A “Seismic Shock is coming to the British political system.
Douglas Carswell, a prominent Conservative MP has announced he is switching to UKIP. a new political party that has been attacked as “racist” and has been attracting a larger constituency from the British traditional voters.
A new political party has appeared in Britain called UK Independent Party. It has been called racist and a number of other things that might sound familiar to Tea Party members here.
For example:
News reports about the rising primary school population in England fail to mention the ‘elephant in the room’, said MEP Paul Nuttall.
“It is accepted that primary schools have increasing numbers of pupils, which causes all manner of problems, but what is frequently not referred to is why we have such a boom in numbers.
“And the answer is unlimited immigration into this country. It hits some areas harder than others but there cannot be many primary schools in the country which have not been affected at all,” said Mr Nuttall, UKIP Education spokesman.
Why is this controversial ? In the 1990s, the Labour Party opened the floodgates of immigration from Pakistan. The Conservatives have mentioned reducing this but have done little about it.
Steven Woolfe, UKIP Migration spokesman, attacks Conservatives for ‘lying to electorate’ on promises to cut migration, adding that ‘it is no wonder their own MPs are losing faith in them and they are haemorrhaging support to UKIP.’
“These shocking figures today show that the Government does not have a handle on immigration. The Conservative Party promised to cut net migration to tens of thousands and yet it has shot up by a staggering 68,000 in just one year. It is quite simple. They lie to the electorate. They lie to try to keep votes. Well they are being found out.
This is one reason why UKIP is hated. For example, of the 1400 young girls made sex slaves by “Asian” men, several were taken from foster parents because they had voted for UKIP.
A couple had their three foster children taken away by a council on the grounds that their membership of the UK Independence Party meant that they supported “racist” policies. The husband and wife, who have been fostering for nearly seven years, said they were made to feel like criminals when a social worker told them that their views on immigration made them unsuitable carers.
Sounds like the Tea Party to me.
Also, The UKIP is opposed to the EU. Horrors !
UKIP leader Nigel Farage has stepped up his criticism of EU foreign policy for destabilising countries on Europe’s doorstep and further afield.
Mr Farage said: “We are seeing vanity take the place of reason in foreign policy and the result is to destabilise a whole series of countries to no positive effect that I can discern. It is not just the Ukraine.
“The civil war in Syria was made worse by EU leaders stoking the expectation of western forces helping to topple the Assad dictatorship despite the increasing dominance of militant Islamists in the rebellion.
“In the case of the Ukraine, Brussels has for many years been feeding an entirely unrealistic dream of a future as an EU member state and large net recipient of funds.
UKIP has many features of the libertarians in the Republican Party but, like the establishment Republicans, the Tories disdain them.
What does the BBC have to say about UKIP ?
Who are UKIP?
The UK Independence Party currently have 12 members of the European Parliament. They use their positions to campaign for British withdrawal from the EU.
UKIP believe that closer economic and political union will be bad for Britain. They want to replace Britain’s membership of the European Union with agreements on free trade and co-operation.
UKIP got 16.1% of the votes cast in the 2004 European elections in Great Britain. They didn’t win, but by increasing their share of the vote by 10% they became the big story of that campaign.
The UKIP is not the only anti-establishment party in Europe.
Eurosceptic parties made sweeping gains in last month’s elections but UKIP, which now has 24 MEPs, has refused to align itself with a number of them, including France’s Front National and Greece’s Golden Dawn.
Instead, its closest ally will be the former comedian Beppe Grillo, who took Italian politics by storm when his anti-establishment party took 25% of the vote in last year’s general election. Mr Farage and Mr Grillo met for talks last month.
The Five Star Movement, which had 17 MEPs elected, wants a referendum on Italy’s future membership of the euro and a loosening of the fiscal rules applying to countries in the eurozone.
The Swedish Democrats and the Lithuania Order and Justice Party, which have two MEPs each, will also join the grouping, as will the sole representative of the Czech Free Citizens Party.
Golden Dawn and Front National are close to fascist in ideology and, while UKIP was been attacked as racist, it is more libertarian than fascist.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was the party’s first leader and the undisputed centre of the party from its start until his resignation in 2011. While the party struggled as a marginal force for its first ten years, since 1984 it has been unrivaled as the major force of French nationalism.
Front National is anti-immigrant but its other policies are not libertarian.
Its major policies include economic protectionism, a zero tolerance approach to law and order issues, and anti-immigration. Since the 1990s, its stance on the European Union has grown increasingly eurosceptic.
Classical libertarians are, of course, pro-immigration but open borders and a welfare state are incompatible. All these countries are welfare states including the US.
What does the recent switch to UKIP by a major Conservative MP mean ?
There are very few MPs I admire more than Douglas Carswell. He is principled, decent, and has gone into politics for all the right reasons. He believes in all the things to which ordinary politicians pay lip service, but in reality frighten them to death. Above all, Mr Carswell is an advocate of popular democracy: that is, that politics is an activity which concerns ordinary voters and not the views of the Westminster elite. He is a fountain of original ideas, many of which are to be found in his very important book The Plan: Twelve months to renew Britain. It is very interesting to note that the book was co-written with the brilliant conservative MEP (and fellow Telegraph blogger) Daniel Hannan.
Oh oh, another blogger !
“The Plan” is a book that I may read but here is a summary:
I had low expectations of this book; I thought it would contain only platitudes about how referendums and the Internet are going to change politics.
In fact, the Plan surprised me by being well thought out, achievable and radically brilliant.
They recommend the transferral of Crown prerogative powers (such as declaring war and appointing ambassadors) from the Prime Minister to Parliament.
They suggest that continued European integration is not in the UK’s best interest and recommend withdraw from the EU and rejoining the European Free Trade Agreement, like Norway or Switzerland.
The main gist of their domestic policy recommendations is ‘localism’, which means putting public services in the hands of local councils, trying to emulate the competition in government that the united States enjoy.
They suggest that state education should have voucher-like systems to make it more market-driven and to allow parents to choose.
For health, they suggest people should be able to opt-out of the NHS and pay into a health saving account so they’re in charge of choosing doctors, facilities etc.
Local police priorities should be decided by democratically elected ‘Sheriffs’.
VAT should be replaced with a local sales tax at a level set by councils. This would make councils self-financing and exert downward pressure on taxation.
This sounds interesting and may provide some ideas for us. It seems even more radical than Margaret Thatcher’s attempt to reform the NHS with Fund Holding which has been ended./
I had some experience with this when I was at Dartmouth and was part of a small team sent to Britain to aid them in implementing it. It was a reasonable reform and helped improve quality but was quickly abandoned by Labour when they took over again.
This all reminds me once again of Angelo Codevilla’s essay, The Ruling Class.
No prominent Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it.
Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter.
This sounds very much like Britain and Carswell seems determined to change things.
Tags: Britain, immigration, Islam, Pakistan, politics