Ukip. What is it? And, why should we care?

At first sight I thought that UKIP wanted the independence from England ...

The nature of the purpose of that political movement is at least peculiar:

UK is independent. Period. As all the EU members. I'm not aware that EU countries have transferred their sovereignty to the Union.

When did this happen?

So ... Independent from what?

 

They adopt a fake sense of nostalgia, coupling it with a Daily Mail-type "they want to straighten our bananas". The English have bought into it because of a general anti-immigration, rather than any relevant Europhobing

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It's a fairly standard far-right agenda for a time of difficult economic circumstances - worried people who don't really understand what's been going on are looking for someone to blame, and looking for a quick fix, so the far right conveniently appears with a smiling face and a 'people power' message, and demonstrates with dubious propaganda that it's all the fault of 'them foreigners'. Sort out 'them foreigners' and 'the enemy within' and it will all instantly get better. Same thing is happening all over Europe, of course, not just in the UK.

 

Choosing a neo-liberal party, given neo-liberalism delivered the financial crisis, is particularly annoying mind you. I couldn't even be bothered to smile at the libdem vote...

 

All I've read all morning long are posts telling of how the "established" politicians throughout Europe are in a dither about this. They clearly see it as a threat to their established fiefdoms and don't know what to do about it.

Anyone going to guess what will happen when the delegates take their seats?

 

In many cases more a threat to decency, humanity and the well being of the population as a whole than anything to do with any supposed 'established fiefdoms'. The 'established' politicians tend to know a little about politics and ideology generally, and they can see these parties for what they really are. The fact that people are voting for such parties again, given what happened last time such parties gained significant power, should be seen as a threat by any decent human being.

 

Very few people who have voted UKIP have any notion of their policies beyond the main two policy manifestations of it 'all being the fault of them foreigners'. The party keeps them as quiet as they possibly can, and most people aren't looking beyond their simplistic rhetoric and smiley faces.

 

But after these brilliant election results, I can't see the UK being a member five years from now. The countdown to Britain being a free and independent country running its own affairs again has started.

 

The only place that the Greens have more representation than Ukip is Greenpeace.

But left-wingers like you never do have much grasp of reality. Are you really so ignorant as to the results of the local and EUSSR elections?

 

Yeah. Ukip are so hated that they've just become the first party other than Labour or the Tories to win a UK election since 1906.

I mean, if they managed to win an election despite being hated just imagine what they could do if they were popular?

By the way, of the four biggest parties - Tory, Liebour, LibDumbs and Ukip - Ukip are the only one whose membership is growing. The other three are quickly hemorrhaging members.

No, he didn't. He said, rightly, that people would feel uncomfortable having Romanian immigrants living next door to them. And as someone who lives on a street blighted by Romanian immigrants I can say that Farage is, once again, right.

The metropolitan liberal left disagree, though, and see Farage as being racist because, for them, Romanian immigration doesn't mean cashpoint crime and muggings like it does to the ordinary man in the street. It means nannies and cleaners. The lefties who accuse Ukip of being "racists" just have no idea of ordinary life in Britain.

 

What a hypocritical thing to say when your avatar is one of the most famous nationalists in history.

Why is Scottish (and Welsh) nationalism okay and "progressive" but British nationalism is "racist" and regressive?

 

Personally I'm not a fan of any nationalism. However, Welsh and Scot nationalism certainly differs from the insularity that vomits from England

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Count the councillors

 

The party name UKIP is contradictionary. The party wants independence, so why put UK in front of Independence Party in the party name?
UKIP is part of the kingdom. Every political party currently is, because not a single politician will explain honestly what is really going on in this world, what politics really is (a revolutionary weapon) and does; it creates movements and causes motion in the population all the time (it organizes societies)
Politics wasn't invented by common people, but by rulers that try to dominate, to rule over the population.

You should 'care' about UKIP, but in another way. never oppose a new party aka new movement, because UKIP has caused another new movement in the population. When you oppose and try to fight a party politically you end up in another new movement, a contra movement.

 

Because they want independence from the EU so it's not contradictory.

No. Politics is a general concept which has been around since time immemorial.

