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 Police Federation and several senior officers do not appear to be emerging from the Andrew Mitchell “Plebgate” affair in a particularly savoury light. Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph has launched a blistering attack on the Police over this and other issues. He talks of lies, cover ups and weak leadership

It is time to acknowledge that the police force faces a crisis of such gravity that it can only be solved by setting up a Royal Commission.

The Independent Police complaints Commission (IPCC) has criticised three Chief Constables for not taking any action over quite well substantiated accusations that three officers had lied about a discussion they had with Andrew Mitchell.

Three police officers have been criticised for apparently giving a false account of a meeting with the former cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell, which the MP had secretly recorded.

What makes this affair so troubling for the police service is less that individual officers may have lied – although that is clearly toxic in itself – but the suggestion that when entrusted with investigating wrong-doing, chief constables did not take appropriate action.

Now David Cameron and Theresa May have made statements deploring what appears to be a stitch up of Mitchell orchestrated by several police officers.

But it appears to me that Cameron is shedding crocodile tears. His behaviour during the whole episode has been rather half hearted. He asked a senior mandarin to investigate the whole incident but the subsequent probe was desultory and rather amateurish. Cameron knew of the CCTV evidence (subsequently used by Channel4 News to undermine the police case) yet did not choose to take it seriously.

As a comment on this post pointed out

Hmmm strange how it took that hotbed of left wing subversion C4news to go carefully through the CCTV footage, and those two well known lefties Jon Snow and Michael Crick to present it to the public and show that Mitchell was being stitched up. It does make you wonder why the Cabinet office and the PM in particular didn’t take the time to do exactly the same thing: I’m sure they must have been aware that the whole area was monitored by CCTV.

Something smells about this whole affair and it’s just not emanating from the boys in blue – it’s also coming out of Number 10 Downing Street

“Let’s have a debate about immigration” is politics speak for “I am about to fob you off with meaningless blather and pretend that something can be done.”

Always beware of politicians who call for a “debate” about an issue. What they really mean is a series of carefully orchestrated statements from key figures within the Westminster bubble. The one thing they do not want to hear about is anything from the great unwashed who live outside that bubble.

Which is why  Yvette Cooper deserves some praise for blurting out the truth…

 Labour’s Yvette Cooper surely had a point today when she said that politicians of all sorts should be more candid about how much – and how little – they can really do on immigration.

She said: “It’s also about being honest with people about what impact you can have and what practical measures there can be, rather than getting into a kind of arms race of rhetoric on immigration, which doesn’t help anybody because they just don’t believe it.”

• You see there is absolutely nothing that any British government can do about immigrants from within the EU because we have unilaterally surrendered control of our own borders to Brussels.
• There is also nothing we can do about immigrants who arrive here either legally or illegally from outside the EU because we have unilaterally acknowledged the European Court of Human Rights as superior to British courts of law.

So when messrs Cameron, Clegg and Miliband give us “straight talk” about immigration they are simply telling lies – unless they also advocate leaving the EU…

…..and they would never ever advocate that, would they?

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…..

Believe me, this is why the BBC, the Guardian and the legions of the liberal left are fanning the flames of faux outrage over the Daily Mail. They want all the press to reflect only the “approved” world view of the taxpayer funded BBC.

God help us if that comes to pass….

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.

UK Labour Party leader Ed Miliband is angry because the Daily Mail drew attention to his father’s Marxist views. I think Benedict Brogan hits the nail on the head…

But the key point surely is that Marxism hated – hates – Britain. It hates our institutions, our economic model, our democracy, our independent media and our freedoms. And before the Marxists and their chums lost the argument, it wasn’t just some academic debate played out around the dining tables in well-heeled north London neighbourhoods: it was deadly serious. Yes, there is something distasteful about trashing a dead man’s reputation, and by the same token something noble about the way Mr Miliband and other politicians have risen to his defence. But Ralph Miliband, however well intentioned, was on the side of those who wanted to turn Britain into something dreadful. It is a testament to how comprehensive the defeat of Marxism has proved to be that the Cold War is all but forgotten, and our politics are repulsed by its harsh truths.

The UK Spectator and its Coffee House Blog has always regarded itself as the intellectual power house of the Conservative Party. Of course I don’t mean the Conservative Party in the sense of the grassroots members in the cities and suburbs and market towns who do all the electoral donkey work delivering leaflets across muddy fields or damp council estates.

I mean the pudgy fingered public school lads and lasses who hover around Westminster buttering up Tory MPs and schmoozing with spotty Telegraph hacks hoping to either parachute into a safe seat or gaining a comment spot on the Telegraph….or both.

So, everything you read at the Speccie is viewed through the prism of Westminster gossip and is about as relevant to the politics of real people as the tittle tattle of the Imperial court in Moscow in January 1917

Therefore the Speccie school kids are unable to comprehend the nature of UKIP. They appear not to have had a presence at UKIP’s recent conference and, in general have made no attempt to get out and about the country engaging with the party’s membership.

So we get Isabel Hardman, in a feeble attempt to encapsulate the essence of UKIP digging up an obscure anecdote from a bit of Lib Dem soul searching after they squeaked narrowly past UKIP’s Diane James at Eastleigh

Or Sebastian Payne trying to pimp that relic of failed Maastricht rebellion Bill Cash as the hammer of Farage and producing a hacked e mail from the UKIP Press office as a mortal blow to the party’s credibility.

Then, finally, the genius Payne uncovers William “Syria” Hague’s Master Plan to pulverise UKIP into granules of dust

• Remind every voter that Cameron has offered a referendum on a renegotiated EU Treaty
• A vote for UKIP will let in Labour
• Errrmmm..that’s it, folks

….and they get paid for this????

The best riposte?

Who will listen to Hague? Honestly he is a man who has swallowed all his own beliefs for ‘power’ and control by the EU, Foreign Office and the USA. Yet another man who broke his promise on the EU to the people. 
Vote Conservative get broken promises and no in/out referendum. Just a ‘Do you agree with the changes we have made within the EU!! Mark my words.

Amen to that, my friend.

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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