Regular Daily Telegraph pundit Peter Oborne pens a worrrying piece about the impact on the social fabric of Britain after January 1^st when Romanians and Bulgarians, as citizens of the EU, will have unrestricted access to the UK.

The new migrants will be hungry for jobs, and are bound to price some British workers out of the market. They will have the right to use our schools and NHS, which are already creaking. They will need housing, and welfare benefits.

Business leaders will love that for lowering labour costs. The middle classes will also welcome the prospect of even cheaper servants

But there is a cost to the social fabric, and it is always the poor and powerless who pay the highest price.

Precisely

Oborne talks about how Cameron, Miliband and other leading politicians need to have the courage to stand up to the EU and develop a strategy to make access far more difficult.

The moral case for such drastic action is very strong. Despite tentative signs of recovery, Britain still faces an economic emergency. Nearly one million young people, almost 20 per cent of the labour force under 25, are out of work. Some of their jobs would surely go to the new Eastern European migrants. Mr Cameron should argue that this is a situation no civilised government can tolerate.

“What’s that noise?” I hear you say.

Don’t you know? It’s cultural icon Bonnie Greer crying “Xenophobia”. It’s Tory minister Anna Soubry yelling “scaremonger”

Only Greer called the X word out to Diane James. Soubry used the S word to Nigel Farage. Both did it on BBC Question Time. But not to a highly “respected” media pundit like Oborne but to James and  Farage because they belonged to UKIP.

Oddly enough Oborne doesn’t mention UKIP at all in his piece (quelle surprise) which is strange because there is nothing original in his article….UKIP has been saying exactly the same for several years.

So, Mr Oborne repeat after me……

UKIP HAS BEEN SAYING EXACTLY THE SAME FOR SEVERAL YEARS…..

Oh dear Peter….you’d rather choke than say that wouldn’t you!!!

It is an undeniable fact that UKIP’s performance in a number of Parliamentary by elections earlier in the year and the party’s astonishing breakthrough in the May local elections have left the political class and much of the media racking their brains for some sort of explanation that conforms to their worldview. Only a few observers have dared to think the unthinkable…that people are coming to UKIP because they are tired of the carefully choreographed puppet show that passes for party politics in 21^st century Britain

The traditional party hacks pretend that if we vote for them they will strain every sinew to transform Britain. Yet, once in power, very little changes except the window dressing – because, of course, nearly three quarters of the rules and regulations that govern our lives emanate not from Westminster but from the EU in Brussels. Our energy policy, our legal system, our trading, our immigration rules  and much else are all eventually beholden to an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels

The Punch and Judy knockabout which passes for parliamentary debate is therefore mostly shadow play. In the three traditional parties the bulk of the leadership cadre has followed this pathway..university > research intern for an MP > brief stint in charity/think tank/PR > parachute into safe seat > cabinet/shadow cabinet. Most have had less than five years experience of real work outside politics/media. Yet they are quite content to tell us what we should or shouldn’t do, even how we should think.

UKIP is different. Our members live in the real world. We come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some have been active in other political parties. A surprisingly large number have never belonged to a political party at all. Yet we all have one thing in common – we are sick and tired of being patronised and intimidated by a political elite who despise our values and traditions, who promise much but rarely deliver.

If you feel like this why not join UKIP.  One thing is for certain – you will not be alone.

The Mail on Sunday commissioned Survation to poll just over 1,000 people about how they would vote if a General Election  was held this week.

The results?

LABOUR 37%

CONSERVATIVES  27%

UKIP 18%

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS  11%

(Survation interviewed 1,017 people on Friday Oct 11^th)

That’s right, as Iain Martin wrote a few days ago, despite the over hyped Godfrey Bloom “meltdown” and several subsequent weeks of non mention in the media, UKIP’s polling is holding up very respectably.

Oddly enough, the Mail “forgot” to say much about this aspect of the poll, concentrating instead on the fact that most respondents supported Adam Afriyie ‘s idea of having a referendum on leaving the EU in 2014 rather than 2017.

Since the Mail has never been at all friendly to UKIP and has consistently sought to undermine the party with sneers and innuendo  their lapse of memory is par for the course. But try to find any reference to this poll anywhere else in the media and you’ll draw a blank.

Hmmmmm…draw your own conclusions on this?

Meanwhile repeat after me

UKIP is just a flash in the pan so we’ll ignore them

UKIP is just a flash in the pan so we’ll ignore them

UKIP is just a flash in the pan so we’ll ignore them

Ah, media pundits and politicians, that must make you feel better…..

