Stephen Glover in the Mail today

Anyone who has the remotest sympathy for the abused underdog will have felt for Nigel Farage as the major parties and much of the media have lined up to trash him.

How true….as Peter Oborne pointed out in a characteristically trenchant article a few days ago

Much of the media has obediently been doing the work of the three main parties. The BBC’s normally admirable political editor, Nick Robinson, interviewed Mr Farage in the tones one might employ for a convicted international war criminal.

Agreed – though maybe Stephen could have signposted this before the election? Anyway better late than never’

But then Stephen goes one hundred percent porkie pie…

 Most newspapers of Left and Right (though not the Mail) have depicted Ukip as an extremist party inhabited by fruitcakes, crooks or dangerous lunatics.

ROTFLMAO!!!

Did Paul Dacre or Lord Rothermere tell you to slip those brackets in, Stephen? Because the Mail, just as it did before the local elections of 2013, has been the pack leader in publishing and constantly recycling both the smearing titbits thrown to them by the industrious zero hours interns at Tory HQ and garnering unsubstantiated quotes from former colleagues of Farage who clearly had an axe to grind……leading to that surreal moment when the Mail had to settle out of court for spreading a false story about Mrs Farage.

Pull the other one, Stephen…..

The most surreal Dan Hodges moment of the 2014 election…in Croydon a white “anti racist” zealot labels a black UKIP member “Racist Scum”

Isabel Hardman at the Telegraph owned Spectator Coffee House blog on the UKIP street event in Croydon (I doubt if the fragrant Ms H would ever go further south of the river than a Clapham dinner party – it looks as if she “commented”…)

Ukip’s we’re-not-racist ethnic minority carnival in Croydon always looked as though it was going to provide plenty of material for sketchwriters and critics. It was another attempt by the party to showcase its non-white members and candidates, with local candidate Winston McKenzie on hand too.

The event did not go as planned, apparently, so UKIP could learn lessons from the Tories

The Conservatives have become increasingly control-freakish about their big campaign days, excluding the press in favour of selected broadcasters so that the party can stage manage every moment as much as it possibly can.

The Tory party “stage manages every moment as much as it possibly can”……which is exactly why it has become less like a political movement and more like a corporate PR show where the audience is as much part of the stage managed presentation as BGT. UKIP is a living, vibrant force of nature driven by an enthusiastic membership – sometimes shambolic, always passionate – the equivalent spirit of a village fete. This might be the reason that it retains a certain measure of popularity.

Secondly, and sadly, Ms Hardman has had months during which she could have visited Croydon and met up with Winston McKenzie and other black Croydonians and asked them why they supported UKIP…you know, Ms H, do an actual bit of shoeleather journalism. But no, you would much rather pop down there and mock Mr McKenzie and his friends……indeed there is almost a hint of a sub text here, y’know, coconuts, Uncle Toms, stoogesw…real black men and women or Sikhs or Hindus or Moslems would never support UKIP

A shallow, cheap and patronising piece of hackery….

That the Telegraph, Mail and other papers had reached an agreement with Tory HQ that they would be fed the details of UKIP candidates making questionable/oddball statements (usually via Twitter/Facebook) in return for ignoring  or downplaying similar remarks/actions from the candidates of other parties is blindingly obvious. Low level, zero contract Tory interns provided a similar service during the run up to the 2013 local elections.

The process is straightforward enough.

The names of these UKIP members are  inserted multiple times in successive articles about UKIP in order to give the impression that a) they are legion and b) to imply they are just the tip of an iceberg.

