How Ukip became the incredible disappearing party

The establishment drive to marginalise Ukip has been under way for three months now, and it has having its effect. You will not read anything about Ukip in your newspapers unless it is a negative story — some half-witted candidate’s office fraudulently claiming expenses, or a disappointed member explaining that they’re all vile people and so on. The papers have, by and large, cottoned on to the fact that Nigel Farage saying something a little gamey about race is not, actually, a negative story. Whenever the Ukip leader mused in moderate terms that he found it uncomfortable to sit on a train where he was the only person speaking English, the London media turned paroxysms of outrage and the Ukip vote dutifully went up a little. Such comments find a bit of resonance, away from the bien pensants — but the media has now grasped this point, so you won’t be reading that sort of thing any more.

Indeed, you won’t be reading much about Farage, unless he is caught having sex with a goat (preferably a European goat, a federalist Brussels goat) or with his hand in some till. The media has gathered too that it is Farage and Farage alone who attracts the voters, and so while he is guaranteed to give good copy, this luxury will be put on hold until all the votes are counted.

The broadcast media has already stuck the boot in, twice, in a way which would be inconceivable with any party to the left of Ukip. First there was Channel 4’s hilarious drama-doc about what would happen if Ukip won a majority in May (which of course it cannot conceivably do). Financial ruin, riots in the street and half of Europe being invaded by Isis was Channel 4’s considered and intelligent analysis of any possible Ukip victory. The broadcaster’s loathing of Ukip bled through in every scene. There was of course no follow-up — an investigation as to what might happen if the staggeringly witless, almost mentally infirm, Greens won a majority. Presumably because Channel 4 think that it would be absolutely marvellous if they did so.

Just as even-handed was the BBC’s hour of gleeful spite, Meet the Ukippers, which revealed that some party members are thick and others doolally, and therefore quite unlike ordinary members of any other political party. I look forward to Meet the Labourites — a documentary set in a certain east London constituency — perhaps while they are stuffing the ballot boxes, intimidating voters and carrying out the occasional bit of ad hoc female genital mutilation.

Then there are the debates, the election debates. Again, Ukip has been carved up. There will be one debate between seven party leaders, which nobody will watch because such a format is close to meaningless. Nobody south of Gretna Green wants to hear the views of that bizarrely arrogant munchkin Nicola Sturgeon. Nobody east of Monmouth has heard of, or has any interest in, Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru. I suppose it will be good for a laugh to watch Natalie Bennett, of the Green party, gabbling antipodean inanities and failing to remember even the important bits of her party’s manifesto commitments. In fact the Greens are likely to have no MPs whatsoever after the next election — even the country’s most achingly hip electorate, right-on Brighton, has had enough of them. But the Prime Minister does not have to take part in debates (and with the exception of Gordon Brown, all prime ministers previously have refused to take part in any at all), and feels himself entitled to call the shots. It is the connivance of the media that grates a little, frankly.

I don’t blame David Cameron for attempting (successfully) to neutralise the biggest threat to his vote, although he may have slightly miscalculated. While it is true that over half of Ukip’s vote comes from ‘Conservative voters’, a substantial proportion of those voters were only Conservative at the last election, and had previously voted Labour or Lib Dem. In other words, it is not the regular Tory voters who Farage has won over, but the distrait floaters. My suspicion is that Ukip has taken just about all that it can from the Tory vote and that its most profitable target now is northern Labour voters. That is why Ukip held its last party conference in Doncaster. In the north it tends to be Labour voters, and in particular older Labour voters, who switch to Ukip and therefore the mantra — ‘Go to bed with Nigel, wake up with Ed’ — does not really hold north of the Severn-Trent divide. There are plenty of seats in the north where a few months ago Ukip might have been odds on to win — and even if they didn’t win, would damage the Labour vote sufficiently to let the Tories sneak through on the blind side.

But, as I say, that was a few months ago. The Ukip vote has contracted and contracted. The Liberal Democrats, for whom rumours of a wipeout were hugely overstated, will end up with about 25 seats from roughly half the Ukip vote, which hovers at about 14 per cent, the consequence of a quite deliberate policy to starve them of publicity unless it is very, very bad publicity. And of course, this approach works. At the time of that Ukip conference in autumn 2014 — and the subsequent by-election wins for Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless — it was at least possible to imagine the party gaining a dozen MPs, and maybe more. Not now. Party insiders reckon between one and four is a more feasible prediction, and my guess is just two — Carswell and Farage himself. And even that number might diminish during an election campaign in which Ukip is rendered invisible and voters see the spectre of Ed Miliband hovering before the door of No. 10.

TaggedBBC, Cameron, Channel 4, Douglas Carswell, general election, Greens, Miliband, Nigel Farage, UKIP

Show comments

Rbeastlondon

They are still holding up in the polls. And the issues that they highlight, the EU, immigration levels etc, are not going away which is why the MSM cannot marginalise them.

I think Labour will lose votes in any town that has a ‘grooming’/ mass child rape problem. And quite right, too.
- willshome
  
  What, like Westminster?
  - Oddsbods
    
    Hopefully.
  - Peter Cawthron
    
    Ten of thousands of Muslims – Pakistanis, Afghani, Turkish, Somalian – serially gang rape tens of thousands of almost entirely White girls, some as young as 11, a total of a million or more times a year in the UK.
    
    What does the UK media do? Persist with a fantasy sold to them by a few grifters – who have been selling the same story since it was concocted in West End drinking clubs in the 80s – about Tory peers and MPs murdering and abusing children in a “paedophile ring”.
    
    The Great Distraction, of course, is Savile. The public will salivate over Jimmy’s mortuary tales in a way that they do not when presented with the reality of Muslim gangs and their racially-motivated religiously-sanctioned mass child rape.
    - GraveDave
      
      at does the UK media do? Persist with a fantasy sold to them by a few grifters – who have been selling the same story since it was concocted in West End drinking clubs in the 80s – about Tory peers and MPs murdering and abusing children in a “paedophile ring”.
      
      Oh no – the white public school boys would never do anything like that! It’s absolutely unthinkable.
      - Peter Cawthron
        
        I’ve never been a public school boy but I’m sure many of them experiment consensually with the same sex.
        
        I’m also sure many Parliamentarians enjoy consensual albeit often commercial sex with men younger than themselves. Indeed the younger the better seems to be the motto of Thorpe, Oaten, Hughes and Smith. There seems to be something in your comments when it comes to the Lib Dhimmis.
        
        But you are another apologistic shill for Muslim paedophiles. Muslims who are racially motivated and religiously sanctioned – for them the rape of a kafir child is not a rape. And, unlike the White public school boys, the Muslims coerce and threaten their victims, grooming children with false affection and bribing them with drugs, alcohol and mobile ‘phones.
        
        There will be around 600 White girls born in the UK today and nearly all of them will be alive in 2100. If they have remained in the UK they will be Third Class citizens and will be of a ethnic group comprising 15% or less of the UK population. Perhaps like Prof. Steve Jones you welcome
        this melting pot/ethnic cleansing? Your daughters and grand-daughters may not agree.
      - GraveDave
        
        Check out my other postings. I just don’t find it has to some left wing/anti Tory conspiracy to make us believe that a group of white elites would be capable of mass abusing minors. The whole thing stinks and needs to be looked into once and for all. Wouldn’t you want that?
      - Peter Cawthron
        
        To be honest I think it’s a waste of time to investigate the fantastic allegations against a mostly dead “white elite”. You are being seduced by a classic moral panic that is fuelled jointly by a) an economic malaise that sees many on lower incomes increasingly distrustful of the
        toffs/establishment/elite, and b) third rate “journalists”, many nothing more than bedroom bloggers, who have been seduced by the 30 year old tales peddled by the grifters to each generation of naive new journos since the 80s. We live in more transparent times where such things could not happen again so there is nothing to be gained by pursuing the dead at vast public expense.
        
        We need to be pursuing the Muslims and asking ourselves if their totalitarian hate-filled ideology is in anyway compatible with the West. Your talk of “white elites” shows that you are, possibly accidentally, some kind of Islamopaedo apologist – very much in the style of James O’Brien, I would suggest.
      - Floriana Green
        
        I spent a long time in North African (muslim) countries. Having witnessed a lot of terrible things and unacceptable behaviour my conclusion is; THERE IS NO ROOM FOR ISLAM IN BRITAIN. MY ADVICE VOTE UKIP. ALL MY FAMILY WILL BE DO SO.
      - Pacificweather
        
        I was following your argument but now I am confused. You appear to be saying the crime is not child abuse but being Muslim. It wastes our time to investigate the white elite but not Muslims? Do you really mean that?
      - Yvon & Barry Stuart-Hargreaves
        
        Tripe.
      - Miss Floribunda Rose
        
        The indigenous British will apparently be a minority by 2066. Please do not ask what an “indigenous” British person is, or I shall have a fit.
      - Pacificweather
        
        What is an indigenous British person? Sit down and have a nice cup of tea before answering.
      - pp22pp
        
        What is an indigenous Australian? J#cka#ss.
      - Pacificweather
        
        An indigenous Australian is alive unlike all indigenous Tasmanians who are dead.
      - pp22pp
        
        1). You didn’t answer the question. If aboriginals can be indigenous, so can British people.
        2). There are plenty of mixed-race Tasmanian Aboriginals around. Only the pure-bloods are extinct. Same is almost true of the Maori. I thought that was supposed to be a good thing.
      - Pacificweather
        
        The aboriginal Tasmanians had lived there for 30,000 years before Europeans arrived. All the Tasmanians were killed or died of disease or starvation.
        
        In the late 1800s when mixed-race Tasmanians, the children of those stolen Tasmanian women and girls, asked for their land back, the government sent them to Cape Barren Island, where they lived until 1951 beyond the reach of the law. From the 1920s to 1970s the government took their children from them to teach them white ways.
        
        Since the 1990s there have been some land given back and apologies made.
        
        The story is similar for Australia but without the extinction.
      - pp22pp
        
        But if mixed race Tasmanians exist, they are not extinct. Are you white? If you are and being white is so bad, isn’t it time you extinguished yourself? And the bulk of my ancestors have lived in Britain since the Ice Age. That makes me more indigenous to Britain than a tangata whenua is to New Zealand. Are only white people bad? Should Russia and Iran demand compensation from the Mongols. Should Italy and Ukraine demand compensation from the Moslems for the millions who were taken as slaves?
        
        I don’t regard racism as the greatest sin. Betraying your own is worse. You do regard racism as the greatest sin and yet you are fanatically racist against whites.
        
        Added to that, for every Tasmanian killed, many more died of TB. The same thing happened to the Ainu of Northern Japan, who are today close to extinction.
      - Pacificweather
        
        Do you feel guilty? Do you feel personally responsible? That is taking empathy too far. You don’t need to justify your existence in Australia by pretending you are indigenous. You aren’t – get over it. You have no idea how long your ancestors lived in Britain? Why are you so insecure that you need to pretend you know. Be content with who you are as a member of the human race and stop trying to create some sort of false hierarchy of humans with you at the top.
      - pp22pp
        
        I don’t even live in Australia and never have. Human history is violent and tribes that lose their homelands are screwed. Genetics can tell you a lot. I am indigenous to Britain. Ethnic groups do vary by IQ and I have long since accepted that Ashkenazi Jews have a higher average IQ than my own people. That is no reason why we should not defend our interests.
      - Pacificweather
        
        Many Chinese are better at maths than you. Many Californians are better surfers than you. Aboriginal Australians invented a stick that would return to them before any one else in the world. An Indian invented the concept of zero. What are you trying to tell me? What interests need defending? Being a poor surfer who is bad at maths and aerodynamics?
      - pp22pp
        
        We had an IQ profile that wasn’t the best in the world, but was pretty good. Soon, it will resemble the world’s biggest hell holes. Much of urban Britain already does. We did fine before we were “enriched”. The bits of Britain that have not been “enriched” are usually (not always) nicer than those that have been. This is our country and our national home. I do not care how good Chinese are at math. They have China. This is ours.
      - Pacificweather
        
        You worry about the strangest things. You need a holiday. Time to visit Australia as you have never been. Or, as you like a bit of fantasy, a trip to Disneyland. Nothing like a holiday to cheer you up. Puts things back in perspective.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        A person whose ancestors go back several generations in the land of his or her birth, and who is culturally and linguistically assimilated.
        
        That wasn’t so hard, was it?
      - Pacificweather
        
        Well, thankfully, that gets rid of Peter Hain and possibly Michael (choo choo) Portillo. Does my Irish grandfather count or my Italian Jewish grandmother?
      - Neil Saunders
        
        I don’t know. Were they settled here? Did they speak English fluently? Did they feel a sense of loyalty to England in particular or Britain in general that overrode any other national attachments?
      - Pacificweather
        
        You tell me. It’s your definition. I never met them.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        In which case, why mention them?
      - Pacificweather
        
        I was trying to clarify and quantify your extremely vague definition. It seems it’s so vague it baffles you. Does that mean that if your grandparents died before you were born you cannot be an indigenous occupant of these isles because you cannot tell how they acted or thought or new how well they spoke English?
      - Neil Saunders
        
        My definition was as precise as the facts allow. If you don’t know whether your grandparents met any of the criteria that I proposed for being regarded as indigenous, or, at any rate assimilated, how am I or anyone else supposed to know? And yet you offer them as evidence. I do know for a fact that my own grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents were native English speakers. (Earlier ancestors, from Essex and East Anglia, Hampshire and Cheshire presumably also fulfilled this condition, although you may be surprised to learn that I did not know them personally.)
      - Pacificweather
        
        I am trying to establish your cut off date for indigenous.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        It doesn’t work like that. It’s far more a matter of affinity than chronology, although obviously there is a fairly strong correlation between the two.
        
        You’re essentially trying to divert me into quantifying something that is, for all practical purposes, unquantifiable.
      - Pacificweather
        
        I am glad you said that. It did seem at first that you thought it was quantifiable. You can have one picture in your head and I can have one in mine and we have nothing to argue about. My chronological element may be slightly shorter than yours. I once went to a discussion with Tariq Ali and he struck me, by the end of the discussion, as a quintessential Englishman who just happened to be born in Pakistan. He was about 65 at the time. It is, as you say, more a matter of affinity than chronology.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        Also the fact that Pakistan once formed part of Imperial India, and the British cultural influence remains strong there.
      - Pacificweather
        
        Very true. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak I strongly recommend it for a thought provoking evening. You may not agree with everything (or anything) he says but you won’t be disappointed.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        I’ve been familiar with Tariq Ali as a public figure for decades. I find myself agreeing with a great deal of what he says, and he strikes me as a man of integrity. (My brother protested with him against the Vietnam War in Grosvenor Square in 1968.)
        
        However, he is probably representative of nobody but himself, as far as the outlook of Pakistanis in general is concerned. Otherwise, he represents only a highly-educated, Anglicised elite. If all Pakistanis were like Tariq Ali there would not only be no problem; their presence in the UK would be a huge net benefit to the nation.
      - Pacificweather
        
        I had a thought about ‘ linguistically assimilated’. I had a call with a BT call centre about a year ago and I was speaking to a Scotsman with a very difficult accent. I asked him to adjust his microphone because I could not hear him properly. He hung up on me. I phoned back, waited the usual 10 minutes to be put through to a human being and this time it was a woman with an Indian accent. When I asked her to adjust her microphone not only did she do so but made extra effort to speak as clearly as possible. Ok, so I am a deaf old git but who was the most culturally and linguistically assimilated? I can clearly understand Neil Oliver and Alex Salmond so it isn’t a prejudice against Scotsmen.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        No. It’s just a pointless, diversionary anecdote with no real bearing upon the issue.
      - Pacificweather
        
        Next to your ‘scientific’ definition of indigenous it sits quite comfortably. I am sure you are capable of a more accurate definition. Possibly even one we can both agree on. What about the Welsh and the Cornish. They have been in these islands longer than most. I could possibly accept the Saxons but the Normans by their own admission are invaders.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        You set the bar preposterously high if you exclude the Normans on the grounds that they were “invaders”. So were the Saxons (the basic stock of the modern English), and so were the Celts (who replaced the Bell-Beaker people). But they all invaded in pre-modern times, when the Westphalian concept of the nation-state didn’t exist; furthermore, they were all Northern European peoples, with close cultural ties. I have already given a perfectly adequate set of criteria for the concept, and your sneer-quotes (“scientific”) are just another rhetorical device by someone who not only fails to understand an argument when it is given, but cannot form one adequately.
      - Pacificweather
        
        I have been trying to get you to clarify but you can only resort to bombast. If you were honest you would admit it is irrelevant where people come from and who is indigenous and who is not. What you are trying to say, I suggest, is something we can both agree on that if someone, no matter where they were born, wants to be British and is prepared to make the effort to be British then that person is as British as someone from Saxe Coburg and Gotha.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        Bombast is in the eye of the beholder, and any unclarity in the discussion does not emanate from me.
        