Rather bizarre few minutes on BBC Daily Politics…Amjad Bashir, UKIP’s spokesman on Small Business (a Yorkshireman with a Pakistani background) being assured by Jo Coburn and two other white people that Tory Grandee Lord Heseltine was right in saying there was a substantial “racist” element within his party.  Mr Bashir pointed out that he, unlike Heseltine and the three of them, had experienced being the target of racism but never in UKIP.  Indeed he had been warmly received when he spoke at UKIP’s recent conference and was on the party’s short list of potential MEPs.

You could see the patronising look in their eyes……they had already filed him under “Uncle Tom”

After all a bunch of white middle class media pundits always know better…

The Grand Panjandrum of the Conservative Media, James Forsyth, has officially declared UKIP and Nigel Farage dead and buried.

Tory strategists talk of a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to dealing with the threat of Ukip on their right. The carrot is more robust Tory policies on welfare, immigration and human rights. The stick is the prospect of Ed Miliband as Prime Minister.

Not only have those brilliant “strategists” discovered the magic formula for collapsing the UKIP vote, the venerable figure of Bill Cash came forth and crushed Farage at a fringe meeting with one blow

Farage was harangued by Bill Cash for ‘not acting in the national interest’ and for making it less likely that there would be a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.

According to Forsyth Farage was then barracked by Tory MPs and had to slink away a broken man. Afterwards Forsyth scuttled up to a “cabinet minister” and described the scene with great glee. Said minister was astonished that the UKIP threat had been neutralised in just a few minutes and probably thanked Forsyth from the bottom of his heart.

Really, Mr Forsyth? Other reports of that Farage/Cash incident paint it in a far less one sided light. He didn’t come as a supplicant, seeking Cash’s blessing and reacted forthrightly to his rather patronising put down.

We know that The Spectator and, to a slightly lesser extent their fellow Barclay Brothers employees at the Telegraph have been peddling this line about UKIP for quite a while. But I suspect this position is not at all based on hard facts. It is either a classic example of wishful thinking or the Forsyth is so enclosed in the Westminster bubble he has little, if any, contact with the real world.

The fact is that Cameron and his clique captured the Conservative machine thinking they could win power by being Tony Blair. It was a disastrous miscalculation.

Rather than locking in the Conservative base and – like Ronald Reagan – building out from there, creating a winning coalition around a couple of big, unifying themes, they rushed to what they thought was the middle, attacked some of their existing voters and activists, and created the space for Ukip’s rise.

However much the Tory “strategists” and their media lapdogs like Forsyth try to big up the shifts and twists of their party’s priorities those who already vote UKIP and the millions more who are moving in that direction are doing so because, if they are not Tories, they have lost faith in the political class, and, if they were they simply do not believe anything Cameron says.

The vote UKIP get Miliband scaremongering so loudly pimped by Forsyth and the “strategists” is an empty threat. Many would argue that, beyond the rhetoric, a Miliband regime would be little different from Cameron/Clegg – EU friendly, High Tax, Corporate Crony and Nanny State. But in opposition the Conservative Party, without the perks of power would collapse like a powdery fossil leaving a resurgent UKIP as the only effective alternative to rule by Big Government.

No, Mr Forsyth, UKIP is here to stay.

Labour leader Ed Miliband is eager to confront David Cameron on TV during the 2015 General Election campaign but, he claims, Cameron is scared of him.

David Cameron should stop “ducking and diving” and agree to take part in televised debates ahead of the next election, Ed Miliband said.

Cameron certainly has got good reason to be nervous of another TV Debate for in 2010 his weak performance is often credited with being the cause of the Conservatives failure to win an overall majority at that election. He had an open goal but the smooth PR man allowed himself to be Clegged.

But Milliband’s portrayal of himself as the alley cat fighter willing to take on anybody in the mean streets of TV politics is a hypocritical charade

Mr Miliband said: “I will debate [with] anybody. In the end that’s a matter for the broadcasters.

“In the end that’s a matter for the broadcasters” – and in that phrase he showed himself up to be a blustering windbag, using tough guy talk to cover up his own cowardice. Because that was his answer to someone who asked him if he would debate with Ukip’s Nigel Farage.

It’s obvious that Cameron and Miliband have made it crystal clear that they don’t want Farage, whose party’s polling now regularly parallels Clegg’s Liberal Democrats, to play any part in a TV debate. They have watched him hold his own with fellow panellists and audiences on BBC TV’s Question Time too often to fail to realise that he is a formidable debater with a message that resounds not just with disgruntled Tories but also with many Labour voters. Recent elections and polling show there is a great swathe of the working class who feel that Labour has sold them out to a metropolitan elite who despise them for their failure to grasp that mass immigration, multiculturism and the creation of a swollen class of work refusers subsidised by their taxes is the best thing since sliced bread.