I don't think that it has caused a new movement

Not really there aren't any parties which have a core ideology of staying within the EU.

 

Reading these posts really makes me sick (for most of them that is) I have to wonder if the people accusing UKIP of being racist etc have really read their policies on immigration, please do find anywhere where it states that UKIP want to close the borders to all immigration permanently. The policy clearly states that they want a ban on immigration for five years in order to sort out the mess created by successive Labor and Conservative governments when that is done immigration will start again .. however on the same premise as used by Australia .. strange we never hear of the 'racist' immigration policy of that country.

Something else that the UKIP bashers have in common they quote policies from 2010, which, if anyone would care to look, actually states that they are not current policy. UKIP will release their election policies around the same time as the other parties, in the late summer/Autumn, why not reserve the judgment until that time.

What pro-Euro's and UKIP bashers will also fail to mention is that NO ONE in the UK has EVER voted to be part of the EEC, the only vote we have had was in 1975 and that was to join the Common Market NOT the EEC. The Common Market was purely an economic treaty between nations, not a blank piece of paper to do as they wished and even the then PM, Edward Heath, admitted in later interviews that he and his party lied to the British public in order to get a 'Yes' vote.

It costs the UK £33 million a DAY (net) to be part of the EEC, even based on official figures released by the Treasury (which are based purely on central government ‘official’ transactions relating to the EU budget and don’t include direct transactions involving households ) the net cost to the UK is £24 million a day.

The UK cannot negotiate it's own free-trade agreements, even with countries who are part of the Commonwealth (some of which have growing economies) we surrendered that on January 1st 1973, Ah, say the Euro-enthusiasts, but that's precisely why we need the EU. On our own, they tell us, we would be little more than supplicants. But as part of a the-member bloc, we can look China in the eye. Oh really? Tell that to the Swiss who, signed their own FTA with Beijing.The Chinese were evidently happy to deal with a country of 8 million people, perhaps because Switzerland did not carry the EU's protectionist hang-ups into the talks. Indeed, the only other European state with which the Chinese have signed a commercial treaty is also outside the EU: Iceland. That's right, Iceland, whose population is half of one per cent of ours. Britain, left to its free-trading instincts, would surely have signed an FTA with China years ago – probably including financial services, where there are colossal opportunities.

Then we have the much pro-Euro valued European arrest warrant where any member country can issue one and other countries have no choice but to arrest and extradite the alleged 'criminal' even IF the alleged crime committed is not a crime in their own country, the UK courts have no power to examine the case and deny the extradition, neither do we have the power to deport radical extremists such as Abu Qatada without clearance from the EU court.

I find it disingenuous of pro-euro's to quote UKIP policies that are not current while ignoring the cost to the UK of our EEC membership.

 

The problem with the leftists is that they seem to think that border control is about making the UK a homogeneously white nation which isn't possible anyway.
The issue of immigration is an economic problem not an ideological one.

Well Labour got us into this mess as well as fouled up other things. The bizarre thing is that so many people still want to vote Labour which to me seems like a vote with a basis of cynicism in view of the current government.

I still think that UKIP has to mature before they get my vote in the national election as well as come up with a detailed and comprehensive policy list.
But I'm happy that they did so well in the EU parliament which I voted for.

Actually we are getting closer to China in other ways both financially and militarily.
I think we can look China in the eye and shake their hand without the EU .

They seem to think that Europe as a united economy is a good thing which to be frank isn't possible because we all do things differently and of course our needs also differ.
The other argument revolves around lasting peace; it's actually thanks to British distance from Europe that has prevented it from being ruled by tyrants from Napoleon to WWII and we've even guaranteed European nations from conquest by their neighbours but that was a while ago.

 

It would be stupidity to be openly racist (though the leader gave the game away somewhat with his comments about Romanians). Its about harnessing the immigration card to push a right wing agenda, thus using nationalism to blinker folk from the stupidity of the party's position.

British attitudes over Europe is dominated by apathy. Let's not pretend otherwise.