        I have no idea what you mean by “as British as someone from Saxe Coburg and Gotha”; I suspect that you are confusing Saxe Coburg and Gotha (the name of our ruling dynasty before it changed to “WIndsor”) with Anglo-Saxons (and Jutes), who came from northern Germany and southern Denmark.
        
        It is precisely because I am honest that I am not prepared to admit something that I do not believe to be true, viz. “it is irrelevant where people came from and who is indigenous and who is not.”
        On the contrary, it is highly relevant to questions of national identity, cultural continuity and social cohesion.
        
          A racially and culturally homogeneous society can assimilate small amounts of immigration over long periods of time, because such immigrants can and must assimilate or else leave the country. A nation cannot assimilate large numbers of immigrants over short periods of time for reasons which I would hope are too obvious to have to spell out.
        
        However, here are some of them: 1) large numbers of immigrants are likely to cluster together into ghettos which inevitably reproduce, in microcosm, the society from which they have emigrated, and therefore never completely integrate with the host society, if at all; when their numbers become sufficiently large they demand changes to the laws and customs of the host society to fit their own; 3) when they become a sizeable minority, or an actual majority, they believe themselves to have a legitimate territorial claim (as happened, for example, in Kosovo).
        
        Lastly, it should be obvious that it is far easier to assimilate immigrants who are closer ethnically and culturally to the majority of the host population; for example, an ethnic Swede should be far easier to integrate into Britain than a Somali or a Bangladeshi.
      - Pacificweather
        
        You are happy to accept Prince Albert as indigenous?
      - Neil Saunders
        
        No, but intermarriage between nations has always occurred, especially among crowned heads.
      - Paul_Wesson
        
        Cyril Smith was a Liberal MP having been a Labour Lord Mayor when he was at the height of his abusing of vulnerable boys. In Lambeth it looks like Labour could be embroiled in a murder case. One of the lists online names a prominent Sinn Fein member. Perversion is not party based, that’s why a Lib Dem PPC stood down yesterday to defend himself against allegations of serious sexual assaults.
    - hugh_36
      
      I’m sure around 2,700 rapes a day would have been noticed by someone, apart from yourself, of course.
      - Peter Cawthron
        
        Let’s do some simple arithmetic with Rotherham*:
        
        1,400 girls
        abused for 2 years on average
        raped 75 times a year
        by an average of 5 men
        
        That’s 1,050,000 rapes in one town. Move on to Derby, Rochdale, Oxford, Peterborough, Bristol….
        
        Police are outside schools in Northern towns and cities at going home time to stop Asian men collecting White children.
        
        Of course, it’ll never happen to one of your relatives…..
        
        * And recall the author of the Rotherham report said a) 1,400 was a conservative estimate, b) that abuse was going on before the period of the report and continues after the period of the report, and c) that the same levels of abuse would be happening in all Northern cities.
      - Northerner1001
        
        Labour will hold Rotherham, General election never about just one issue but carry on in your delusion Peter
      - Neil Saunders
        
        One issue? As single issues go, the systematic rape of young girls is a pretty big one by any sane standards, but the turkeys-voting-for-Christmas tribalists of the Labour North obviously don’t think it’s a very important one.
      - Northerner1001
        
        ahem i never said it wasn’t a big issue or not important but it certainly isn’t the only big issue
      - Neil Saunders
        
        You described it as “just one issue”, which hardly suggests that you consider it very important.
      - Paul_Wesson
        
        No. 42 police are being investigated in Rotherham having failed to take action over many years and even having friendly relationships with the perpetrators of the crimes. That’s in today’s Guardian so kit must be true.
    - rtj1211
      
      Just what collateral will you put against your thesis that white establishment politicians, diplomats, spies and police officers were not involved in child abuse over 50 years??
      
      I wouldn’t put valuable things like your testicles up if i were you……
    - Mr B J Mann
      
      Strangely, I find it very difficult to get the following facts published in media on-line comments threads about the Savile Case.
      
      Just before it blew up I listened to an entirely unrelated medical ethics documentary in which, in relation to the ethics problem being discussed, a medical professional advised that 50% of people recovering from anaesthesia experience hallucinations so lifelike they cannot distinguish them from reality.
      
      And that in half of those cases the hallucinations are of a sexual nature.
      
      Something, strangely, I’ve never heard mentioned in relation to Savile and his alleged hospital activities.
      
      So, if a touch-feely, flamboyant, extrovert pop star (remember he invented the disco, was a leading radio DJ and TV presenter, mixed with the stars on and off screen, and was probably on many teenagers and pre-teen bedroom walls) spends most of his free time on surgical wards, regardless of whether or not he was a paedo, how many people would “think” he’d “abused” them?
      
      As far as I’m aware, thousands of nurses, and other hospital workers, had heard rumours about his alleged activities, but only one had witnessed any.
      
      But that was when she was a patient!
      
      Similarly, with “institutions”, though probably even in the 60’s they were supposedly only inhabited by victims rather than criminals, a large proportion, if not most of the residents were either there for criminality at worst, or because they were “vulnerable” for one reason or another, at best.
      
      Many people queue up at police stations to admit to serial murders when the outcome, if they’re believed, is imprisonment.
      
      How many people are likely to jump on a where there’s blame there’s a claim bandwagon?
      
      We know that people do even when they weren’t in the institution at the same time as the person they are claiming against!
      
      And do the people who insist that the victim mustn’t just be listened to, but believed, say the same about the poor, innocent victims of alien abduction and extra-terrestrial abuse?!
      
      Non of which is to say that Savile is innocent.
      
      But if he is guilty, where is the proof?
      
      And the “fact” that a buxom Sixties beauty queen admitted to sleeping with him in her twenties to further her career isn’t proof he’s an abuser, never mind a paedo.
      
      And what does the “fact” that a convicted fraudster “witnessed” him going into his bedroom with a girl who MIGHT have been under-age where they MAY have had sex prove except that fraudsters might be people who may tell lies for financial gain?
      
      Then there’s the woman who was allegedly raped as an adult by an associate of Savile’s, so obviously a whole ring of paedo’s, not just one.
      
      Strange that the crime was apparently committed in a store room at the Beeb between studios where she could hear the audience laughing at the shows being recorded.
      
      Wouldn’t they have been soundproofed?
      
      I don’t know?
      
      Can anyone enlighten me?!
  - Dan O’Connor
    
    Is that the same Left ideological multiculti EULibLabCon Westminister that orchestrated the ” rub the face of the native British in diversity ” as a way to gerrymander import a new client voting block from Shariaistan and is it the same Westminster and the institutions they govern, that aided and abetted in the rape, torture, slave trade jihad of tens of thousands of white children because it would be ” racist ” not to do so ?
    Westminster is the false opposite of the anti-White racial self-hating Left.
  - Rbeastlondon
    
    Just got it!
- Marcus
  
  No such luck I am afraid: the goons will keep voting Labour like they always do. Just look at Gillian Dufffy.
- greggf
  
  “They are still holding up in the polls.”
  
  True, and although ‘the establishment would just like Nigel Farage to go away’ the voter will determine their future.
  Any survey of the polls will show how difficult it may be for any party or coalition of parties to govern after May 7th. The old order is faced with being held to ransom by Alex Salmond, a lame-duck Conservative leader and a parliament controlled by mercenary nationalists – just imagine if Sinn Fein also decide it’s an opportunity too good to miss……!
  
  The days of the establishment are numbered.
pp22pp

You get on a train and you are left thinking: “Who else but UKIP?”
- willshome
  
  I ride on trains regularly and that thought has never crossed my mind – except when some loud-mouthed bigot starts airing his views.
  - pp22pp
    
    Rotherham doesn’t happen to your children – yet. Or wouldn’t you care? And any UKIP bigot who mouthed off would be arrested – in the land of the free!
  - MikeF
    
    You mean a socialist spouting about ‘multi-culturalism’ – I agree they really never cease to be irritating.
  - Ted Jones
    
    Sometimes I don’t think England deserves to survive when we have such servile cowards like you there. I’m baffled that I once thought the way you did.
    - EDLNEWS
      
      It will survive because it is strong and ukip will be told to sling their hook
      - Miss Floribunda Rose
        
        Non-whites are more racist than whites. Blacks and Asians never have relationships with each other. Why?
  - Dave R
    
    why does your avatar thingy say NHS on it?
- Molly NooNar
  
  I could see that happening for the Green party due to the extortionate price of travelling by rail. But then again we had the East Coast Mainline operating a profit for the government, high customer satisfaction and they … yes, you guessed it, privatised it. Who are those Tories kidding? They sell off Royal Mail at bargain basement prices to their hedgefund mates, bank shares which we could sell at the top of the market instead of now so that Osborne can use the money to bribe pensioners, sold the Eurostar, the East Coast Mainline and still they only meet 50% of their deficit target, what a joke! Kick these Tories out!
  - Alexsandr
    
    methinks you need to understand just where money goes on railways. Ask yourself how much of your inter city ticket goes to the government as a franchise premium. And look how the nationalised network rail spends vast sums of cash.
    And then think how all the new trains have been financed and kept up to specification. That will be investment by the ROSCOS. Would the government have the money to do that work or would our trains age and get tatty. And ROSCOS have been replacing DC traction motors and control systems with AC ones which are more efficient and allow regeneration so using less energy.
- EDLNEWS
  
  That would be because you are a racist i would have thought
  - pp22pp
    
    Pathological smugness. Self-interest is not a sin. Putting our own interests first is not a sin. Becoming a minority in our own land is madness. Screaming waycist is the reaction of a fool.
- hugh_36
  
  Imagine all those nasty foreigners, glad I can stick to my Bentley
  - pp22pp
    
    If you think it’s good or necessary that we become minority in our own land then you a self-satisfied, complacent #####. Ask any Jew or Armenian. Then, look at the Balkans or the Caucasus or Latin America with its barrios and favelas. Grandstanding sanctimony is not a substitute for thought.
    
    I know, I know. It’s all about you and how wonderful you are (or think you are)
    - hugh_36
      
      87% of the population was white British at the last census. There is no chance what so ever of you becoming a minority in your own country
      - pp22pp
        
        Not so long ago I said we were on our way to being a minority in our own capital. So ### like you laughed at me. Well it’s happened.. Among young children in the capital, the indigenous are now a small minority.
  - Neil Saunders
    
    I can assure you that few of the indigenous white working class are driving around in Bentleys.
souptonuts

Reckless will lose his seat in Rochester. Tories are now 8/11 favourites there. UKIP will get 2 seats with Farage and Carswell.
- The Bogle
  
  Watch out for Tim Aker in Thurrock.
  - FreeKip
    
    It cannot be said that Tim hasnt put the effort in there, he deserves to win for sure.
- hugh_36
  
  Carswell is barely UKIP in any case. Far too thoughtful. Read his speech about welcoming first and second generation immigrants into the party.
Oddsbods

The UKIP vote has contracted? It is strange but that does not match up with my experience, everyone I know who was going to vote for the UKIP still is going to vote for them. Just where do you get these “insights” from?
- tjamesjones
  
  damn polls! who needs science when we’ve got anecdotes.
  - Rbeastlondon
    
    The polls are usually pretty accurate but actual outcome of the election is almost impossible to determine.
    - Paul_Wesson
      
      Kinnock was massively ahead of Thatcher in the polls, right up to e-day. He even had a triumphalist rally in Sheffield, before the election, based on the poll results. How we all laughed when the opinion polls were found to have been rubbish all along. The reasoning given by the pollsters is that people were embarrassed to admit to intending to vote Tory for fear of ridicule by the ‘neutral’ pollsters or for fear their details might be shared. With the increasingly violent, verbally at least, attacks on UKIP and the Tories it is credible that, in the age of unlawful data retention and distribution, many people won’t tell pollsters the truth. I am wary of telling some of my acquaintances what my voting intentions are as, despite working for a human rights organisation in developing countries, I am worried about being a racist or fascist for wanting to withdraw from the EU. I will definitely lie to pollsters.
      - tjamesjones
        
        yes, but don’t forget the pollsters started adjusting their polls in the 1990s, for precisely this reason. They do see it as their job to get the right result, not to be constantly blindsided by that well known kinnock effect.
  - Neil Saunders
    
    The polls are there to manipulate public opinion rather than to reflect it.
    - hugh_36
      
      A refusal to accept the facts is usually the first sign of delusion. It appears common amoung UKIP supporters.
      - Pacificweather
        
        Which is why all the polls tally exactly?
      - Alb Einstein
        
        Oh right accept the facts that the country is bankrupt and at the current rate of demographic change will be Islamic in 50 years. It’s you that is in denial.
      - Trini’s dad
        
        Are you making a case for importing more CoE Christians from Nigeria now? You’re not are you. So what are you doing Alb, you are offering yourself as my lowlife racist punchball.
      - Kennie
        
        Trini’s dad,
        you get today’s prize for being the most stupid and nasty one on today’s blogs.
      - Patrick Roy
        
        Islam is not a race, it’s an ideology / religion. I don’t like it. Sorry.
      - gateway147
        
        What’s the difference between a Islamic Ideology and a Communist Marxist Ideology…they are both as far as I am concerned… dangerous….ideologies
      - Space_Cowboy_1952
        
        Islam is enabled by Marxists and Cultural Marxists worldwide. However, Marxism is less than 150 years old. Islam is 14 centuries old. The Qur’an has over 100 anti-Semitic references. Marx was an atheistic Jew who was full of ethnic self-loathing. Doubtless Adolf Hitler, with which Muslims had some sympathy in WW2 (Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin Haj Al Husseini, who raised 2 Waffen SS Divisions for Heinrich Himmler, The Handschar and Skanderbeg), read Das Kapital and twisted it to his own ends. ‘Mein Kampf’ in Arabic can be bought off the shelf from Muslim newsagents in the Edgware Rd, London, and is a best seller in Turkey and Palestine.
      - gateway147
        
        The danger `Marxism` poses is: that it is indoctrinated into unformed & uniformed minds in Britain’s Universities. Young people, who are at a vulnerable stage in their not quite adult lives; who want to fit in; and what makes them easy targets for Socialist claptrap and Marxist indoctrination.
      - Alex Williams
        
        The main difference, is that one believes the earth was created by a god and that god demands everyone worship him and obey his rules, the other, believes the guy who’s currently ‘el presidente’ is god and that everyone should worship him and obey his rules.
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        100% agreed
      - berosos_bubos
        
        Why would a non-Muslim want to live in a Muslim state ?
      - hugh_36
        
        As the population was 87% white at the last census an Islamic UK is impossible within any concievable timescale. Not least because a significant proportion of immigrants are white European in origin. Interestingly UKIP’s immigration policies are likely to see a much higher proportion of immigrants coming from non white, non European countries.
      - Miss Floribunda Rose
        
        I have been informed that the indigenous population of London will one day become a minority. Scaremongering, surely? It will never happen. The same is true of Luton, Leicester, Slough, Birmingham, and so on.
      - Space_Cowboy_1952
        
        London is less than 45% white already, according to 2011 Wiki figures and Gov.uk. “Are we there yet”? 🙂
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        Yes probably Space makes me sick
      - Space_Cowboy_1952
        
        I suggest, avoid flying, especially Germanwings 🙂
      - gateway147
        
        Exactly the intention of Britain’s Marxist Labour Party.
        Who had lost Britain`s guaranteed `working class underclass class` vote. Britains betrayed `working class` underclass had
        finally woken-up to the fact that: Marxist, Socialist’s love above everything else `Communism` because it is a way for these `wolves in sheep’s clothing` to keep control of: power ,education and economics…and the good life..which Marxist think….they and only they should continue to enjoy…
      - UKSteve
        
        I’d take more water with it, mate!
      - gateway147
        
        UK Steve: are you one of those highly privileged monopolists, who think that victims are necessary; so that the strong and `privately educated` can exercise their power?
      - UKSteve
        
        Wow, a coherent sentence!
        