Cameron and now Miliband are playing the usual establishment game of stitching us up to keep us quiet and, at present, the media is willing to play by their rules. The worn out husks of political parties that were once vibrant movements energised by mass membership are messing their pants over Ukip, as are their hangers on in the media and the lobbying “industry”

So let’s take the battle to the court of public opinion…..raise such a fuss that the media will have to sit up and take notice and shame the toadies of the political class at ITV, BBC and Channel 4 into admitting Farage into the debate.

Because we have a lever.

It’s not politics because the Grand Panjandrums of TV loath Ukip and all it stands for. But they have a higher love than politics. They worship RATINGS.

The formula is straightforward.

Cameron, Miliband, Clegg…..yawn yawn, universal narcolepsy

Cameron, Miliband, Clegg plus Farage…..ratings gold!!!

Bring it on…….

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A vote for ukip will let Labour in says Alex Wickham.

It’s a mantra that we shall be hearing more and more over the months leading up to the next general election.  It usually begins with a statement that the author is sympathetic to much of what ukip stands for and, yes, for a long time Cameron and Co were badmouthing its members but Dave has seen the error of his ways and is now firmly committed to a referendum and immigration reform and will be “watching like a hawk…etc..etc…blah blah”

So now is not the time to be rocking the boat by putting ukip candidates in every seat (especially the marginals) and thus decanting a measure of the Tory vote and letting Labour in.

However, leaving aside the obvious issues (not all the ukip vote comes from former Tory voters / on many issues the views of Cameron and Miliband are interchangeable) there is one major flaw in the Wickham argument.

If it is assumed by many conservative politicians and pundits that a substantial proportion of Tory voters are willing to “desert” to ukip at the ballot box isn’t it a sign that Cameron’s party has alienated a significant element of their core support?  Shouldn’t Wickham and his friends be asking themselves why this has happened AND WHAT THE TORY PARTY SHOULD DO ABOUT IT?

In other words it is a problem for the Tories, not for ukip

While Cameron and his clique are in charge the Tory Party will be exactly like those abusive husbands who regularly beat their wives black and blue then sob uncontrollably and promise to reform when the wife threatens to leave.

For a few days they appear to be thoughtful and caring – then their fists come into action again.

Wickham’s cri de coeur is pure, unadulterated moral blackmail. It’s the eternal siren song of the dodgy salesman. Only a fool would buy into it and, this time, many Tory voters will say they have been fooled once too often….

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Iain Martin applauded Nigel Farage’s response to Bloomgate

it was refreshing to hear a political leader not resort, in a tight spot, to the standard political phrases used by other leaders when something has gone badly wrong. The script usually runs: “I am getting on with the job… we are focussed on doing the right thing… I won’t be distracted by media tittle-tattle…”

But both Iain and Nigel are wrong when they said the “row” was a disaster. The Ukip conference was not a disaster. The Bloom incident was an unwelcome distraction but I doubt if it will have much lasting impact on the public outside the bubble of the political class and their hangers on in the media.

I am a Ukip newbie – I only joined a few months ago so the conference was my first opportunity to meet up with fellow ukippers on a large scale. The Great Hall of Central Hal, Westminster (which can hold 2000 people)  was packed.  There were no corporate  lobbyists, no consultants – just ordinary party members, quite a wide range of people, giving the lie to the stereotype peddled by a media generally hostile or demeaning. Chatting to other attendees at conference I discovered that many of them had memberships going back no further than 2012….this was their first conference and the opportunity to find out they were part of a growing political phenomenon. They, like me, listened to the presentation, put faces to names that previously were only seen on party handouts, chatted easily and eagerly between themselves – and left conference determined to work their socks off for the party

It was only at the end that we learned of the “incident” and it was patently obvious that Bloom was kebabbed. Crick and co. were on his tail like terriers on a ratting expedition because they knew Godfrey has a shortt fuse – and Crick’s weaselly face and sneering voice is perfectly programmed to rile any target. This is why he is such a brilliant investigative reporter. Some reporters disarm their subject with charm in order to reveal the inner man or woman. Crick makes you lose your temper and then it all comes out. He has you on tape and, with some clever cutting and editing the whole event is choreographed to over emphasise the subjects loss of control, red face and angry outburst and to highlight Crick’s feigned innocence and “I only asked” sensitivity.