The next stage, however, is the most important. The writer must create an atmosphere of frenetic mass disapproval as if the whole nation in pubs, shops offices and homes puts aside all other topics in order to declare their shock/horror, or, as the Mail often puts it, UKIP is once again “engulfed in controversy”

Ukip is taking a pounding, but will it make a difference? The polls give the party first place on Thursday in the Euros, but anyone reading across the papers would wonder how that can be. The main parties must wish there was a bit more time to go before polling day, as they reckon the tide has further to turn ( Benedict Brogan)

Similarly the pundits will big up someone who “fearlessly” tells Farage (or any other Ukipper) that he/she is  “Racist – Xenophobic – Fascist – Fearmongering – homophobic – Islamophobic etc etc” and applaud them for “stopping the UKIP bandwagon in its tracks” or even engineering a “car crash”. LBC’s resident pseudo socialist, the middle class public school educated 40 something white blowhard James O’Brien is the latest in a list that includes Tory politicians Eric Pickle and Anna Soubry.

Just think of all the trouble that could have been saved in the Thirties if LBC’s James O’Brien had been around to interview European party leaders. It was O’Brien, you’ll remember, who cross-examined Nigel Farage on air last week and derailed the Ukip leader’s election campaign ahead of Thursday’s vote (Iain Martin)

Over egging the pudding, Mr Martin? In Telegraph anti UKIP world fantasy reigns supreme….a mouthy talk radio host is transformed into James the Hitler Killer…

Thus is created the all important Narrative, the implication that many ordinary folk are so easily swayed by “bigotry” or “anger” that their unsophisticated minds simply cannot know what is best for them and they need to be guided back onto the proper path by those wiser souls who have true insight.

Trouble is it appears to be only those “wiser souls” in the political and media metropolitan bubble who are “engulfed” in the “car crash” “pounding” that they have created from their own imaginations. The ordinary voters do not appear to be taking any notice of the media’s anti UKIP fenzy at all…

 I wonder why?

“It’s OK Mum, he promised me an IN-OUT, but only in 2017 when it’s legal.”

H/T Guido Fawkes

The pundits at the Telegraph and Spectator went into overdrive with the latest Guardian/ICM poll and the changes since last month. Reading between the lines (and remember that Brogan and Hardman especially have a hot line to Tory HQ) the Tories are quietly confident that it’s all in the bag, all part of the master plan that will see them coasting to victory in 2015

Support for Labour drops six points as Tories take lead in latest ICM poll. Labour support falls to 31%, Conservatives rise one point to 33%, Lib Dems are up one on 13% and Ukip rises four to 15%

Only one problem – Tory support has virtually stayed the same, as has the Lib Dems. One party. Labour, shows a decline greater than the margin of error.  One party shows an improvement greater than the margin of error – UKIP.

Wonder where those UKIP votes are coming from?

Meet Laura Wilkes

Laura Wilkes is Head of Policy and Research at the New Local Government Network. Laura joined NLGN in November 2013 after a number of years at the Local Government Information Unit, where she led policy programmes on Community Budgets, local government finance, economic development and citizen coproduction. Prior to this, Laura worked in local government and is a graduate from the National Graduate Development Programme.

Yeah yeah she’s a classic Think Tank Labour drone so was so astonished at seeing a Pakistani chap leafletting for UKIP that she forgot all protocols and tweeted about it because surely in her little world UKIP IS RAAAAAAAACISTTTTT.

Anyway she soon realised she had committed the cardinal leftist sin of humanising UKIP – so she deleted the tweet.

Unfortunately or her the eagle eyed scourge of all right on middle class liberal/left trolls LittleBlueDr had nailed her…

https://twitter.com/LittleBlueDr/status/465533086785363968

No wonder our ruling class just don’t get UKIP….

A couple of days ago Isabel Hardman at The Spectator’s Coffee House blog briefly let her mask slip when she cavorted with glee over the selection of Roger Helmer as the UKIP candidate for the forthcoming Newark by election

His selection as the party’s candidate for the Newark by-election is a gift for CCHQ, which now needs a teaspoon rather than a spade to dig out awkward comments the MEP has made.

The Speccie , like The Telegraph (both owned by the rather secretive Barclay brothers) has, since the beginning of 2013, consistently sought to undermine UKIP either by constantly recycling and repeating the remarks of a handful of oddball members and, between the lines, implying that they reflect the opinions of the party’s ever increasing membership.