        No.
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        So true
      - Alex Williams
        
        2011 census showed that 36.7% of Londons population was foreign born, once that goes over 50%, by default, the so called ‘indigenous’ population is a minority, regardless of the fact that they will still be the majority of any other race/nationality overall, they will be a minority when it is considered there are more foreigners there, than Brits.
      - me
        
        Wont be long then.
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        so right you are Me
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        no scaremongering it is a fact it is not us english who breed like rabbits
      - gateway147
        
        You missed out: Southall, Slough, Ealing, Brent, Hackney, Barking, Dagenham, Rochester to name a few… which has left Labour `culturally adrift` from it’s voters because people are concerned they are losing a sense of community? Also let the truth be told which is .. Miliband shortcomings go deeper than his gawky manner, and his difficulties with a bacon sandwich.. Here I am referring to Milibands memory-lapse, which made him forget to mention immigration and the deficit? Which is why we should never forget he is a `liberal on immigration`…while trying to masquerade as a Conservative…He is because UKIP is hurting Labour in its Northern English Heartlands. Which is why Millie, would like to convince `Labour Voters` that he can be trusted to Control Immigration; which he and Labors hierarchy… have absolutely no intention of doing? immigration levels, which in my view… have only achieved to increase the current levels of inequality among Britain’s discriminated `working class` . Levels which have only succeeded in holding-back their employment chances; because of the`level of immigration` Labour brought into Britain….Which has left their group having to compete with immigrants for jobs and reduced what they are able to earn… A LEFT WING political class. who insisted on imposing: Their Views, Their Prejudices, and Their Agenda on an Unwilling Electorate.
      - Space_Cowboy_1952
        
        London is less than 45% white already, according to 2011 Wiki figures and Gov.uk. There’s an early start 🙂
      - Miss Floribunda Rose
        
        I was being ironic.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        hugh_36 is another of those dullards who have an excess of esteem for official statistics, combined with an inability to understand exponential growth. If anything can, this might help him (and others who share his Panglossian delusions): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8
      - Neil Saunders
        
        That is a snapshot; the figure will be different in 10 years’ time; in 20 years’ time; in 50 years’ time, etc.
        
        The important question to ask is this: What proportion of the population are, to take your example, Muslim, among the under-30s; among the under-20s; among the under-10s; among live births? Each of these figures will give a more accurate indication of the future we face on current trends.
      - Alex Williams
        
        Actually, UKIPs policies will see a much lower number of immigrants coming into the country full stop, 550,000 per year less if you take the 600,000 gross inbound numbers as all being foreign (They’re not, but because we have no border checks, no one actually knows who is coming or going). Thus, if only 50,000 people come in per year and they are spread evenly from across the world, all high skilled and of all colours, races, nationalities and abilities, we will have a considerably more diverse immigration intake than we do now, which will be considerably more beneficial to the country, as almost 100% of immigrants, will be of a net benefit to the country, whereas what we have now, is hundreds of thousands of people who are of neutral, or negative benefit to the country and only a few tens of thousands who are of a positive benefit. This automagically creates a negative overall benefit, because any benefit the few tens of thousands are offering to the economy, gets wiped out by the negatives, is not helped by the neutrals and then we have infrastructure issues on top, that we cannot possibly hope to fix with such huge numbers coming in year after year.
      - gateway147
        
        It’s called..population replacement…
        If Britains `State Education System` prepared our young people for adult life, work and responsibility and able to leave their state education able to make the right choices & decisions for themselves; we wouldn’t need to import educated skilled workers. Solzhenistyn said: ” in order to destroy a people, you must first sever their roots”.
        I think from your writing we ARE on a similar page?
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        YES agree
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        Thousands of people who are of neutral, or negative benefit to the country are you not over stating Alex
      - Alex Williams
        
        Nope, according to official figures, if a points based, skill-determined system was in place last year, only 27,000 people would have actually been admitted and given work visas, out of the 600,000 believed to have come here over that 12 month period. Those 27,000 are likely to be of a positive benefit, one way or another, but there’s no guarantee, as you have to earn enough that you don’t qualify for in-work-benefits and/or have no children, no illnesses, etc. in order to be a genuine positive benefit to the economy, i.e. you actually pay in more than you take out.
        
        So assuming 3/4 of that 27,000 are of a positive benefit and a few more thousand who wouldn’t qualify to come here under a points based system, but do actually earn enough, or take literally nothing from the state and therefore are of a positive benefit, you’re still looking at hundreds of thousands who are either negative, or neutral. In reality, those who are a real positive are in their hundreds, rather than their thousands and these are the people everyone on the left hates, bankers, high-up executives, etc.
        
        What the left fail to realise when they try to rally everyone against the rich, is that the top 1% of earners in this country, pay over 1/4 of the total tax take that keeps the country afloat. ONE PERCENT, paying over a quarter of the total tax take and they’re moaning that these people are not paying enough! They’re paying MORE than enough, but our immigration and population growth is SO out of control, that now the left want to tax them to the point that they leave and/or hide their money, in order to keep their multiculturalism dream alive and that attitude, to be perfectly frank, sickens me.
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        who puts out these official figures
      - gateway147
        
        Unfortunately the damage has already been done; by utterly Ruthless Misguided Politically Correct… Left Wing Liberal Parasites, who effectively Control Britains Anti learning State Schools, Local Authorities and Current Rates of Inequality.
      - me
        
        The % you are spouting doesn’t really matter! The Muslims of the UK play the Human rights card AND the race card when ever anyone says anything against them! You are telling me that you believe in the Sharia law in the UK? Don’t tell me that it isn’t allowed because IT IS! You should know by now that you do NOT need a Majority to cause havoc! These people have abused the laws of Britain and the governments have allowed it to happen!! How else would you explain why the likes of Anjem Choudary are still free men? when they blatantly preach HATE and are insighting terrorism!!!? You people make me puke! You do not know what is happening under your snotty little noses because you have probably had a very privileged childhood! NOT everyone has had that. Get your arse down into the heart of Englands suburbs! See it for yourself!
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        Yeah Sharia law would be reversed with our party of course it has no place in our UK courts me
      - Charles Patrick O’Brien
        
        The heart of England’s suburbs! not Britain?! See where it starts from,sometimes Britain sometimes not.
      - me
        
        INFACT! The indigenous Brits are the minority in London! Who will support us? The English minority in our own country? Sure as hell not the likes of you! In fact, do you live in a stately home somewhere? because spouting percentages is not clever! We can all google the ‘Percentages’. Get your butt down to street level and see it happening for yourself.
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        Ukip will return them if they are no use to our country once out of the eu wake up your sooooooooooooooooo behind
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        Well said Alb!!
        This guy HUGHIE is a total loser
      - Neil Saunders
        
        What about confirmation bias?
      - me
        
        Oh dear, you need a lobotomy!
      - Theresa Truelove
        
        OMG you are sad you must read more we love UKIP all the more hughie I do feel so sorry for people like you who cannot see further than the end of there nose get a life
  - Alex Williams
    
    Here’s an anecdote for you. I’m a UKIP member and a YouGov member. My wife, is a UKIP voter too and a YouGov member. I haven’t been asked to do a survey for a while now. The latest Sun/YouGov poll on voting intention, was taken 2 days after the last survey I took and my wife is in the same boat. Now not that I’d want to cast any aspersions of course, but the fact two ‘known to YouGov’ UKIP voters, were excluded from the last poll, which shows UKIP sliding down to 10% or whatever it was, frankly, stinks a bit!
    
    Just to further the anecdote, I posted this info to twitter, in response to a tweet regarding said YouGov poll and there were others who anecdotally, had the same experience…….I at the very least find it interesting, that so many ‘known to YouGov’ UKIP voters, appear not to have been given a survey to fill out, as part of that poll.
    
    Every time an election is coming up, the media reports that UKIP has fallen in the polls, yet when the results from the election come in, they’ve improved on their last result, extensively in some cases.
    
    So either, the MSM is with UKIP really and they’re telling us that UKIP has fallen in the polls, to spur us all on to get out there and bolster that vote, or some morons in the media actually think reporting this information, is somehow going to deter us from voting UKIP, by making people think the vote will be wasted. Considering the track record of this not working in the slightest, you’d think they’d stop doing it if that’s the case.
    
    Somewhat like that headline, which reported a poll on whether people would vote to leave the EU or not, had determined that we were considerably less Eurosceptic than ever before and that we as a nation were all for the EU. Yet, when you examined the poll, the most popular answer to the question at hand, was “The EU should have less political integration with the UK than it does now” with the answer “The EU should have no political integration with the UK” had only fallen by 3 points! Overall, the poll showed that as a nation, we are MASSIVELY more eurosceptic than we have have been as a nation and that were a vote to be held tomorrow, based on the question of “Should we leave the European Union, or integrate with them further”, we’d categorically vote to leave.
    - Ngaire Lowndes
      
      Funny that. I’m also a YouGov member and my opinion was suddenly not required in any polls at ALL last August. You’d almost think someone had gone through the profiles and eliminated anyone supportive of UKIP.
    - Dogzzz
      
      Me too. YouGov have not sent me a political poll in a while now.
    - tjamesjones
      
      Yes, that’s an anecdote.
      - Alex Williams
        
        oh look, more people saying they’ve experienced the same anecdote……shocking.
        
        Here’s another one for you. I live in Doncaster, a Labour stronghold. We moved house in November 2012 and immediately registered ourselves to vote at our new address, knowing that there were local elections coming up for the Mayor of Doncaster, during our time there. The election came around and we had received no voting cards, nor letters regarding voter registration, nothing.
        
        2 weeks AFTER the election took place, where the Labour candidate took the Mayorship back from the Independent who had been the Mayor up until the election, by a smidge, we received our voting cards…….more coincidence, I guess.
        
        Definitely registered to vote this time, received our updated electoral roll letter only a few weeks ago, so we will of course be voting for our two fantastic local UKIP candidates, both of whom were born and raised in Doncaster, unlike my current MP, or Ed Miliband (MP for Doncaster North, the constituency I actually did grow up in). At the last local elections, our local candidate for our ward, lost out to the Tory by a tiny 98 votes, 1375 to the Tories 1473. The Tory hasn’t done anything that I’m aware of for the ward, so I suspect I may have a UKIP cllr in May. 🙂
      - Pacificweather
        
        So why did you not phone the electoral officer and ask why your voting cards had not been sent before the election? Electoral officers work in accordance to statute law. If you registered in time they would have to put you on the electoral roll.
      - Alex Williams
        
        Well as polling cards only turn up a few days before an election, a week at most, we really didn’t notice they hadn’t turned up until the last minute. As a family, with two professional working parents, running a business, me travelling up and down the country for that business, polling cards for the local mayoral elections, when UKIP weren’t standing a candidate, wasn’t really at the forefront of my mind at the time.
        
        I’m quite a stickler for voting, I think it is not only my right, but my duty to vote, which is why we made absolutely certain we sent off the registration as soon as we moved in. It really came to light what had happened, about two weeks AFTER polling day, when our voter registration confirmation came through the post (A good 4 months after having moved in and registered) with us having done nothing extra to register.
        
        We were moving out of that house about a month after polling day, so having missed the election, we weren’t then too fussed about making sure we were registered at that address obviously. We originally assumed that our registration had simply not been received, or our polling cards had been lost in the post, or whatever, but for the registration confirmation to turn up 2 weeks after polling day, without us making a call, writing a letter or re-registering, then seemed a little fishy.
        
        We then moved home again, re-registered at our new address and did get our registration letter and then our polling cards for the next set of elections, all on time and without hassle. Hopefully the polling cards for the GE will turn up without issue, but we’ll obviously be a lot more active about making sure of that for the GE.
      - Pacificweather
        
        You don’t need a polling card to vote. All you had to do was roll up at the polling station and give your name and address. If it is any consolation 52% of votes for the three main parties are ineffective so there is an above average chance that yours would be ineffective too. It never ceases to amaze me that (knowing that) how keen the majority are to cast their vote. That shows a dedication to civic duty beyond reason. I believe that those who say the British people are too lazy or apathetic to support Swiss style government are wrong.
      - Alex Williams
        
        I needed to be on the register though, which I wasn’t, the letter that came through confirming my registration, had me registered after the election, despite the fact I had sent it in 4 months before.
        
        As for a civic duty, it is a civic duty to vote, it is a duty to those who died in the name of achieving the right to vote, it is a duty to those who have since died in the name of defending our right to vote.
        
        Voting is not ineffective, some times the choices are terrible, some times the democratic system doesn’t live up to expectations, for example with FPTP, if UKIP get something between 18% and 25%, while the two old parties get 30%+ each, UKIP will likely have nowhere near as many MPs as them and that’s just not representative democracy.
        
        But voting is also part of changing that system, the more votes for UKIP, the stronger the case for a form of PR instead of FPTP. People who refuse to bother, or attempt to convince others not to take part in choosing our leaders are despicable in my eyes.
      - Pacificweather
        
        Yes indeed, all the votes are counted but only half the votes count. It is just a shame two thirds of UKIP voters did not understand that in May 2011 or the number of UKIP MPs would be in double figures on May 8th 2015.
      - Alex Williams
        
        Not sure I get what you mean there if I’m honest. What do you mean by only half count? Also, why would UKIP voters in 2011 have any affect on the results come May 8th this year? Maybe I’m tired, but I don’t get it.
        
        Edit – Ah, I may have just dropped on it, you’re talking about the PR referendum?
      - Pacificweather
        
        Well, a PR referendum would have been just what was wanted. Instead the choice was between FPTP and AV. AV, which is used to elect members of the lower house in the Australian Parliament and to elect the London Mayor has the advantage that an MP must have a majority of the votes of his constituents albeit their second or even third preference. Under FPTP, two thirds of MPs are elected by a minority of the votes cast by their constituents which would automatically trigger a count of the second preference votes under AV. UKIP would be many voters second preference which could mean that combined with their first preference vote they would gain over 50% of the votes. By voting against AV (statistically 2/3 of UKIP supporters did that) they voted to reduce the number of UKIP MPs at this general election.
        
        As for all votes are counted but only half count. You can down load a spreadsheet of the results of the 2005 and 2010 election results from the Electoral Commission web site. If you add up the votes for the parties in constituencies where the MP did not get over 50% of the vote (about 2/3) you will find that these ineffective votes are about 52% of the votes cast. In the EU elections for MEPs, by contrast, every single vote is effective because PR is used which resulted in UKIP getting the most MEPs.
        
        The other effect of voting against AV in 2011 is that if the electorate rejects change it is not going to be asked again for a very long time. If you vote for change you are more likely to be asked again sooner.
      - Alex Williams
        
        I get what you mean, although I do disagree with the idea that no referendum will be held on it again for a long time. As I said earlier, if UKIP gets 25% of the vote, or any substantial percentage, but doesn’t get a vast number of MPs, it will be enough to trigger a push for electoral reform.
        
        The AV referendum was a proper stitch up (As are most), the leaflets coming through the door were scary to many, insisting that changing the way we elect our MPs would somehow damage the integrity of the system and people would get govts they didn’t want and didn’t elect etc. it was disgraceful.
        
        I don’t think AV would actually be the best way to elect our govts, a different form of PR would probably be better. Lots of people really don’t like the first and second choices option either, as many just want to vote for the party they want and there are a lot more ways your ballot can be thrown out in AV too, if you don’t fill it out properly.
      - Pacificweather
        
        In Northern Ireland they manage to select their assembly using the Single Transferable Vote system of PR which is like AV but more complicated. Are the English not as intelligent as the Northern Irish? The Additional Member system used in Scotland and Wales keeps the local MP but adds a regional member to give a proportional vote. That would probably suit the English better. The EU elections use Party Lists in Britain and STV in N.I. Party Lists is the most proportional system and if this was combined with primary elections to determine which candidates go on the list and in which order then we would have a very democratic system for general elections.
      - Alex Williams
        
        I don’t think they’re less intelligent no, in most cases when parliaments and assemblies are set up, the public are not given a choice on the voting system used, it’s simply implemented by those who chose it. So the NI assembly I assume, is still elected via a method that was imposed when it was set up, as opposed to the people being offered a referendum on the method.
        
