian reader would never allow in the house (far too common).

The truth of this is that Nigel Farage thinks you should be able to drink, eat and smoke legal products without being ostracised, taxed to the hilt or banned. However, he doesn't think people should be able to marry who they wish or that freedom includes free movement.

The Guardian, on the other hand is fine on the marrying bit but doesn't think working-class people are able to make choices about drinking smoking or eating and should be told what to do. The Guardian is also opposed to free movement - especially in Cuba.

Given a forced choice, I'd back Nigel over The Guardian. But there must be a better choice than between 'nanny knows best' social democracy and the slightly xenophobic world vision of Nigel Farage? I read and hear people saying the right things - some right, some left, some muzzy middle - about choice and freedom (that they are rights not privileges granted us by some benign authority) but see too little of this arriving in public policy. There I just see more reasons to interfere with choice and freedom, more of the man in Whitehall knowing best, more regulation, more tax.

And the result is less choice, less freedom, less opportunity and more poverty.

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“No we don’t like that. We don’t want that here. It was better before.” - The Grumpy Old Bloke Party

On a previous occasion I wrote some Conservative thoughts from somewhere elsewhere than our annual conference. It struck me that, at these conferences, a game is played to filter elements of the “agenda” – good and bad – and that these were not necessarily the big issues.

This year, as always, the media’s preference is to focus on rows and, if there are no rows, to manufacture the row. This year we are supposed to be especially excited at Nigel Farage calling everyone names – as if that is either helpful or edifying. To be fair, Farage comes across as the sort of bloke it would be great to have a beer and a bluster but as a serious politician he simply doesn’t cut the mustard.

I always felt the same about Neil Kinnock. Always seemed a decent bloke, didn’t start with any great advantages in life but made the most of the talents he had – tub-thumping rhetoric, tactical nous and a sort of public bar charisma. Kinnock also did Britain a great disservice – on one day in 1985 he saved the Labour Party.

Nigel Farage is very similar – good rhetoric, a thick skin and a personality that appeals to the saloon bar. And Farage has placed himself as the authentic voice of the Grumpy Old Bloke Party.

You know the sort. When there used to be pubs, the Grumpy Old Bloke would be leaning on the bar, pint in hand telling – and I mean telling – all and sundry about the ills of the world. The chosen subject of the Grumpy Old Bloke would vary but you can be assured that, in most cases, it would include foreigners (and the iniquity thereof), homosexuality (usually described in more derogatory terms), how no-one running anything can manage their way out of a wet paper bag and, above all, how it used to be better back in the day when there was national service, the death penalty, rationing and rickets.

Back in those days footballers were just blokes who went home to their council house on the bus, policemen wore capes and clipped naughty kids round the ear (before using said ear to drag the child back for Dad to thrash), schools actually taught children the three Rs and there weren’t TVs or computers to make us fat and lazy. Those were the days – as our Grumpy Old Bloke will tell us – when Britain Made Things and blokes worked in factories or workshops not open plan offices.

Nigel Farage has taken a single issue campaign – let’s get out from the awful European Union – and transformed UKIP into that Grumpy Old Bloke Party. Gathering together all the annoyances that our Grumpy Old Bloke has described – foreigners, the Internet, children, gays and, above all, anyone employed by the government in any form other than actually digging holes or emptying bins – Farage has moulded a successful insurgency. The Grumpy Old Blokes accompanied (assuming the fridge is clean) by their wives – no ‘partners’ in The Grumpy Old Bloke Party – flock to hear Nigel being rude about all the people they don’t like. And they love it.

UKIP – the Grumpy Old Bloke Party – has gathered together all those gripes and mitherings, taken this contradictory pot-pourri of prejudices and turned it into a campaign. I hesitate to say programme, for beyond withdrawing from the EU, UKIP has no programme, and it isn’t yet a manifesto. For sure there’s some stuff I support in there – it would be hard not to do so given I’m most of the way to being that Grumpy Old Bloke. But, in the end, the UKIP position on almost everything can be summed up as:

“No we don’t like that. We don’t want that here. It was better before.”

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