Bloom is in actual fact  intelligent and well informed and he  has a good track record on issues like pensions and military procurement and is not afraid to think outside the box. Unfortunately there has also been a constant trail of foolish and unsettling incidents of public behaviour that have gradually convinced a substantial number of people inside Ukip that he has become something of a PR liability.

He is clearly a well liked figure in the party but Farage’s angry denunciation of his conduct and decision to suspend the whip was greeted with strong support at conference. As he and other Ukip veterans had pointed out earlier the political class has been thrown into confusion by the rise of Ukip and its continued presence in the polls as a credible fourth (or even third) party – and they want to lash out.

The fact is the political/cultural media just do not know how to deal with a movement made up of political outsiders and whose leaders are not part of the North London dinner party circuit. The “Conservative” media in particular at the Telegraph, Mail and Spectator are highly confused. To them politics is about lobby tittle tattle and gossip in the up market enclaves of Notting Hill, spaces currently uninhabited by Ukip so  they are left with spreading lies and half truths fed to them by the posh, nice but dim student interns from Tory HQ.

Yes  there will be more kebabbing – so our response needs to be honest but also thoughtful, measured and….civilised  Above all remember, when they start trying to kebab you it means they are frightened of you.

It’s really a badge of honour.

Today I am at UKIP’s annual conference  here in London. Earlier this week I attened my first local branch meeting. Yet I am very much a Johnny-come-lately because, although for several years I have sympathised with much that UKIP stands for, I regarded the party as a fringe group which could never win enough votes outside EU elections to even gain a sniff of power – because power is the essence of any political movement, the ability to influence governance either by involvement or pressure.

UKIP also appeared to me to be all about campaigning rather than doing – playing in the haystack rather than trying to find the needle.

Then, as well, I perceived it as a one trick pony, the logical extension of the Referendum Party, using all its energies to advocate an in/out EU plebiscite – then dissolving into dust once one had been held, whatever the result.

This year’s elections changed my mind as well, I suspect, the minds of many others. Diane James achievement in Eastleigh, in particular, initiated a seismic shift in attitude in the minds of those sympathetic to UKIP – and its enemies.

UKIP, its ,members and supporters, is now taken seriously by the political class and their media followers – and that must be a tough call because our political/media establishment is as tightly knit in its symbiotic relationship as any feudal aristocracy or mafia brotherhood. About a thousand families, centred mainly in North London/Notting Hill/Richmond, dominate this nexus, absorbing individual  newcomers and spitting out the has-beens

But now they are faced with a whole group of “outsiders”, most of whom have either never fitted in to the nexus or have existed outside its metropolitan, international worldview.

We lack “connections”. We don’t know anyone from the Guardian or the Telegraph. We know little of Quangos, lobbyists or PR consultants. Our views are not fashionable or politically correct. Most of us probably don’t take exotic holidays or mix with millionaires or celebrities or lobbyists.

But we are not donkeys. We work in a whole variety of jobs. We come from a wide range of educational backgrounds – but we don’t have the contacts or the relatives inside the nexus.

Until now we could be safely ignored, even during elections, for, like sheep we could be herded through certain gates because we bought the myth that the mainstream parties were in competition with each other.

But they are not. They make up a cartel of shifty shadowy figures who, despite their labels, believe in Big Government, high taxes and rule by special interest groups. They are ashamed of our traditional British values and desire to force us into alternative patterns of behaviour for what they perceive to be “our own good”.

However we of the silent majority can challenge the ruling political cartel because, with the emergence of UKIP, we have a political party which has demonstrated the ability to tune with the feelings, convictions and concerns of ordinary folk outside the special interest groups that dominate the cartel……and also, crucially, gain the votes….no wonder they are nervous.

Notice how in the course of this post the pronoun shift from I to us. It marks my own pride in now being just a minor cog in the wheel of a political party that has a golden opportunity to transform our country.

Full credit to those stalwarts who, unlike me, nailed their colours to UKIP’s mast while other fainthearts, like myself, were unwilling to step forward.

You were right – I was wrong.

So remember…never, ever, underestimate the little guy…because one day he could give you a painful surprise…

Awaiting his trial David Cameron’s former right hand man and dining companion Andy Coulson is still watching the PM’s back over the growing support for UKIP. He has suggested that Farage and his party can easily be defenestrated via youtube with…

An attack video demolishing UKIP’s dark side, focusing on Farage’s “less pleasant and stranger utterances”

No doubt the posh twentysomething graduate interns at Tory HQ are already working on it so, wishing as always to be helpful to those callow youths, may I suggest this as an example of an obvious Darth Farage vote loser

Surely ordinary folk wouldn’t touch UKIP with a bargepole after watching it?

On second thoughts…..