        The fact remains in Britain today, that most are not politically minded, most will go cast their vote tribally, or even based on their favourite colour, lol. Which, I believe, is how we’ve ended up in the mess we’re in. Democracy is a very noble prospect, with the people being given a choice in everything important going on in their lives, unfortunately, most either don’t partake, or don’t partake fully, leaving us with some very bad results from democracy.
        
        Personally, I’d like to see a form of PR used to elect the British Parliament, but as to which type of PR, I don’t have a particular preference at this point.
      - Pacificweather
        
        I think the nature of N.I. politics and parties led to the selection of STV. I hope you are right about the outcome of the next election leading to PR for Westminster. As you say, few think deeply about voting systems or understand their importance but let’s hope the importance becomes more widely understood.
      - pp22pp
        
        I was once denied the right to vote because of a postal strike and was told there was nothing that could be done. If you are out of the country, they often don’t leave enough time for the documents to get to England from Australia. I complained and was told that the law was on their side.
      - Pacificweather
        
        The law is on their side and they are creatues of statute. Next time send it special delivery via Quantas.
      - Joe Parmaker
        
        Had exactly the same experience. Complained to my (Tory) MP who took no interest. Was told by the local election officer that these things were fixed by law. Which hardly explained why for one election the proxy form turned up after election day and on another it turned up late in the afternoon of election day.
        Tory MP seemed not to bother at all.
        Last year I turned up in person to vote, but had not received the card.
        Later I received a letter saying that my card had been returned marked ‘gone away’ —by whom and why? Everyone near by knows that I have not done any such thing. But a protest or two ensured that things were set right. Now I will always make sure I am around in person on election day.
        By the way the electoral officer said they had nearly ten thousand postal votes (high) and I was the only person who had ever complained.
      - Roger Hudson
        
        It would make more sense if you’d inserted ‘are supposed to’ between ‘officers’ and ‘work.’
      - Pacificweather
        
        I said what I meant and what is true. I have met and worked with several electoral officers and their staff and they are without exception the most decent, responsible and honest people you could ever meet. Exactly the kind of people who should work in all departments of local goverment. They work strictly within the limits of statute law. They are human and can make mistakes but my experience suggests any mistakes are small and rare.
      - Alex Williams
        
        My mum used to be quite a high up civil servant in the local council, think her job title at the end of her career was “Legal Services Manager” or something, for the borough council. During her tenure she ran quite a few of the elections, local and general and at the time, never had any particular political persuasion. She just voted for whoever seemed to be offering the best policies at the time and was a total stickler for the rules, so everything was run like the most efficient thing you could imagine lol. Now of course, being older and seeing the state the old parties have made of the country, even though she hates Nigel Farage, she’s a Kipper 😉
      - Space_Cowboy_1952
        
        Welcome to The purple revolution 🙂
    - John Booth
      
      My experience exactly. I am a ‘known to YouGov’ UKIP supporter and haven’t been asked to do a poll in months
      - Yvon & Barry Stuart-Hargreaves
        
        When I persisted in saying I vote Mebyon Kernow, I was banned for “not taking the poll seriously”, plus they owed me £32 for surveys completed.
    - FenlandBuddha
      
      Well obviously that proves it
      - Alex Williams
        
        I quite clearly said it was an anecdote, nothing more.
    - Roger Hudson
      
      Spot on, Alex. I leaflet in a strong Tory seat and nowadays I’m welcomed with open arms. Polls reflect what the sponsor wants them to reflect.
    - nemesis
      
      I do ‘yougov’ polls and always tick the ‘dont know’ box – just to keep them guessing.
    - Space_Cowboy_1952
      
      ‘morons in the media’ should read, Trotskyist Marxists in the media 🙂
  - Conway
    
    It depends which “science” you use. If you weight the polls with past voting habits, as many do, then you are not going to get a true reflection of voting intentions because many more non-voters are getting interested now they actually have a party that represents them.
    - tjamesjones
      
      UKIP is hardly a new party – they scored 16% of the vote in the 2009 euro elections, which is a lot more than they are polling today. Yes, perhaps we’re better at polling methodology here than the pollsters know themselves, or perhaps it’s all a big conspiracy. I don’t think so myself, and I think pollsters have developed tricks such as using previous voting histories, propensity to lie to pollsters, etc, all to further their aim at predicting the outcome of elections.
      - Alex Williams
        
        I notice you deliberately sidestepped the fact, that this is a general election and ALL the pollsters who use previous results for weighting in current polls, are using the 2010 GE results, at which I believe UKIP got a tiny 2% of the vote?
        
        UKIP are probably in reality, on about 25% nation wide, if you factor in all the weighting against 2010 results, which will drag the figures down VERY dramatically and if you also factor in the anecdotes I and others shared above, where we were not included in the most recent YouGov poll, despite being members who have not recently had a survey…….
        
        I think Survation have us on about 18% at the moment and I find the usual rule of thumb with Survation, is that they’re the closest and if you add about 5% to their results, you usually get the actual result UKIP gets in that election.
        
        Considering their is a blatant conspiracy to keep UKIP out of the news and off the TV, unless it’s bad news (Which is what this entire article is about and it’s not wrong), it’s not really that difficult to believe, that a pollster, whose president is the husband of a Labour Baroness, might just be a little bit establishment biased, just you know, a smidge.
      - tjamesjones
        
        I didn’t sidestep anything Alex, just showed you that UKIP isn’t some new thing. As for the rest, well once you’re making up your own figures, why stop at 25%.
      - Alex Williams
        
        We were discussing weighting and you implied they are not a new party, therefore weighting won’t affect them. You then used the Euro 2009 election results to imply that their results were high anyway, so they also wouldn’t affect them much too. Which is bullshit, lol.
        
        I’m not making up my own figures at all, I’m saying quite clearly, that usually, Survation are pretty close to the mark with their figures and as a general rule of thumb, over the last couple of years, add 5% to their poll results for UKIP and presto, you have the amount that UKIP actually gets in the election. That’s not me making up anything, that’s me commenting on actual evidence, not anecdotal, not prospective, or projective, but actual results in polls and actual election results 😉
      - tjamesjones
        
        No, I used Euro 2009 elections to show that UKIP isn’t a new party. I don’t know why you have your favourite pollster, but OK, how did Survation do in the 2010 election?
      - Alex Williams
        
        Are you a bit dim? Or are you sad enough to be deliberately trying to turn this into a win somehow, with some tiny technicality, or observation you can find?
        
        You clearly did what I said you did, it was blatant, it’s like Clegg saying he wouldn’t put up tuition fees, then he did and has spent the last 5 years insisting he never actually said it quite like that. Give up.
        
        I don’t have a favourite pollster, I’ve made an observation, that they always seem to be the closest in their polls, to what UKIP actually get at the election they’re polling for.
        
        I’ve no idea how they did in 2010, I only came back from NZ in Feb 2010 and I didn’t vote in that election, as by the time we had sorted out a house, schools for the kids, got jobs etc. the election was upon us and we hadn’t registered to vote in time. Nor had I particularly paid attention to the political field here in the UK whilst I wasn’t here, so not being tribal, I felt voting would be like stabbing in the dark.
        
        I also wasn’t a Kipper back then, I’d been away for a few years and when I came back, the country had gone to shit completely! I switched over to UKIP at the end of 2012, after having caught up on the political status of the country and done my research as to who I should be backing for the next election.
      - tjamesjones
        
        “UKIP is hardly a new party – they scored 16% of the vote in the 2009 euro elections, which is a lot more than they are polling today. ”
        
        Oops! Could that be saying UKIP is hardly a new party?!
        
        Let me tell you Alex. Survation didn’t do a poll in 2010. So why are you using them as your “best predictor” for kipper vote? We just don’t know. Presumably you have found they give higher numbers for ukip, and you add 5 because you like ukip, and voila.
      - Alex Williams
        
        You really are somewhat of a primate. I gave an analogy of what you tried to do, not what you said, what you said is not up for dispute, what you were trying to do with what you said, is.
        
        I don’t care that Survation didn’t do a poll in 2010, it’s irrelevant to the subject of the 2015 GE and pollsters using the 2010 ELECTION results to weight polls.
        
        Again, I’ll re-iterate this as clearly as I possibly can and dumb it down as far as I possibly can for you, to try and help you understand.
        
        Survations poll results, are usually, over the last few years, around 5% lower than the ACTUAL result, that UKIP gets, at the end of the election, that survation was doing the poll for. So this means, regardless of whether I like UKIP or not, regardless of whether Survation did a poll in 2010 or not, I have observed, that if you add 5% to whatever Survation suggests UKIP will get in the next election, that is USUALLY what the actual outcome is for UKIP.
        
        Just to be absolutely clear with you, as I know you’re struggling, I have not and do not intend, to suggest, that Survation are my favourite pollster. I have not and do not intend to suggest, that if I add 5% to the survation result, UKIP will somehow magically get that result, I have simply pointed out an observation of FACTS over the last few years, which are undisputable.
        
        No go get some sleep, you need the brain cells.
      - ukipifyouwantto
        
        But this is the first election since 2010? What are you on about Alex? Or are you talking about euro elections or council elections or some nonsense?
      - Alex Williams
        
        Are you really that incapable of understanding English? The last general election was in 2010, there is little to no point in comparing the 2009, or 2014 EU elections, to a general election. The pollsters, are all using the results from the 2010 GE, to weight their poll results for this years GE. It’s really not rocket science, is actually incredibly, remarkably, stupefyingly simple.
      - Patrick Roy
        
        UKIP / Nigel wasn’t even allowed to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. Shocking given their numbers. #CommonPorpoise
      - Joe Parmaker
        
        And of course the BBC didn’t tell us.
  - Oddsbods
    
    Never believe any statistics you haven’t falsified yourself (Groucho Marx)
  - milford
    
    The polls said Netanyahu was finished now look what’s happened.
    Nobody knows what’s going to happen. Interesting times politically.
  - Greyfox
    
    Who needs the truth whe we’ve got propaganda?
- hugh_36
  
  But you probably only know angry sad old white people. They are only a small proportion of the population as a whole. Hence the polls and hence UKIP being lucky to get 4-6 MPs at best.
  - Oddsbods
    
    Oooh you do sound vibrant, you are making me jealous.
    Hey! If angry, sad, old, white people are such a minority, why does the government keep telling me that we have an ageing problem and too many pensioners? More lying statistics?
    - Pacificweather
      
      You are right. There are far too many happy old white people in this country for our own good. More sad and angry people is what this country needs.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        What should we do, then? Have a cull? Bludgeon the miserable old sods to death? They’re just “useless eaters”, anyway. Let’s have lots of vibrant, happy young immigrants to grow the economy for the multinational corporations and banks (and for the PC brigade to indulge their utopian Multiculti fantasies).
      - Pacificweather
        
        Well you had a good day didn’t you? Lighten up and join us happy pensioners. Being grumpy isn’t a virtue.
        
        Now here is a happy question for you. Which is the only party with a policy (and with a chance of implementing it) that is guaranteed to cut immigration from the EU before 2017?
      - Gerhardt Kippets
        
        Well, UKIP have a policy but no chance of implementing it so I would have to guess – the Tories?
      - Pacificweather
        
        Labour are the only party who have said they would raise the minimum wage which will reduce the incentive for employers to import cheap labour. They have also said they will stop employment agencies only recruiting workers for jobs from abroad. Raising the minimum wage will also reduce welfare expenditure on employer subsidies (or in work benefits as the Tories like to call them). Interestingly, Cameron won’t say how he will make his £12.5billion welfare reduction. Could it be that he is also going to raise the minimum wage but does not want to upset his supporters before the General Election. A firm promise or a vague hint? The choice is yours. The policy gets my support because I think jobs should generate taxes not taxes generate jobs.
      - Paul_Wesson
        
        No point raising the minimum wage if you’re not going to enforce it. Anyway, the minimum wage Labour talk about is an hourly rate. On a zero hours contract the minimum wage can be £0.00p for a 0 hour week.
      - Pacificweather
        
        There has always been casual labour, look at how the docks operated, but employers being subsidised by the taxpayer is relatively new. They are two different problems. We can’t eliminate the deficit and subsidise employers. We have to to make a choice. It should be done in steps over the next 3-4 years. I know what my choice is.
      - Patrick Roy
        
        You cannot POSSIBLY support Labour, and that self-loathing Marxist freak. Labour have destroyed Britain. Cameron has partly lifted it from the direction straight to hell. Cameron is good for business, business is good for jobs, jobs are good for people. But he’s still too left of centre.
      - Pacificweather
        
        I support the policy because employer subsidies are the curse of this country. I just wish the Tories would come out in support of it. Cameron said wages must rise but he did not say he is going to make it happen. You are right to say that employer subsidies are the worst kind of socialism and for him to actively support it shows his true colours as you rightly point out.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        The employers are not importing cheap labour; our borders are wide open and the cheap labour is coming of its own accord.
        
        Much of this cheap workforce is run by gangmasters and employers who will ignore any minimum wage legislation in force, so raising it is no solution to the problem. Only closing our borders will change anything.
      - Pacificweather
        
        Until we can do that then raising the minimum wage will be more effective than doing nothing. Those working for gang masters are a minority. Most work in hotels and restaurants. It will also reduce the welfare budget and allow the deficit to be eliminated.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        It’ll do none of the things you claim; just see.
      - Pacificweather
        
        I am pleased to know you think Labour is going to form the next government so that I can see if it works. Sadly, I think we won’t get a chance to see. I wish I could share your optimism.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        No party that is likely to form any part of a government elected in 2015.
    - Gerhardt Kippets
      
      “Angry, sad, old, white people” being a minority and the country having an ageing problem are not mutually exclusive concepts.
  - Dave R
    
    They should be angry and sad. We all should.
    - Neil Saunders
      
      And anyone with half a brain – old or young – is.
  - Patrick Roy
    
    Angry sad old tax-paying white people are the backbone of Britain.
    - Pacificweather
      
      That’s actually quite funny. You can come around and dig my garden. My happy old backbone is not up to it these days. I need to swap it for a sad angry one.
      - Patrick Roy
        
        I’m mostly happy, except when thinking of where my taxes go, and strong as an ox. And of course like gardening. 🙂
      - Pacificweather
        
        You are just the man for me. Tea and biscuits every hour 😉
        
        I am with you on the spending of taxes. Both governments’ obsession with employer subsidies certainly wipes the smile off my face.
  - Cyril Sneer
    
    That’s it, insult the electorate.
    
    Keep it up hugh, keep on with the insults it served you so well in the European Elections.
- John Booth
  
  Agreed. My experience too. I know of NO ONE intending to vote UKIP that has changed their mind. All the smears and anti-UKIP propaganda is simply strengthening UKIP supporters’ resolve.
  
  Rod liddle is usually spot on and often ant-establishment in his writing but I fear this piece has been ‘planted’ along with all the usual idiots from the MSM who are instructed by their editors to write anti-UKIP pieces.
- FenlandBuddha
  
  And no-one I know would ever vote UKIP. So judging by my anecdote they should be at 0% in the polls. How can we resolve this issue. How about we researchers from half a dozen different companies to interview at least 1,000 people each, regularly week in week out..and oh wait we do that and it says UKIP are about 10-15% in the polls. Boo hoo for the UKIPers
  - Paul_Wesson
    
    No, because you are contemptuous of those who vote UKIP none of your acquaintances dare tell you lest you abuse and vilify them. If a relative admitted to intending to vote UKIP would you tell them it is a free country and it is their democratic right to do so, or, more likely I guess, would you call them a racist and fascist and mislead them about UKIP’s policies?
    - tjamesjones
      
      it’s tricky though Paul – we need you to guide us, which anecdotes we should listen to, which ones we should ignore. It’s hard work! But no question we shouldn’t trust the pollsters – only BTL kippers for me!
      - Paul_Wesson
        
        Me – anecdotes? Do you know me? My anecdotes are legendary.
- realarthurdent
  
  If someone claiming to be an opinion pollster asked who I will be voting for at the election, I would not say “UKIP”.
  