It’s the oldest trick in the book – guilt by association. Strangely, however, they never appear to use reports of the antics of many of our current set of MPs to push that implication to its logical conclusion – that Parliament is full of fraudsters, drunkards, gropers and liars.

Hardman is comparatively new to the Westminster media village so her lack of nuance could be put down to experience. Not so her DT colleague Benedict Brogan. He has been reporting on politics for many years and, until recently, could be relied upon to provide an insightful and perceptive analysis of the political scene.

Over the last few months, however, his comments about UKIP have followed the DT/Speccie line of recycled put downs and sneering asides, arousing suspicions that, like Hardman, he is working quite closely with Tory HQ.

But even a worm can sometimes turn and it looks as if Mr Brogan might well have decided to re-assert his independence

Will Mr Helmer make a difference? He’ll certainly attract publicity for the Ukip campaign. He’s up against the typically vanilla candidates chosen by the main parties……………………………Yes, Newark is ripe territory for the Ukip insurgency. It’s the ideal place to give Dave a bloody nose. The Tories can’t make too much of Mr Helmer’s behaviour, because his most egregious remarks were made when he was a Tory, and the party did nothing about them then.

Perhaps BB had a preview of this report in The Guardian

Ukip’s Newark byelection candidate Roger Helmer was greeted like a celebrity as he launched his campaign to be the party’s first MP – in a sign his controversial comments about rape and homosexuality appear to have had little effect on the electorate.

The 70-year-old was cheered by market traders as he visited the Nottinghamshire seat, which was vacated by former Tory Patrick Mercer after a lobbying scandal.

Helmer will be hoping to replicate and build on Ukip’s previous byelection gains, which has come from a tiny proportion of the vote to take second place in five of the past seven contests

It’s rather strange, isn’t it, that a paper which would appear to be diametrically opposed to most, if not all, of UKIP’s political positions, should actually go to Newark and report on Helmer’s campaign and treat him fairly in an interview when the Telegraph/Speccie are content to rely on their own self generated caricatures.

Cameron’s Palace Guard, perhaps?

What is it with the Telegraph and UKIP? You would think that an anti EU, small government, low tax party standing firmly for stricter immigration controls yet free of the racist, corporate state baggage of the BNP would merit a certain degree of sympathy from a broadsheet that has always been the standard bearer of middle class conservative values. Yet over the last few months the resident political “pundits” have unleashed a constant stream of bile directed at the party in general and its leader, Nigel Farage, in particular.

Is it possible that there is a daily conference with Messrs Brogan, Wigmore, Kirkup, Hodges, Martin and Young in which they giggle like crazy as they encourage each other to deliver as much vitriol, innuendo and half truths about UKIP & Farage as possible? Surely that thought is just a flight of fancy…..surely….

Yesterday Iain Martin posted a piece on the storm battering David Cameron and Maria Miller, his Minister of Culture, over her expenses claims. A scandal the Tories need like a hole in the head, he claimed – and then proceeded to use it as a hook for an attack on UKIP.

After months of the DT over egging sundry UKIP “scandals” Martin feared that Farage might seek to capitalise on the Miller/Cameron affair. This is so unfair, said he, because UKIP scandals are ignored….UKIP is Teflon. Martin conveniently “forgets” that the so called UKIP “scandals” have been bigged up, in fact,  by the DT (via CCHQ?) in the face of UKIP’s post Eastleigh (and sustained) polling performance.

I wonder why?

Then James Kirkup (fresh from “proving” that Clegg actually “won” the EU debate with Farage) needing to fill up a column with a few hundred words but clearly suffering from Writer’s Block, decides he might as well follow the DT editorial line and sneer at Farage through the prism of “Game of Thrones”

So, just when you think the DT “pundits” cannot sink any lower in their systematic attempts to undermine UKIP – and those who either support him or, at the least, feel he has something significant to say – the bar is pushed further down and more drivel is spread around.