Deliberate misrepresentation. You'd need to undertake a cost-benefit analysis, factoring in aspects such as trade gains (you can confirm that through analysis into 'trade creation', a basic aspect of analysis into preferential trade agreements)

It doesn't need to. WTO membership sets the conditions.

I find it disingenuous that folk pretend this is about Europe when its just Little Englander attitudes

 

Funny how people bandy about the term 'little Englander' without having the slightest knowledge of what it means. The rank ignorance is laughable.
I would have thought any English Leftist wouod be happy to be caled a little Englander but so devoid of any historical knowledge are they that they do not realise it refers to supporters of the Liberal party who were against having an Empire and wanted to Grant Home rule to Scotland, Ireland and Wales hence beimg content with only 'little England'

 

Funny how folk think English vocab doesn't change! You'd have a point if it was a historical error, such as misinterpretation of the luddites. However, you don't.

 

And of course no other party leader or MP says ANYTHING that is politically incorrect do they?

and that is the problem, sleep walking into train crash is no excuse.

So you are saying that the treasury figures are wrong are you, and it certainly would be good to see that cost-benefit analysis, problem is there has never been an official one done since we joined the Common Market, one wonders why.

Four unofficial ones have been conducted by :-

Institute of Directors
Economics Committee of of the US Senate
Institute of Economic Affairs
Open Europe

The first three concluded that that Britain would be marginally better off out, the fourth that we'd be marginally better off in.

Even the original cost-benefit analysis conducted in 1960, in 1967 and in 1970, coinciding with Britain's three membership bids. Each time, HMG concluded that there would be a small negative impact: that the loss of Commonwealth trade and the inflationary effects of higher food prices would slightly outweigh the benefits of preferential exports to the EEC. Ministers took the view that the diplomatic gains would outweigh the economic costs; and, in a pattern that has continued to this day, they convinced themselves that, once inside, Britain could 'use her influence' to make the EU less protectionist and less regulated. Just how well has that worked?

The Common Agricultural Policy obliges us to subsidise our farmers' Continental competitors, raising food prices and penalising the poor; the Common Fisheries Policy has caused an ecological catastrophe in British waters; the EU's social and employment rules make us uncompetitive; the Common External Tariff penalises Britain, with its global trade patterns, more than any other member state; EU directives have struck at whole industries - art dealers, slaughtermen, cheese-makers, herbalists, temping agencies, fund managers; on the EU's own figures, the costs of regulation outweigh the benefits of the single market by five to one (€600 billion versus €120 billion).

Why did we join the Common Market in the first place? What was the knock-down argument used by Heath, Jenkins and the rest? Do you remember? The Commonwealth, they told us, was finished. We needed to be part of an alternative market, one that would grow.

At the time, the claim seemed sound enough. Between 1945 and 1973, Western Europe enjoyed spectacular growth, bouncing back from the artificial low of the Second World War. Britain and her Commonwealth, by contrast, were exhausted and indebted. Much of our postwar decline was caused by successive governments eroding their debts through inflation, unaware of, or perhaps untroubled by, the damage they were doing to our national competitiveness and productivity.

We can now see that our timing could hardly have been worse. We joined the EEC in 1973. Europe's Wirschaftswunder came to an abrupt end with the oil shock of 1974, and never properly got going again. The expansion came instead in the Commonwealth markets from which Britain had just stood aside.

Look at the linked graphs, compiled by World Economics. The first two contrast the growth rates of the EU and the Commonwealth since Britain joined in 1973 (in all cases, the UK is excluded from the figures). Ouch. The third and fourth, though, are the real kickers. They contrast the share of world GDP of the Commonwealth with, respectively, the original members of the EEC and the current members of the eurozone:

http://www.worldeconomics.com/paper...?PaperID=0E53B963-BCE5-4BA1-9CAB-333CEDAAB048

It sets the conditions, not who we can and cannot negotiate FTA's with.

The EU has exclusive competence to negotiate trade and investment agreements with countries outside the Union; and it is a customs union with a common external tariff on imported goods.

Ah yes the standard ill informed attack designed to demean those who don't agree with the pro-euro's

 

He let the mask slip somewhat. Is he a racist? I don't think so. However, he's pandering to racism for political gain.