  Why ?
  
  – Because foster parents have been known to have their foster children taken away for being UKIP supporters.
  – Because, at the Euro election, UKIP supporters with posters up had their cars and homes vandalised.
  – Because, last weekend, the UKIP leader was chased out of a pub where he was having a private lunch with his family.
  – Because, thanks to the campaign of vilification of UKIP and Farage in much of the media, admitting to being a UKIP supporter is socially unacceptable.
  
  But none of these things will stop me voting UKIP in May.
  
  I suspect there a lot of other “shy” UKIP supporters out there.
  - berosos_bubos
    
    West Midlands has a particularly high number of don’t knows..
  - Bert
    
    I’ll still be voting UKIP, and will put a poster up in the window.
    
    Anyone caught vandalising my property will be dealt with accordingly.
- WimsThePhoenix
  
  Wishful thinking by Rod I think. He just can’t get the Old Labour out of his soul.
The Bogle

Why are the media, especially the BBC which receives funding from the EU according to James Delingpole, not picking on the SNP, whose aim is to destroy the UK?
At least UKIP believes in the UK and its right to govern itself by leaving the EU, unlike the other parties.
- Brimstone52
  
  What makes you think the media want the UK to continue?
  - starfish
    
    The way they report on UKIP?
- hugh_36
  
  UKIP is an English party. It has no relevance in the other parts of the UK.
  - The Wiganer
    
    Does Wales not count in your world?
    
    Latest polls had UKIP getting more votes in Wales than Plaid Cymru.
    - Cyril Sneer
      
      You will note his silence.
  - Miss Floribunda Rose
    
    I’m Welsh and I’m voting for ’em, so there you go.
  - Brentfordian
    
    David Coburn?
    
    He’s UKIP’s Scottish MEP by the way.
    - hugh_36
      
      Proportional representation gave them that. They will be obliterated in Scotland with first past the post.
      - Brentfordian
        
        You don’t answer my point – if UKIP is irelevant in Scotland, how come the MEP?
        
        Obliterated by FPP? Of course. But it won’t be Scottish UKIP voters who are obliterated, just their representation in Parliament. Now, in a democracy …
TomFowdy

but then the Ofcom broadcasting rules come and UKIP are obligated equal coverage on television to the others.

Fail.
- FreeKip
  
  Steven Woolfe is on QT tonight.
  - zorbathegook
    
    I hope the ranting blue haired nutters can be kept under control, but Steven will annoy them by not getting annoyed. The only folk who can manage an interview without descending into incoherent squabbling are the UKIP representatives.
    - Ngaire Lowndes
      
      He has to deal with Gob-on-a-Stick Street-Porter. He’ll manage.
    - EDLNEWS
      
      blue haired nutters are usually ukip voters
MikeF

You are right about the debates Rod. Cameron was determined to avoid a situation where it was just him, Milliband, Clegg and Farage – hence his determination that the Greens should be there as well. Does anyone really think he cared two hoots about them? The Nats are just a bonus. But come the campaign itself things could change. Oh and that Channel 4 programme wasn’t a ‘drama-doc’ – something described in that way should have some basis in actual events – it was just a fantasy
revkevblue

Stil voting UKIP. I do not care that the media are trying to brainwash us into thinking, that we are loosing support.
The ridicule and destain they have heaped on us, has only fed our passion to resist their mind shaping engineering.
Because we have eye’s to see, and ears to listen and brains to reason, even though they have tried to stop our tongues, all they have done is create a silent majority, with a sense of outrage, at being ridiculed and sidelined in our own country, and for what?
That we believe in the right of self determination, and the God given right, paid by our fathers,sons and daughters, in buckets of blood down through the centuries, to run our own Country.
- tjamesjones
  
  yep, nothing crazy here.
  - Neil Saunders
    
    Yes, it’s crazy to want to live in a country that still resembles the country you were born and grew up in, and will still be recognisable as the same country if you manage to survive into old age. Sheer madness, eh?
    - tjamesjones
      
      not to mention media brainwashing, mind shaping engineering, silent majorities and buckets of blood. Not crazy at all.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        The media do brainwash, vast swathes of public opinion have been disenfranchised by the cartelisation of politics and there have already been buckets of blood (7/7, the murder of Lee Rigby, etc.). So, no, not crazy at all.
    - hugh_36
      
      That’s UKIP’s whole problem. They want to turn the clock back and you can’t, even if it is a good idea, and many young people don’t think it is. A “people’s army” of nostalgic, sad and angry old men will never be enough
      - Neil Saunders
        
        What do you mean by “turn the clock back”?
        
        I would like to see the disastrous policies of the last few decades halted and reversed, which is quite possible.
        
        We now have a permanent coalition between the PC left and the Thatcherite Right, permanently disenfranchising huge swathes of public opinion (unreconstructed Consensus-era social democrats, like myself, and moderate, traditionalist conservatives).
        
        I am no fan of the Thatcherite economic policies espoused by the high command of UKIP, but they are the only party who can destroy the Cameron-style Conservative Party (if they are permitted to do so); a necessary precondition to recalibrating the Labour Party back to the pre-Blair era.
        
        It is possible to choose the wrong future; Labour did so nearly a quarter of a century ago, when they rejected the vision of Bryan Gould and embraced the nightmare of New Labour.
      - hugh_36
        
        Not sure I follow your argument, if the PC Left and Thatcherite Right are combining I’m not sure where you can stand! Too the far left of Ed Milliband or further to the right of Maggie, neither seem very plausable for achieving a democratic mandate.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        The fact that people like you can’t follow my argument is why we’re in the present predicament. (Your equivalents from the right are people like Peter Hitchens, who – however implausibly – still regard Tony Blair as a figure of the left.) You’re still thinking in terms of an outmoded left-right spectrum, when what has happened is that the deregulatory, libertarian wings of left and right have recognised the essential compatibility of their respective programmes (sociocultural deregulation by the PC left, economic deregulation by the Thatcherite right) and coalesced into the Neoconservativism that is the default ideology of our ruling elites.
        
        There are no palatable alternatives among the mainstream parties. Nor, for reasons too involved to go into, a UKIP government – which will not in any case come about in any foreseeable future – would not be any salvation, but UKIP can help to destroy the Cameron-led Conservative Party in 2015, a necessary precondition for the reform of the Labour Party away from Blairism/Third Way Neoconservatism back to something that resembles social democracy.
      - Cyril Sneer
        
        You are slow.
        
        Neo liberalism/Neo conservatism – two sides of the same coin.
        
        Both Labour and Conservatives are full paid up members.
        
        There is no left and right as there once was in British politics. It’s all pro-EU gravy train, pro-mass immigration to support business.
        
        Labours enemies used to be the fat bankers, now they’re owned by the fat bankers.
        
        This is extended to our foreign policy where regime change is ordered for any country that decides to not support the US global hegemony.
        
        Apparently Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya was all about human rights and democracy.
- EDLNEWS
  
  I do not care that the media are trying to brainwash us into thinking, that we are loosing support.
  
  You are losing support
Hippograd

Control of the media is essential in a democracy. Otherwise the people will make the wrong choices.
scepticeu

How the papers owned by people who are Tories, will try to make believe the UKIP are a no go political party. Thank goodness the UKIP people of our country, have more sense not to take any notice of the bias against them.
Dan O’Connor

Nationalism is a threat to the Left who function as the Left wing theological / ideological priesthood and useful idiots of the Western globalist / internationalist / banker Fortune 500 company crony-capitalist plutocracy
Left Multicultism andf Cultural Marxism and your multiculti sensitivities training course goes hand in hand with big Capital and Goldman Sachs .

The Left have jumped in bed with every one of its stated traditional enemies

1 Religion ( clasping Muslims to their maternal protective bossom , because it is not a White religion and is hostile to the West an can be used as a biological / demographic weapon against Whites in their utopian rainbow nation brotherhood of man cacamemie baby boomer flower power hippy social engineering project )

2 ) Big Buisness ( Capitalism ) which uses cheap wage slave third world mass immigration to increase profits and sustain consumerism

3 ) Racism / Class Warfare and Class Snobbery ; Conducting a 50 year long relentless, mean ,wicked and cynical campaign of racial double standards and Soviet style ethnic cleansing against the masses of ordinary people and their own flesh and blood , and in a particular against the White working class, who they pretend to be the only friend and spokesman for of , just to get their votes, but never waste an opportunity to collectively vilfiy, demonise , stigmatise, and excluded them as being less than human , incapable of feeling a sense of pain, of loss, of disinheritance and alienation and betrayal. Of being less than human, of being
” chavs ”

They worship immigrants as being more inherently more deserving, more worthy , more noble, culivated , enriching , vibrant and virtuous on account of nothing more than their non-Whiteness, and vilfy their own culture and race at every available opportunity , because this is the cheapest and the most risk free form of virtue one can buy in the West today , They are cultural and demographic terror bombers

They disgust me . They are the modern day equivalent of 12th century fundamenalist Christian zealots and engaged in a full blown war of destruction agains their own culture, civilzation and race
They have just subsituted Christianity , biblical original sin and the crucifixion with a more recent event that occured in WW2 in Germany. and then turned it into a religion. But whereas the Christian claim that Christ dies for our sins , the Leff claim that the White man and all of his children’s children have the mark of Caine upon them and must die for his fathers sins
- zorbathegook
  
  Our ‘elite’ seem to be under the misapprehension that they will be exempt from the beheading squads when they ‘cleanse’ our country. Same as the French aristocracy a couple of centuries ago.
  - Neil Saunders
    
    Yes, a very close parallel. They’re very much like the pre-Revolutionary Bourbons.
Jack_H

The slip in the polls is a setback but not a disaster…….more interesting is the demographic…”Floating voters”even 10% of the vote will cause chaos in marginal swing constituencies,if there is a real debate their vote will increase.The EU is not going away and immigration is increasing,Ukip called it right on Bulgarian and Romanian immigration after being called scare mongers,the next country to join the EU is Turkey.It will be the largest by population and the poorest by per capita GDP…..I think that will dominate any debate on staying in the EU.
- Barbara Garratt
  
  What slip in the polls ?? They’re at 18% only the Cons. Poll has dropped. Duh !!
  - EDLNEWS
    
    they are actually at about 12% if you take an average from the nine main polls. cons and labour have gone up. ukip’s time is up and the people have seen through farage’s man of the people guff
- zorbathegook
  
  Turkey in the eu would spell the end of a european europe.
Tickety Boo

UKIP may even win, the unhappiness with the current cartel is spreading daily.
- alfredo
  
  It would certainly be difficult to think of any country or period where all three party leaders have been so universally despised by the electorate. If only a part of that distrust and contempt were to be translated into action, things could change a lot.
  - EDLNEWS
    
    farage’s approval rating is worse than camerons and millbands at the moment
    - Blakenburg
      
      With bias and misinformation, what do you expect? No level playing field with the establishment’s media !
    - alfredo
      
      And, as the Duke of Wellington said in another context, ‘By God, sir, if you believe that, you’d believe anything!’
- EDLNEWS
  
  The are currently predicted to get 1, possibly 2 seats. That is not going to hand the keys of number 10 to farage
- EDLNEWS
  
  In fact their popularity has dropped significantly since the high point of carswell/reckless getting elected. no one is buying farages ‘man of the people’ guff. he is just like the rest of them
  - hugh_36
    
    Agreed, there is only so long he can get away with saying wildly contradictory things to appeal to almost everyone without being rumbled.
stephengreen

Farage, to paraphrase Bloom from memory, is a great showman, but would you have a showman in charge of your company? They’re for front of house, not strategy.

Considering the UKIP manifesto is not going to be released until just before the election, this seems very bad strategy: instead of exhausting the criticisms and ridicule that our corrupt elites delight in, (cf the Greens) they’ll now be able to take it right up to the election, with the various papers going to bat for their affiliated political parties.

Farage, being a showman, should be able to drag their polling upwards, but how far, remains to be seen. He looks likely to win here (South Thanet) but the left dogs have been taught to despise him so well, that they will likely happily vote Conservative if it appears that will cause his resignation. Another strategic error on his part.
- Captain America
  
  UKIP is lacking a monetary reform policy, as do all the other parties, and without that no party can pull Britain out of the spiralling public debt.
  And no party wants to mention the prospect – inevitable – of the collapse of private pension funds, which would be the first to go, followed by insurances and banks, once the State started defaulting on government bonds.
  Britain’s version of the Greek financial crash is only down the road, and the same applies for most European countries. And no party wants to admit that the current financial system has to change.
  Some form of wealth redistribution, or default, or bail-in (Cyprus style), or a combination of all these, must be on the cards.
  Unless someone had a better idea, of-course.
  UKIP are as clueless as all the other parties on this.
  - Neil Saunders
    
    Bail-ins? You don’t work for a big bank, do you?
    - Captain America
      
      Britain’s public debt has doubled (exactly doubled) since the Coalition entered government in May 2010.
      This notwithstanding the massive spending cuts.
      And the public debt is set to increase steadily, at a rate by far higher than inflation (in fact inflation is now at almost 0%, but the public debt increase is about 18% a year).
      Even the QE money-printing out of thin air that the Bank of England carried out under Osborne’s Chancellorship a few years ago did not prevent the doubling of the public debt UK in solely five years.
      As no party has a clue how to intervene by way of a monetary policy, we must expect an imminent financial crash. So a bail-in is on the cards. And not only.
      - Guest
        
        file:///Banksters%20-%20Bail-In%20and%20the%20Financial%20Stability%20Board:%20The%20Global%20Bankers’%20Coup%20(Ellen%20Brown)%7C%20Max%20Keiser.webarchive
      - Guest
        
        Sorry for the bad link. Try this: http://ellenbrown.com/2014/12/01/new-rules-cyprus-style-bail-ins-to-hit-deposits-and-pensions/
      - Neil Saunders
        
        http://ellenbrown.com/2014/12/01/new-rules-cyprus-style-bail-ins-to-hit-deposits-and-pensions/
      - Captain America
        
        Yes in fact all bank accounts in Britain are secured for a maximum od around £87,000.
        This rule came in about 2 years ago if I’m not mistaken.
        A customer with various deposits in the same bank (or group of banks) will still be secured for that maximum figure as if all the accounts were one and the same.
        Fortunately, most people don’t have that much in their account(s), so the majority will not be affected.
        The link you posted to seems to imply that the same regulation has been adopted by some other countries too.
        
        I wonder if it would apply to Mrs. Windsor too.
      - Neil Saunders
        
        I sincerely doubt it, Captain!
      - Captain America
        
        If you don’t believe me, check the first page of your next bank statement. It is written there by default.
        It is written on all my bank statements.
  - stephengreen
    
    I like PositiveMoney myself, based on earlier more right leaning perspectives, but with better traction due to their more liberal left identity:
    
    http://www.positivemoney.org/2015/03/prominent-economists-advocate-different-type-quantitative-easing/
    
    If I was UKIP spokesman, I would pitch it as a Royal Commission to consider… not decided policy and also reference the fact that an analysis was supposedly done for a similar process (The Money Bomb – James Gibb Stuart) under Thatcher, who instead plumped in the end for mass privatization:
    
    http://prosperityuk.com/bromsgrove-conference/about-james-gibb-stuart-the-convener-of-bromsgrove/
    - Captain America
      
      OK I understand. Admittedly, a monetary reform is not going to be easy unless there is someone who really understands what needs doing.
      Even a royal commission would be clueless.
  - Dave R
    
    Indeed. When this mother blows, it will make the 2011 riots look like a pleasant dream.
    
    As its a when, not an if, the only question that remains is where you would rather be when the riots come again?
    
    In one of those bastion’s of labour liberalism, like Tottenham, or one of those pits of Racism like UKIPs Clacton.
    