Memo to the DT pundits. UKIP is not just Nigel Farage….it has 34,000 members, of whom 20,000 have joined within the last two years or so. Astonishingly most Ukippers don’t slavishly agree with Farage over everything he does or says….we tend to be ornery souls with a fairly cynical view of human nature. But, as with Mrs Thatcher, we are more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt because he is going in the same direction as us

Would it be too much to ask of the DT pundits that we would appreciate a modicum of balance and some evidence that they have used some shoe leather and left Westminster/Notting Hill/Islington to actually talk with a range of UKIP members?

Once upon a time that would have been called “journalism”…..

Probably the most significant outcome of the Farage/Clegg debate was not so much the verbal fencing of the discussion itself but the final piece of evidence proving, if any further proof were needed that, with regard to UKIP most of the media establishment is as out of touch with the views of the man and woman on the street as the political class which claims to represent them.

I’m not talking about the liberal/left ramparts of The Guardian or Daily Mirror – at least the bias in those quarters is so blatant that one can immediately discount much of their “reporting” or “comment”. But the barrage of sneering anti UKIP bile filling the pages of the Telegraph and Mail, both supposedly rightward leaning and Eurosceptic, has certainly puzzled many of us in UKIP.

Many have suggested that the Telegraph/Mail have merely been pimping Tory HQ propaganda as part of a campaign to buttress Cameron. Yet the Mail is often scathing about Dave so I cannot see the Tory HQ line as being the whole story.

My feeling is that, though “journalists” work for media outlets that have varying political stances, the bulk of them are all part of the London media “village” and intermingle professionally and socially not just with each other but with the political class. All of them see politics as a political game where the terms of the debate are exclusively set by the metropolitan elite and the role of the electorate is to be as passive as a TV audience, maybe cheering or booing on cue, but otherwise happy to leave decisions about the important issues to the “professionals” who know best.

What these people hate about UKIP is that it is a party of political outsiders with no connection to the metropolitan elite. No political “big beast” SDP type defections have brought the party into the dinner party conversations in North London. They hasten to characterise UKIP members, supporters and potential voters as simple minded, racist, ignorant etc but they have made no attempt to get to know UKIP members or treat their views seriously.

The result? They constantly get blindsided…

During and immediately after the debate, Westminster observers appeared to come down on the side of Clegg – or that both men had performed competently. Initially, Lib Dem cheerleaders apparently satisfied with the performance of their leader and several “gaffes” from Farage, who they pointed out appeared to denigrate the European car industry and claimed the EU had “blood on its hands” over Ukraine.

“The truth is it was a score draw,” said Andrew Mitchell, the senior Conservative backbencher and former chief whip.

However, the mood shifted to visible disappointment in the Clegg camp as the first opinion polls showed Farage was ahead by 57% to 36%.

Asked whether the loss mattered, one Lib Dem aide said philosophically: “In a snap poll, populist arguments may well win over. The real win tonight has been that we wanted this debate and talked directly to the voters.”

Let’s face it – the media hacks were all caught with their trousers down

Backstage, Westminster’s hack-pack was necking cheap vino and Pret sandwiches after carrying out a spectacular volte face. Initially ‘the spin room’ had called the duel for Clegg, on both style and substance. But, as news of the Sun/YouGov poll filtered through to the scribblers, headlines were rewritten and awkward tweets deleted. Soon, only the BBC was left flying the Clegg flag, with the help of Danny Alexander and Tim Farron.

The moral of the story? Simples… On every Mail snide anti UKIP piece, or Tim Stanley/Dan Hodges ill informed rant, or snooty dinner party Spectator put down keep on hammering the comments with the phrases that wind them up…..LibLabCon, Tory HQ agitprop, out-of-touch media luvvies….believe me those remarks really get under their collective skin.

The media expects to be courted. Until the age of the internet there was no other option if you wished to be heard. But today is different. Journalists are ranked with estate agents, car salesmen and pimps. They don’t need to be courted – when they lie and distort and misreport they need to be exposed and attacked from every angle.