Hogwash! It is neo-liberalism that has destroyed well-being. And what delivered that? Right wing economics. And what corrupts UKIP thinking further? Right wing economics. Whining about the economic dangers of Europe and then voting for a party that supports destabilising economic policies will never be an exercise in consistency!

I'm stating the obvious: deliberate misinformation is being followed. Rather than undertake an economic analysis, there is a deliberate attempt to make bogus accountancy claims.

Present an economic study. Make sure it covers the obvious elements, such as 'trade creation' effects. If you can't please be honest.

I've always been anti-Europe. My reasoning? Because preferential trade agreements weaken multilateralism. The likes of the EU have been damaging to the development round of multilateralism, required to ensure the full gains of trade are exploited (and thereby reducing absolute poverty and therefore labour mobility). However, I can't be dishonest about the nature of the Little Englander 'Europhobes'.

 

And what about those Scots and Welsh who voted Ukip? Are they "Little Englanders" as well for each voting in a Ukip MEP?

What about all those French and other people around the EU who voted anti-EU parties? Are they all "Little Englanders" too for wishing their countries were free and independent?

What about all those Scots who vote for SNP and wish for Scotland to be "independent" (SNP aren't a true nationalist party because they wish Scotland to remain in the EU)? I'm assuming they're also "Little Englanders".

 

A "Little Englander" is now a term (one which I think is disgusting, because it is used all too readily to label any Englishman who just happens to be patriotic towards England) that the Left applies to any Englishman who is proud of his country and wants what's best for it. Any such person is a "Little Englander".

There is no such "Little Scotlander" or "Little Welsher", because, as we know, Scottish and Welsh nationalism are seen as "progessive" and are positively encouraged. It's just English, or British, nationalism that the liberal Establishment view as being "racist".

 

That is a generalization, one used by the media to tar all with a very big brush and TBH just shows the desperate measures being used.

I find no respite in the spend, spend attitude of the current and past governments when that attitude places us in the position we have been in for some time now. Both the Cons & Labs are guilty of allowing the financial services to create too much private credit and money and while I find the austerity measures hard they are necessary .. did anyone want to see the UK end up like Greece.

You tell me exactly what are the economic advantages of being part of the EEU, advantages that relate directly to the UK, because I cannot see many at all.

Already given you four unofficial cost-benefit analysis from four separate bodies, are they all guilty of deliberate misinformation?

and if I do will you then ask for some other study, already given your four cost-benefit studies, now you want an economic study .. what next?

Again the generalization and assumption that people who support UKIP are "Little Englanders", my reasoning for not wanting to be part of the EEU is that bigger is not always better (look at Switzerland) , most of what the EEU has done has been an abstract disaster for the UK, from the decimation of fishing to the loss of sovereignty. The EU has become a bully in the playground and thankfully more and more countries are beginning to see that and doing something about it. The EU requires fundamental changes to its very core before I will accept it is better for the UK or any other country for that matter.

The EU should be nothing more than a trade block of nations seeking the best for all the member countries .. not trying to create a super state along the USA model, it won't work.

 

He made a racist remark. Bit of a mistake of course! However, when you court BNP supporters, the damage isn't going to be so huge.

Zero response to what I said! Right wing economics delivered neo-liberal instability. In terms of a Marxist analysis of that instability, we'd focus on the hegemony of the financial class. However, to truly understand the problems we have to factor in government policy (or lack of, given the believe in market correction) and labour problems (given the further divorce of productivity and wages)

You haven't provided one credible economic study. If you think otherwise, please point to the calculation of trade creation effects.

The trouble with Europhobes is that, as they are often right wing, they just don't understand basic economics! We both know that you cannot refer to what I've asked for.

I've gone further than that. I've also referred to basic ignorance amongst the voters. Many of them do not know that they are voting for a right wing party with zero economic credibility

It was always more than just a trading block. Its origins can be traced, for example, to US efforts to politically stabilise the regime (particularly given USSR threat).

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That you think English is a dead, rather than evolving, language says a lot about your stance

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Ignorant people live in Scotland and Wales? Yep! Good point well made!