    I think i’d feel safer beside the so called racists.
    - Captain America
      
      I was saying exactly the same thing today to someone: I made the comparison to the 2011 riots and how the London Police at first just stood there and did nothing, while the Government was on holiday in Spain, and that the situation only changed when the Kent Police Force moved into London – along with units from some other Forces outside London, and actively put down the riots with clubs and batons.
      The point I was making is that if the SHTF in the Gulf and the oil supply breaks down, along with gas, and trade crashes, and money-printed-out-of-thin-air is no longer accepted on the world market, and a few million people in Britain lose their jobs as a result, the minorities in London (they are actually a majority there) and some other big cities, will go on the riot, whereas in our area (Kent) we don’t have these minorities, so we won’t have that sort of reaction, but rather other areas will be calling for our Police to intervene, like in 2011 in London.
      - Dave R
        
        Yes…its was quite amazing to see how quickly people went from decrying a police state to demanding tanks on the street.
        
        The obvious solution is some kind of 2nd amendment legislation.
      - Captain America
        
        I would opt for a Home Guard, but one that does not swear an oath of allegiance to a private family. Only a pledge to serve the British People and uphold law and order.
        It would have defensive purposes for our Island Nation, and support the Police IF REQUIRED.
        A disciplined Home Guard could also prevent ugly scenes such as when people decide to either go on the rampage or take the law into their own hands.
- Ngaire Lowndes
  
  It’s just as well then that there’s a large group of extremely competent people backing Farage- Woolfe, Evans, Nuttall, Aker, Helmer, Bours, Finch to name but a few – who ARE extremely well-suited to the duller job of actual government.
  - stephengreen
    
    Yes, perhaps. But if those people have little room to assert themselves due to being either overshadowed or overruled, then it’s all for naught.
Gary Johnson

‘In fact the Greens are likely to have no MPs whatsoever after the next election — even the country’s most achingly hip electorate, right-on Brighton, has had enough of them.’
I do hope you are correct but Betfair currently have the Greens 2/5 to hold Brighton. A long way to go but Bookies are not often wrong.
- Icebow
  
  Brighton, that seething pit of queirdos. Our answer to San Francisco. Someone should stage a mock KKK rally through it, if not a real one.
  - Ngaire Lowndes
    
    They do, every year. Well, it’s Britain First/EDL/Patriot parties with many St. George’s flags, marching along the seafront, which attracts coachloads of ‘queirdos’ and rabid Lefties to oppose them, and gives every policeman in West Sussex a nice overtime opportunity.
    - Icebow
      
      Crikey! Thanks for that. Is it on some particular date?
  - Miss Floribunda Rose
    
    Queirdos?
    - Icebow
      
      Short for ‘queers and weirdos’.
FreeKip

The national polls have contracted, that is true, although not by much. What few seem to concentrate on are regional polls which show there is alot to play for, hence you dont see many Kippers in a panic.
At my council, we look to take 1/3 of the council seats where we currently have none and perhaps more than that even. Most of us consider this a dress rehersal and a general learning experience for many branches which are still very new.
From what I am hearing on the ground, UKIP are outperforming the main parties on leaflet delivery and are doing more to engage the voters that the other lot.
We havent disappeared, we are just quietly going about the business of talking to the voters direct, cutting out the media. Tends to work and the attack on Farage convinced alot of people to come across, usually old Labour, although why that in particular I dont know. Dont worry Rod old son, we havent gone anywhere and at the beginning of the short campaign we get equal coverage.
Barbara Garratt

The attempt to massage the poll figures is dismissively stupid. Only a complete idiot would take notice. Truth is they are still pulling 18% ! Nobody believes the spin.
JENNIFER BASTIN

We have to hope that media/news communication is fair and correct for all parties. To just alienate one party, whichever it might be is somewhat discriminatory. Hopefully reputable organisations such as The Spectator can adhere to this!
- Neil Saunders
  
  And pigs might fly.
  - Blakenburg
    
    Will they be Gloucester Old Spot ?
    - Neil Saunders
      
      If I were a gambling man, I’d say the odds were strongly against their being anything.
Neil Saunders

This is a concerted dirty-tricks campaign. I don’t like UKIP’s Thatcherite economics, but they are the only party who can destroy the Conservatives at the coming election. Until the Conservatives are destroyed, the present Neoconservative elected dictatorship will continue (austerity, bank bailouts, insane foreign wars, out-of-control immigration), irrespective of which mainstream party (even if shored up in coalition) is in power.
- MikeF
  
  I think what is really required is the destruction of the Labour Party. It could happen. It is already more or less wiped out in Scotland, something similar could happen in Wales, bien-pensants – as Rod would call them – may drift towards the Greens, Muslims nationally may start to act like those in Tower Hamlets and just maybe UKIP might bite into their ‘traditional’ vote in areas where the Labour hierarchy has shown it doesn’t mind young women from that older community being raped if that helps shore up for the moment at least a newer ethnic minority vote. It is an evil organisation – albeit with a few decent people in it – and it does not deserve to exist.
  - Neil Saunders
    
    Yes, but it can’t occur until the Cameron version of the Conservative Party is destroyed.
GraveDave

whenever the Ukip leader mused in moderate terms that he found it uncomfortable to sit on a train where he was the only person speaking English, the London media turned paroxysms of outrage

Emma West said out out loud on a bus and look what happened to her.
Thomas Evans

This is easily the most poorly written article I have seen this year.
Awful.
- alfredo
  
  Poorly written? You mean it’s poor English? I hadn’t noticed.
Alan

Those who decided to vote UKIP when they were looking stronger in polls will not be easily deflected. Labour voters are dwindling in number and will vote UKIP before Tory. I still think about eight seats in communities most affected by the immigration tsunami from Europe. I myself am ex-Labour…not voted for them since 1997 and NEVER will do so again.
- Guest
  
  The left abandoned the white working-classes. They must now pay a price for this betrayal. Of course, they were merely using them, just as they now use minority groups and immigrants, and for the same reason: Power.
Les Goodey

I don’t think so! UKIP are going to shock the corrupt establishment to the very core. The people of this country are sick to death of uncontrolled immigration, sick to death of positive discrimination against the British workers by the EU, only recently did they announce they are paying British companies to take foreign workers in preference. Our Schools, Hospitals and Social Services are swamped with Eastern Europeans and our jails and courts filled with their criminals. Time to get out of Europe, time to put a stop to this country being taken over by foreigners trying to change my country into theirs.
David

‘It will be good for a laugh to watch Natalie Bennett…failing to remember even
the important bits of her party’s manifesto commitments’. Yet you conveniently forget to include UKIP in that same bracket. At the last election, their leader, Lord Pearson, famously couldn’t name the policies in his own manifesto, while recently Farage, who stood for UKIP in that election, has similarly not been able to identify many of those policies (and has completely denounced many others). And of course, that manifesto included £100bn of unfunded spending.

If the media chooses not to treat UKIP as a serious party, that’s because it’s not one. It may be relatively popular at the moment, but that says a lot more about the other parties than it does about anything UKIP offers.
- hugh_36
  
  Nigel avoids that fate by not bothering with a manifesto, or simply over ruling anyone else’s opinion but his own
Conway

“In other words, it is not the regular Tory voters who Farage has won over, but the distrait floaters. My suspicion is that Ukip has taken just about all that it can from the Tory vote and that its most profitable target now is northern Labour voters.” I live in a true blue seat, Rod, but people who tell me that they are now going to vote UKIP usually add, “I always used to be Conservative”. That’s if they don’t tell me that they’ve always voted Labour, but the Labour party has done nothing for the working man. I have to say that all my LD friends are telling me that they will not vote LD again, so I’m not so sure that the LD vote will hold up that well.
Ngaire Lowndes

Now that’s really odd, because as a campaigner I’m finding that at least 35% of the people I speak to are strong supporters of UKIP and intend to vote for UKIP in May – they’re just keeping their heads down and not letting the meeja twist their opinions and words to add to this appalling negative propaganda!
Theresa Truelove

UKIP the peoples party is the best party this country has ever seen or will see channel 4 are total morons on par with BBC paid off for spreading lies & can you see my fingers up well on both hands to the total rubbish (well thats me be polite) most of the media prints due to being well being paid off by the other sinking parties they hate to refused large sums of money now is that not a fact for spurting their excrement in the their national papers & on their websites as if intelligent people take any notice we know the media are a load of filth so they can do their best to smear our great future leader Nigel Farage UKIP VOTE UKIP
- hugh_36
  
  What a strange world you must inhabit
  - Theresa Truelove
    
    OMG get a life Hughie but I feel that would not be feasible as you need more than just the one brain cell that is failing badly to make that achievable I think of you being deficient!!
    - hugh_36
      
      Insults are usually a sign you have lost, or fail to understand, the argument.
      - Cyril Sneer
        
        He raised a valid point – you don’t have two brain cells to rub together.
  - Cyril Sneer
    
    Oh dear how dare he vote for a party that you do not approve of.
    
    Forgive us for thinking that this used to be a free country.
Nigel Lander

Good article – but disagree with your closing statement. The polls are not to be believed, they are contrived by the way the questions are put. The undercurrent of support on social media for UKIP has unnerved the printed media control.
- Alexsandr
  
  you need to remember who pays the pollsters. the main stream media. hey will tell the pollsters to return results that fits their agenda.
  - hugh_36
    
    UKIP could always commission their own polls, but that would spoil the illusion and force people to face reality, never popular amoung it’s supporters.
    - vieuxceps2
      
      A poll by a party on itself would be worth how much…..?
      - hugh_36
        
        Lord Ashcroft regularly polls in marginal constituencies. He is a Tory but his polls are widely respected, not least because they can be uncomfortable for Tory high command.
- hugh_36
  
  No, the same small active group of people on social media and Comments pages like this are deluding themselves that they represent more than a small minority opinion.
  - Neil Saunders
    
    Are you an amateur fool or a professional liar?
    - hugh_36
      
      Social media is not the same as the real world, sorry
      - Neil Saunders
        
        I don’t understand. Please explain.
Blakenburg

Democracy must prevail, but no publicity for UKIP at this election. We cannot have the Electorate to be given the opportunity to vote UKIP. It is our game, so Nigel and his party can not play. signed…….Call me Dave.
hugh_36

UKIP is never out of the media, hardly a day goes by without some laughable self inflicted media disaster. But since UKIP has no policies beyond vague populist and often contradictory aspirations and Nigel doesnt trust anyone else to actually say anything there isn’t much else to write about.
- amandastarspangled
  
  Keep wearing those blinkers, baby. Don’t forget the nosebag, either.
Pauljames Mcelvaney

it is a gee up tbe brjtjdh want a huge one we can dk it we wi
l do it care fucking legion
- Nick
  
  Interesting!!
amandastarspangled

I look forward to Meet the Labourites — a documentary set in a certain east London constituency — perhaps while they are stuffing the ballot boxes, intimidating voters and carrying out the occasional bit of ad hoc female genital mutilation.
This should be posted in the House of Commons’s tea rooms.
—
If Ed Miliband becomes PM, there is NO WAY I am returning to England. He is like Arthur Scargill on uppers, only without the political judgement and personal charm. %^[
- ColinPowis
  
  Not to worry ; fear and loathing of the odious SNP is going to give Cameron his majority
JonBW

The antipathy of the media to UKIP is likely to work in their favour because it emphasises their opposition to the establishment.

Their problem is that whether they win 14% or 20% of the vote, the combined effect of the electoral system and a geographically dispersed support means that they won’t necessarily win seats.
Pacificweather

It doesn’t matter if your UKIP vote has no effect at the general election. Just because only 48% of votes are effective that is no reason not to go to the polling station and vote for your UKIP candidate. All the votes are counted and the final tally published so the country will know what support UKIP has in this country. We have seen how they got the majority of candidates elected when a democratic electoral system is used for the European Parliament election. The more votes UKIP gets the greater pressure can be generated for a democratic electoral system for the Wesminster elections. If this can be achieved the tales can be turned in 2020.
Nick

I agree with just about everything Rod Liddle says in his articles and he is nearly always right.

However,this time I hope he’s wrong.

And I will still most definitely vote UKIP in the GE.
Bonzo

Good article, Rod. Whether or not people support UKIP they should be concerned about the treatment of UKIP. If all parties were subjected to the same treatment by the media it wouldn’t be a problem. It worries me that the unelected, and largely unaccountable, media decide which parties should be attacked and which left, mostly, unscathed. It’s hard to see how a democracy can function well if the electorate are given such a one sided view.
The main reason UKIP have been criticised is their immigration policy but the majority support these views (see any opinion poll/survey). The Greens have the opposite view on immigration (Green policy MG203, MG300) but there has been no serious coverage of this.
It has always been the case that the media affect elections, why else do they all employ spin doctors, but each party has its own, largely balancing share of media supporters. The one sided treatment UKIP (who else in future?) has shown a major flaw in our democracy.
John Booth

Rod, I love reading your various columns and generally agree with you but not on this one. UKIP is certainly disappearing with regards to media coverage (unless it’s negative) and the MSM only show the polls which average out UKIP’s polling. But everywhere I go and who I talk to there is much higher support for UKIP than the average polls show and that you infer.

It is much more likely that people are keeping their true intentions to themselves. I believe you and the MSM are in for a real shock on May 7.
The Colonel

At last a very fair and even handed article,well done Rod Liddle.I still believe that UKIP will prosper over the next few weeks as OFSTED have granted them major party status.Given the TV air time that this supposedly guarantees Nigel Farage could still expose the two muppets that I witnessed on the Sky Tv debate last night.
jaz

Ukip long ago gave up being a party in the traditional sense of the word, it is something more akin to a cult, as is evidenced by the near messianic belief that people have in Farage. Like all cults it thrives on publicity, hence Ukip’s media strategy of keeping itself on page 1 by almost any means. For most parties losing three PPCs in a single day would be seen as a disaster, not so for Ukip and its supporters. For them anything can be painted in a good light. I once asked a Ukip supporter what would it take for him not to support Ukip and he couldn’t answer the question. That is a troubling sign.
There is a consistency in the polls that shows Ukip has peaked and support is plateauing. Given that, Ukip’s greatest hope is that it rearranges the losers’ list in 600+ constituencies. Right now (and things can change) Ukip looks on course for two, or possibly just one, seat.
- Tox66
  
  Perhaps the recalcitrant voter believes in UKIP and so doesn’t want to stop supporting them; perhaps also phrasing the question in terms of “what will it take for you to stop smoking/beating your wife/abusing children” terms annoyed him greatly. Who knows?
  - jaz
    
    Since you have been kind enough to reply, and forgive the presumption in assuming you may be a Ukip voter, but If you are a Ukip voter, what would it take for you not to vote for Ukip? Where is the line drawn for you? What would Ukip have to do to lose your support?
    - Tox66
      
      I am not a UKIP voter. But let me ask you why the inference in your question that voting UKIP is a transgressive act, one reluctantly undertaken until repelled?
      - jaz
        
        I was minded of Brian Redhead’s famous rebuff of Nigel Lawson for presuming to know how someone voted. I did not want to make the same mistake.
- Sean L
  
  As I understand it Ukip, consistent with its name, is the only party standing for the idea that this country should be self-governing. That such a party exists at all is bad enough, one might think, but if people regard that very idea as a ‘cult’, perhaps UK independence is indeed a lost cause. However that might be, it won’t stop those of use who think it’s right that this country should make its own laws promoting the idea of national autonomy, which, incidentally, we all tend to advocate by default for everyone else on earth. To that extent national self-determination, the nation state, is a *cult* that we’re all members of. But forgive me if I think the term applies more accurately to those who renounce their own national status, transferring legislature to an unaccountable, unhistorical bureaucratic entity commanding the allegiance of none of those it purports to govern. .
  - jaz
    
    I think the UK national interest is better served inside the EU than outside, but I have no issue whatsoever with people who believe the opposite. If that was all Ukip was, then it would be a party like many others. The reason I say Ukip has become a cult is that many of its members project onto it aspirations far beyond its original purpose. You only have to read the pro-Ukip comments on sites like this, the Daily Mail and the truly execrable Breitbart to see that for many (but by no means all) it has become something far more. The language that is used, the projections on to it, the near messianic belief in Farage. These are all hallmarks of something more akin to a cult than a political party.
    - Sean L
      
      Well opposition to ‘Europe’ was originally Labour Party policy. As to national interest, the ability to make one’s own laws is surely constitutive of what a nation *is*. Thsu EU membership is a renunciation of national status. It might be that it’s in our economic interest, that’s to say we’d be less well off outside it. But it’s also arguable that that could be achieved by an economic alliance, which is what people originally consented to when they vote to join the Common Market, as it was then known, rather than the kind of federal government that’s actually come to pass.
      - jaz
        
        All of which are perfectly reasonable arguments. However what I have observed with many of Ukip’s vociferous supporters is that it long ago moved way beyond such arguments. Ukip adopted the dog-whistle politics of immigration and many of its supporters have used that to give voice to profoundly unpleasant xenophobic and bigoted remarks.
        My main objection to Ukip isn’t its support for an exit from the EU, it is the utterly divisive natured of its politics, fostering disharmony and exacerbating “us” vs “them” politics.
      - Sean L
        
        Well politics by definition resolves into questions of allegiance, of *them* v *us*, of whose side you’re on. Perhaps you’re thinking of how *we* are defined. But it’s beyond question that there are those in our midst whose *us* excludes indigenous Britons. And the comments you object to are a reaction to that division rather than a cause of it. But how ought they to react to such hostility emanating from those who’ve settled in their homeland? By renouncing their own allegiance? Surely it’s beyond perverse to take sides *against* the indigenous people on grounds of divisive politics. After all one would never condone such colonialism as they’re reacting to elsewhere. So why on earth here? Because of “racism”? But one could equally argue that they are victims of racism as much as perpetrators of it. If people come here and don’t want to belong, are even hostile to this place and its people, the responsibility for division surely lies with them rather than with those among whom they’ve come, whom for the most didn’t even invite them here . . .
      - jaz
        
        I disagree. Ukip’s new strategy is pretty clear. Ukip is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid and telling you who’s to blame. Yes there are people that have settled here who hate our country, but they are a tiny minority. Let’s deal with them rather than castigating all immigrants. Look at the contribution immigrants can make. 60% of the top US technology businesses have migrant founders. In the UK migrant entrepreneurs are behind one in seven of all UK companies.
        
        No one is suggesting that dealing with these things is easy, but Ukip offers simplistic solutions to complex problems. It seeks to blame immigration for everything (Farage blamed being late to a meeting on immigrants). It engages in dog-whistle politics. That is what I mean by divisive politics. That is what I find so abhorrent.
      - Sean L
        
        The argument is about *immigration* not the immigrants themselves. To construe any discussion of the negative effects of immigration as an attack on immigrants themselves, who are blameless, immigration being entirely our responsibility, or at least successive governments’, is an egregious distortion and evasion. My own wife is a black African immigrant who thinks there are far too many foreigners here, as do many non-whites, whether born here or not. If I agree with them that doesn’t make me a bigot any more than Nigel Farage or the bulk of Ukip supporters. The bigotry is mostly in the other direction. Ukip are generally victims of bigotry.
      - rastech
        
        Trade Agreements are a scam that allows career politicians and bureaucracy to impose themselves and get a ‘cut’ from economic activity.
        
        It is gangsterism and racketeering.
        
        All a Nation needs to do, to encourage or discourage (there are things you may not want imported or exported for the National good) trade, is set relevant duties and occasionally prohibitions.
        
        Trade is business to business, and people to people. Government interfering messes it up, and pushes up prices to the customer unnecessarily.
        
        It’s like taxing businesses, when businesses don’t pay tax. Customers pay taxes for them via higher prices. Then sales taxes are added to prices already inflated due to taxes, so people pay even more for their goods and services.
        
        It’s bonkers, and only ends up killing the geese that lay the golden eggs (and destroys vast numbers of jobs in the process). Then what?
      - Sean L
        
        I completely agree. But you could argue that government itself is a kind of scam. Not in principle but in practice.
    - rastech
      
      By every definition, the EU is a lawless State (embracing the proven lie and despotic tyranny of Divine Right, where “The Law is what ‘we’ say it is”).
      
      The only safe dealings you can have with a lawless State, because no Treaty, Agreement, Understanding, or even business contract, is worth the paper it is written on, is no dealings at all. Have you really failed to notice that the EU will consistently ignore even its own laws, just for convenience?
      
      Why would you want Britain to be dominated by a lawless State (and we have been turned into one as well). rather than embrace the security of our Rights, Liberties, and Freedoms, being protected by the Rule of Law?
      
      Lawless States always inevitably fail, that failure is usually catastrophic, and usually accompanied by great bloodshed.
      
      Do you REALLY want the Nations of Europe to suffer such a fate? EVERY member Nation needs to leave the EU, yesterday, if not sooner, and not just us.
      
      This insanity is going to blow spectacularly and do incredible damage to Europe in the process, if the People of Europe allow the EU to continue.
    - Jerome Leroy
      
      Oh here it is, the “reformist”.
      
      Most federalists who can’t argue to remain in the EU fall back to this position.
      
      Fking nutter.
- Tom
  
  You say what would it take not to vote UKIP in my case i can’t think of one and the reason is not what UKIP would or wouldn’t do it the other parties.
  They are all embroiled in corruption why would i vote Labour with the likes of Rotherham laid at their door.
  Conservatives and their desperation to keep the lid on Elm House also Libdems.
  They are the reasons i couldn’t ever vote again for those parties and if UKIP turned out as corrupt as them then i guess i would not vote for them either.
  - jaz
    
    That seems an entirely fair answer – if Ukip turned out as corrupt you would not vote for them. There is the answer. But I have met, both online and for real, people who cannot answer the question. I find that troubling.
    - Jerome Leroy
      
      What would it take for you to note vote for the party of choice? I think you are crazy if you vote for Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Green.
      
      Very worrying times that people can’t handle other peoples selection on a ballot box, and “the left” are the ones who are tolerant of others opinions? bahahahahahaha
- Penny
  
  “I once asked a Ukip supporter what would it take for him not to support
  Ukip and he couldn’t answer the question. That is a troubling sign”
  
  I’m not sure this is a “troubling sign”, jaz. To my mind it’s an odd question and I would be flummoxed if asked to respond to it – not because I’d been sucked in by a cult but because the question has way too many possible and diverse answers. Put on the spot I’m not sure a supporter of any political party could answer it – not because their support is unconditional, but because the possible reasons for withdrawing support from a political party are endless.
- Jerome Leroy
  
  Erm, so what about Tory voters who vote against Labour and vice versa? (tribal) isn’t that a “worrying trend” which has been happening since world war 2? oh because one UKIP voter couldn’t answer you they are going to dominate the UK narrative and put stars on eastern europeans.
  
  The heart of the anti UKIP hyperbole is fascinating.
CrankyMiddleAgedGuy

Isn’t anyone considered this is deeply undemocratic?
Would people be so sanguine if the newspapers decided to ignore everything the Conservatives or Labour (select your party) said?
James

I thought I’d back UKIP before the debate but, after watching the debate my mind was even more convinced and today we as a family signed up for membership to become official kippers.

Why did Paxman not ask why Lib/Lab/Con started campaigns saying they would not privatise NHS and now the cat is out the bag and we know they’ve done it behind our backs. If that is not bad enough, they told us that UKIP would privatise the NHS, which simply isn’t true.

Miliband says being in the EU will help solve the environment – this is the same EU who published environmental strategy in accordance with the corporate lobby and now our environmental plans are weaker than China’s coal. Across Europe, privatised water supply is pouring out unknown chemicals and causing environmental hazards.

Enough of these criminals who get sponsored to take office. Vote UKIP to put an end to puppet governance.
James

BTW, anyone who views the polls, especially the poll of polls, be wary. The company that formulate them is run by Tony Blair’s old political strategists – as well as providing election polls they have a special niche according to their website – segregating the electorate.
Tom

Not a bad analysis until the last paragraph.
Much of UKIP’s support is already entrenched and will not be swayed by the MSM propaganda machine.
Also from Monday aren’t UKIP getting the same exposure as the legacy parties which is when the vast majority of the public will start to pay attention.
realarthurdent

Once the short campaign starts, the broadcasters need to be even-handed in their coverage of UKIP, by law.

Also Farage has two election “debates” in which to make his mark.
In addition, the electorate will be sick of the sight of Cameron and Miliband and sick of hearing them iie and avoid the question every day for the next month.

I suspect we will see a surge in UKIP support as we approach polling day.
Northerner1001

I confidently predict UKIP won’t gain a single seat from Labour at this general election but they’ll get 12% of the vote, 4 MPs maximum & cost the tories dear so thanks UKIP 🙂
- Notrut .
  
  UKIP will take umpteen seats from Labour, hopefully Ned Milibore’s too …
  
  1997 to 2010 Labour lost 4.9M voters.
  
  The trend continues at by-elections …
  
  4,596 Labour voters lost in Newark.
  
  4,726 Labour voters lost in Wythenshawe.
  
  6,842 Labour voters lost in Clacton.
  
  6,866 Labour voters lost in Heywood.
  
  6,938 Labour voters lost in Rochester.
  
  Quite an alarming trend?
  An average drop of 5,993 per constituency.
  
  Labour’s woes are further compounded by their failing
  popularity in Scotland, a large group of Labour MPs throwing in the towel
  7/5/15, and a perilous group who are already on very low majorities …
  
  00,042 Glenda Jackson
  
  00,192 Gloria De Piero
  
  00,192 John Denham
  
  00,504 Geraint Davies
  
  00,641 Diane Johnson
  
  00,649 Ian Austin
  
  00,714 Austin Mitchell
  (A majority 15,530 lower than his 1997 peak)
  
  00,889 Simon Danczuk
  
  01,101 Ed Balls (When first elected his majority was 10,002)
  
  01,552 Paul Farelly (A majority down from 35% to 3.6%)
  
  01,613 Mary Creagh
  
  01,663 Clive Efford
  
  01,772 Lilian Greenwood
  
  01,852 Gordon Marsden
  
  01,859 Vernon Coaker
  
  02,445 Natascha Engel (Down to 5% from 29%)
  
  02,524 Sadiq Khan (Less than half what he started with)
  
  03,595 Caroline Flint (A majority 11,064 lower than her 1997 peak)
  
  Oh Dear … I almost feel sorry for you!
  
  Labour are a spent relic from the Industrial Revolution.
  - Northerner1001
    
    ahem those were byelections for starters where turnouts come into play & Labour held everyone this parliament they were defending bar Bradford West & it wasn’t UKIP taking that……..Name a seat or seats you think UKIP will win from Labour! Either put up or shut up 🙂
    - Notrut .
      
      HaHa, somebody’s rattled?
      
      You know fine well Great Grimsby will topple to UKIP.
      
      Followed by many of the MPs’ constituencies named above.
      
      Not forgetting the Labour territories BETRAYED by Labour administrations who have failed en masse to protect girls.
      
      Why is every sex pest revelation in a Labour Council?
      
      I don’t even think your leader is safe.
      
      Milibore has already reduced Doncaster North’s Labour majority from 15K to 10K. The area has had an influx of 12,000 migrants and Unemployment is running at above the UK average. Add to that the corruption scandal of recent years in the Labour Council, and the fact Milibore spends more time in Israel than he does in Doncaster, things look decided dodgy for Neddy …
      
      UKIP will also do well in the ex-Labour Welsh Valleys.
      
      Are you going to spit your dummy out again?
- Jerome Leroy
  
  Congratulations, you can read the polls and type in the comments section on a website.
  
  Would you like a medal?
terence patrick hewett

Anyone with a smartphone knows that UKIP spoilers have been going in at a rate of 20:1 day on day for the last 6 months. I have ceased to read them.
Westminster Weasel Watch

UKIP have troops on the ground, end of story. Harder the battle sweeter the victory.
John Andrews

I agree with Rod that UKIP is being excluded from media coverage. And I agree with the below commentators that this will have no affect on UKIP voters.
milford

‘Channel 4’s considered and intelligent analysis’ He has got to be joking.
Netenyahu was apparently finished according to UK media. Shows how much their fingers are on the pulse, they just talk through their collective you-know-what.
Zed largo

What a load of establishment-rag rubbish this is. Of course this bloke Liddle hopes UKIP has gone away, because that’s what he and his mates are conspiring to achieve by taking Frage out of the media. They tried to shame and humiliate him. And it failed, so now they’re trying to ignore him. Both strategies will fail. What I despise most about the establishment media sycophants is their bullying and antidemocractic tactics. They lie through their teeth, deceive, corrupt and poison anything or anybody to preserve their power of influence, their fat salaries and their privilege. How easy it would be to take arms against such a sea of troubles as the culture that feeds people like Liddle.
Bry

The best thing for UKIP is a Labour Government, that means UKIP can attack the Labour heartland in earnest for the 2020 election. UKIP will win some seats at this election anything above 6 would be awesome although unexpected. However watch the huge number of second places. UKIP are without doubt drawing the vast majority of voters from blue collar votes, this is without question UKIP’s tactics attack Labour with all its might. Remember the UKIP war chest will be much larger going into 2020, elections are expensive UKIP have not the resources at present.

Cameron has to watch his own back with the Tory right looking for any sign of him not honoring a referendum or indeed coming back with mere scraps from Merkels EU.

The future is bright and one day it will be purple.
Mode4

I believe Rod is right, I’ve noticed the lack of coverage of any party except Ed and Dave. Occasions slurs and hysteria against Nicola which we expect. It’s a deliberate policy by the media to shut out any party except Labour or the Tories. Farage would have to do something very negative to get a headline. I’m not sure whether kippers votes are losing ground though. I believe there are many voters who don’t own up to supporting UKIP and Labour and the Tories may be in for a shock in May.
logdon

Read the comments here, on the Telegraph and Mail sites and Breitbart. That’s a lot of coverage.

If Rod is right it ain’t working is all I can say.
Richmond clements

“Nobody south of Gretna Green wants to hear the views of that bizarrely arrogant munchkin Nicola Sturgeon. ”

Wow. Not sure if that’s racism, sexism or just plain old disgustingly rude. Either way, you’re a horrible, blackhearted piece of work.
- Notrut .
  
  No, he’s right.
  
  Mrs Krankie is an MSP, not an MP.
  
  She represents Glasgow Southside with a 4,349 majority.
  
  12,306 people of Glasgow Southside voted for her.
  40,148 people of Glasgow Southside didn’t …
  
  Her stated intention to influence the UK post election is utter quackery.
dalifarmer

how can the media print good stories about ukip if there are non,
look at that shambles the other day, how can you trust a man who’s kids will not and run away, not expect him to protect them,
a man who rushes off with out his kids while he does not know where they are,
a man whos story changes were there just his 2, or was there another 2 kids with them, or was it that its like some people said he was there on his own
yes what they did to him was wrong but in my books what he did across his kids, he does not deserve the title dad
- Cyril Sneer
  
  I’m a father, and in that situation I would’ve sent the kids out the back door (they were dining with friends) whilst I went out the front door to face the vile crowd of apes outside.
  
  And that is precisely what happened.
  
  You’re obviously not a father because if you were you would not have produced that slanderous garbage.
  
  The police picked up one his children down the road from the pub – they had escaped out the back door.
  
  And you’re still attempting to make out that Farage was on his own – it’s been know since day one that the police picked up one of his children, that they were dining with friends and that his kids left our the back door whilst Farage faced the mob outside.
  
  This has been known all this time and yet you’d rather continue to lie and smear.
Pete North

Ukip deserved to fail.

http://howtobeacompletebastard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/so-long-ukip-and-thanks-for-all-laughs.html
- Notrut .
  
  24 MEPs, 150+ Councillors and 2 MPs is success, not failure.
  
  Farage has turned UKIP around in only 52 months.
  
  The failure to understand, is yours.
  - Pete North
    
    And what has that accomplished apart from a steady decline and an ungovernable party incapable of winning the arguments or surviving beyond it’s leader?
    - Notrut .
      
      All parties start with an embryo.
      You might not like it, but Farage has pushed the agenda and set the ball rolling, until 4.3M voted UKIP in the EU elections.
      The acorn is now a sapling.
      Which is how the Labour Party started in 1900 …
      I’m wondering where your ‘steady decline’ is matey?
      - Pete North
        
        zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
      - Notrut .
        
        Ah, the usual retort of loons without a counter-argument.
      - Pete North
        
        No, there’s just no point interacting with a true believer. I could explain to you in detail with multiple references as to why Ukip has failed and is damaging every cause you believe in, but in your fog of incomprehension you will lash out as all kippers do, and place your head back up your bottom. Unless it’s written in capslock and green ink, Kippers just don’t want to know. Thus I don’t want to know kippers or read their shallow, empty, stupid arguments.
      - Notrut .
        
        Ah, now I get it, you’re one of the miffed LGBT, right?
        
        ‘Thus I don’t want to know kippers or read their shallow, empty, stupid arguments.’
        … and yet you did read and reply with a shallow string of zzzzzzzzzzzz.
      - Jerome Leroy
        
        Nah, UKIP didn’t like him and now he’s like a feminist blogger calling people names on the internet because they declare allegiance for the party who didn’t take him in.
      - Jerome Leroy
        
        Can you kindly fuck off calling people names on reddit please?
freethinker14

Another journalist who thinks the Westminster village is representative of the country.
The Prez

I’ll certainly still be voting UKIP.
UKSteve

By coincidence, yesterday we saw the publication of the British Social Attitudes Survey, which very much confirms the YouGov findings. It has 57 percent wanting to continue with EU membership, with only 35 percent wanting to withdraw. “

“As it stands, support for Ukip is currently declining – down to 12 percent according to YouGov and a mere ten percent according to ComRes in the Daily Mail.”

Lost the single argument you were pursuing, looking a like a bunch of expenses cheats and out-and-out racists, oh yeah, I bet they’re queueing up now to vote UKIP. Pfff!
- GettyRos
  
  By the time you take the not sure votes into account, your figures are inconclusive!!!! and were Northern Ireland voters included in this poll?
  - UKSteve
    
    What utter nonsense; polling is not your strong point, obviously.
    
    Why don’t you e-mail and ask them who they polled?
- Notrut .
  
  No one believes YouGov but you!?
  
  It’s the Labour Party propaganda machine of Mr Baroness Ashton.
  
  Backed up by Channel4, which has a Chairman given a Peerage by Blair.
  
  Wake up Steve to the mass mind manipulation.
  - UKSteve
    
    “No one believes YouGov but you!?”
    
    What a daft comment.
    
    Having watched political polls / the media for 40 years, I don’t really need to be advised to take them with caution. As I’ve been saying for years ‘polls put Neil Kinnock in Downing St.’
    
    I wish I had a quid for every time some UKIP muppet pointed to a Survation poll and inferred Farage would be PM. ROTFLMAO.
    
    With a trailing wind, UKIP could win 4 seats, with 2 already taken. No policies, no structure, no leadership, no bl0ody clue.
    
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11506884/Nigel-Farage-Britons-so-ill-at-ease-with-immigrants-their-children-cannot-play-in-the-streets.html
    - Notrut .
      
      After the GE you can take up the argument with Killner about YouGov’s error …
      I’m not predicting Farage as PM. But 20-50 seats is easily do-able.
      - UKSteve
        
        20 – 50??? ROTFLMAO.
        
        Most people don’t see you getting 5. So I’ll ask you (not holding my breath) – which seats are you going to win?
      - Notrut .
        
        The ones Labour and the Tories lose.
      - UKSteve
        
        Yep that’s exactly the level of intelligence I expected in a reply from a Ukipper.
        
        A cabbage could have given a more intelligent response.
      - Notrut .
        
        I expect UKIP to plunder these Labour marginal seats …
        
        00,042 Glenda Jackson
        00,192 Gloria De Piero
        00,192 John Denham
        00,504 Geraint Davies
        00,641 Diane Johnson
        00,649 Ian Austin
        00,714 Austin Mitchell (A majority 15,530 lower than his 1997 peak)
        00,889 Simon Danczuk
        01,101 Ed Balls (When first elected his majority was 10,002)
        01,552 Paul Farelly (A majority down from 35% to 3.6%)
        01,613 Mary Creagh
        01,663 Clive Efford
        01,772 Lilian Greenwood
        01,852 Gordon Marsden
        01,859 Vernon Coaker
        02,445 Natascha Engel (Down to 5% from 29%)
        02,524 Sadiq Khan (Less than half what he started with)
        03,595 Caroline Flint (A majority 11,064 lower than her 1997 peak)
        Easy Peasy.
        
        I’ll give you the Tory marginals soon …
Harry Dresden

This is what happens when you “remove the corrupting influence of money from politics”. You end up with a country where the news media/news corporations have too much power because they are the only ones authorized to have a megaphone on political issues. These are just some thoughts from an American who thinks the news media in his own country is trying to pull a fast one with their constant bashing of the Citizens United ruling.
John Booth

Rubbish. I’m still voting UKIP. Doesn’t matter what smears and untruths you print, nothing will change my mind.
- UKSteve
  
  More of the same, then.
me

Farage, is purposely leaving his campaign until the last minute! Ukip supporters are NOT stupid! We do realise that we will not get into no.10, the whole point is that we WILL get the seats and the voice of the working classes, will once again be heard. Something that the present and passed governments have neglected to consider!
alainfahri

What would happen if Jeremy Clarkson backed UKIP one week before registering to vote closes on 20 April, and urged those who do not vote that this time it really could be different.
- Notrut .
  
  He’s Tory through and through. He advocates staying in the EU. No thanks.
alainfahri

Apparently Fleet Street haberdashers have almost sold out of brown trousers.
GettyRos

Still, never mind…….what is it like to be living on another planet? Whilst the media and the cosy little clique called LiblabCon might well be trying to throw scorn on UKIP, it is not working. Myself, friends and family are voting UKIP and so are many more voters whom I have been speaking to, out and about in public meeting places. UKIP has more to offer other than just controlled immigration and this is what Lib/Lab/Con are so worried about. Even Labour are now talking about controlled immigration……..where did that come from!?

The disappearing party, we most certainly are not. We may not win many seats this time around, but, by the time the next government have completely ruined this country, we will still be there, waiting in the wings. with possibly a new leader and even more members. Watch this space…….we are not going down without fighting for our country!!!
fim

Very clever article……………The writer makes out his anti-media, and how he’s against it. You know, all this manipulation…………….But then he puts the boot in at the end, by sowing seeds of doubt in your mind, that NO ONE is going to vote UKIP……………Nearly everyone I talk to can see the biased manipulation of the BBC, CHANNEL 4, the press and sites like this one…….IT DOES NOT WORK……………………UKIP WILL POLE 18% to 22%………….And hold over 10 seats…………..

CHANGE.ORG

https://www.change.org/p/bbc-involve-ukip-in-the-special-question-time-episode-on-30th-april#petition-letter

BBC: Involve UKIP in the “special” Question Time episode on 30th April.

On March 16th 2015 the government approved broadcast media regulator Ofcom Confirmed that the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Was a major political party

The BBC announced today a series of debates which would take place in the run up to the General Election on May 7th, this includes a “special” Question Time episode presented by David Dimbleby on 30th April

Although the BBC have invited UKIP to other programs they have not included UKIP’ in a “special” question time episode airing on 30th April opting only to invite Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and David Cameron.This is a completely unjustified decision that gives the 3 other political parties an upper hand against UKIP and is a betrayal to British voters. UKIP won the 2014 European elections this alone proves that the British Public believe in what UKIP stands for, the BBC are turning a blind eye to this and of Ofcom’s confirmation that UKIP is a major political party.

I urge you to sign this petition if you too believe that the BBC’s actions are wholly unacceptable and that UKIP should be invited to this “special” Question Time episode and any other programming format where Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and David Cameron are invited.
fim

Very clever article……………The writer makes out his anti-media, and how he’s against it. You know, all this manipulation…………….But then he puts the boot in at the end, by sowing seeds of doubt in your mind, that NO ONE is going to vote UKIP……………Nearly everyone I talk to can see the biased manipulation of the BBC, CHANNEL 4, the press and sites like this one…….IT DOES NOT WORK……………………UKIP WILL POLE 18% to 22%………….And hold over 10 seats…………..

CHANGE.ORG

https://www.change.org/p/bbc-i…

BBC: Involve UKIP in the “special” Question Time episode on 30th April.

On March 16th 2015 the government approved broadcast media regulator Ofcom Confirmed that the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Was a major political party

The BBC announced today a series of debates which would take place in the run up to the General Election on May 7th, this includes a “special” Question Time episode presented by David Dimbleby on 30th April

Although the BBC have invited UKIP to other programs they have not included UKIP’ in a “special” question time episode airing on 30th April opting only to invite Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and David Cameron.This is a completely unjustified decision that gives the 3 other political parties an upper hand against UKIP and is a betrayal to British voters. UKIP won the 2014 European elections this alone proves that the British Public believe in what UKIP stands for, the BBC are turning a blind eye to this and of Ofcom’s confirmation that UKIP is a major political party.

I urge you to sign this petition if you too believe that the BBC’s actions are wholly unacceptable and that UKIP should be invited to this “special” Question Time episode and any other programming format where Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and David Cameron are invited.
fim

Question Time with David Dimbleby on 30th April

BBC REFUSE TO INCLUDE UKIP’ in a “special” question time episode airing on 30th April opting only to invite Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and David Cameron.

IS THIS DEMOCRACY

BBC are turning a blind eye to this and of Ofcom’s confirmation that UKIP is a major political party.

Sign the petition

CHANGE.ORG

change.org/p/bbc-involve-ukip-in-the-special-question-time
Charles Patrick O’Brien

Its proof that the press manipulate public opinion to a degree.That degree could be as much as 20% of those who vote for a party or a candidate on a whim,the ones that never put much,if any,thought into why they should vote for selected person,as eenie meenie minie mo does not make for good politics,great for the pollsters.As I have witnessed over the years certain folk “read” or look at pictures,in certain types of “newspapers using the word newspapers very loosely.The press Barons can be asked to help out a friend or party,and of course they will,for a fee payable later and amount or what to be determined.The Scottish referendum was one of I’d say disgraceful proportions,as there was none to take the independence side(OK six weeks to go Sunday Herald did) two years of constant bombardment will all sorts showed how the people can have fear put into them.Now we have UKIP being denied the oxygen of publicity smacks of anti -democratic stance by the entrenched two big parties,just confirms my righteous contempt for Westminster.
Colin

Perhaps Rod Liddle hasn’t been casting an eye over The Daily Express (and who would want to) lately. Dirty Des has been UKIP’s biggest media cheerleader. The BBC (you know, ‘Britain Broadcasting Communism’ in case you idiots who like to use the phrase ‘Cultural Marxism’ in any media related comment are reading this) were almost the broadcast wing of UKIP during the European elections. So what is Rod ‘I want to be the new Clarkson’ Liddle moaning about? Tory media moguls back the tories instead of UKIP… I wonder if he’s going to tells us where bears shit next?
gateway147

The problem is as I see it is: to vote UKIP will let Labour in i.e. A Socialist Marxist Tribe, who will continue to do what Blair, Brown & Balls instigated; during Labour`s13 years in Govt of despair which includes Labour wrecking the economy; opening our borders to uncontrolled immigration; in the hope of increasing Labour Votes? Labour will be in no doubt if they are given the chance, continue to lengthen dole queues; which will hit the most vulnerable in society i.e. Britains ill educated `Underclass`..as the last Labour Govt did. Labour would also wreck the economy and bankrupt the country; because Ed Balls and Miliband are clueless about business? Labour under the direction of `Cruddas` began to speak more about patriotism and the English identity; while continuing to open our borders to uncontrolled immigration; without consulting the British people? Putting unacceptable pressures on Britain’s State Schools, Housing, NHS and Social Services…. Blair less we forget took us to war in Iraq?
Less we forget it was Labour’s Social Engineering Policies; which achieved to put Britain`s `Forgotten Underclass` facing long term Unemployment…to live their wasted uneducated lives on benefits; which only achieved to put this `Discriminated Social Class Group` Further Down
The Food Chain? Which makes me ask: At what cost to Britain`s Taxpayers.. To:Provide Social, Education, Housing, Health Care: to Integrate Immigrant’s into Britain? At what cost at a time of Mass Unemployment, among Britain`s `ill Educated, Jobless and Benefit Claiming Underclass` who in 2015 continue to be reduced to living on: Britain’s: Crime Ridden Social Concrete Housing Estates? Which Makes me question: whether the money Labor spent to bring people into the country; should have been spent on `Improving: The Housing, Education, and Economic Outcomes of Britain`s Underclass? Here I am describing: Social, Education and Economic Failures…. On A Grand Scale: which makes me continue to question Labors: Ed Miliband, Ed Balls & Liam Burn: who said there is no money left; their and Labours competence and suitability to govern?
gateway147

I won’t be voting UKIP although they are the only Party who are offering a lifeline to Britains disaffected and forgotten underclass; because they haven’t got a hope of getting into Govt. We can only hope that a negative outcome.. will be the same for `Wolves In Sheeps Clothing Labor`
- ArchiePonsonby
  
  So you only vote for parties who have a chance of forming a government? Tell me, how does the country look after sixty-odd years of them?
Mr B J Mann

The worst thing about the Channel 4 “documentary” was that it finished at 10:05, which is why I caught the last five minutes of it when I turned on the TV for the 10:00 o’clock news.

How many other people turned on the TV and thought they were watching the 10:00 o’clock news?!

Especially as it ended with an invitation to listen to the “full interview” (I think it said) on-line?!?!?!?
Terry Field

As a self-chosen emigrant, the condition of Britain and its absurd ersatz democracy confirms my instincts to leave were right.
It is not just UKIP that has been buried by the Goebbels-like media and the sea of authorised misinformation from the corrupted main-party system, it is the ludicrous misrepresentation of the economic realities that amazes. Fantasyland rules.
Take one simple example.
The reduced oil price and the lower rates that try to track this synthetic ‘deflation’ gives the treasury a 50 billion cost of debt finance gain.
The reality for the not too distant future, however, would strongly indicate a reversal of this condition, and a significant uptick in the cost of debt finance.
A modest, half-point rise would add 80 billions in debt service charges; a one percent rise, would result in 160 billions.
This, however, is lost on the Guardianised economically illiterate fools who edit the questions put to the party ‘leaders’. The obsession of today is the 12 billion welfare cuts so far undefined by ‘the tories’, or the 30 billion unspecified by ‘the labour’.
Try chewing on a simple and probable near-term rise in debt finance that takes the equivalent of health, defence and education as an INCREMENT in costs p.a.!!!!!!
Not one of the third rate dummies running the humorously absurd political slots on the main media even mention any of this.
You have to read serious sources, like the FT and the WSJ to draw the veil of insanity back a tiny touch.
The vox pop questions focus on the terminally thick, the stupefyingly unaware, the economically illiterate and the corrupted and bought.
The only surprise is the seemingly limitless numbers of them.
A kind of zombie army.
Scary Movie 3.
The litany of stupidity spewed across our drooling minds by these absurd channels guarantees instant idiocy; with the best will in the world, even the sharpest mind goes catatonic when drenched in this crap.
The well-reported 10% drop in measured IQ over the last 100 years is thus explained.
Cretinism by TV journalist pollution.
Ahh but you all worry about ‘the NHS’!
Keep worrying. It is dreadful and soviet now; it will continue in that state.
Enjoy!!
Nicetime

After listening to the Today program’s ridiculous interview with Farage yesterday, there’s no doubt that Liddle is right, and that there is an agenda to demonise UKIP. The problem is that these bien pensant progressive liberal hypocrites are the gatekeepers of public discourse. You can’t oppose gar marriage, you can’t think that Ched Evans is being hounded unjustly, you can’t feel uncomfortable being the only white person on the bus driving through your home town…. Any attempt to discuss and rationalise these issues has to go through the liberal gatekeepers who will distort and misrepresent it. Exactly the same thing happened with the Tea Party in the US, despite the counterweight of Fox News and Talk Radio. It bewilders and frustrates the hell out of me that people can’t see who their enemies are, who is patronising them and who is speaking for them. However, there is one hope on the horizon, electoral reform. If this election produces a big enough and unjust enough mess, it may be that, despite the media, the only thing preventing UKIP ‘doing an SNP’, is a fairer voting system. I particularly enjoy asking lefties who crow about UKIP’s declining support whether they would be happy seeing this election held under AV

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