UKIP go from strength to strength

[Borachio]

I don't know.

My best guess is it's because it started as affiliated to a football supporters thing, and, as far as I know, there's no British Football team.

It may be something as simple as that, but it's an interesting question.

 

[Tee Kay]

My best guess is it's because it started as affiliated to a football supporters thing, and, as far as I know, there's no British Football team.

There's a Great Britain team that competes very occasionally at the Olympics.

 

[Borachio]

You're right! Team GB.

Well, thank goodness for that, then! Phew!

 

[Traitorfish]

You're lying

Lying about what? The fact I've never lived in Leeds? I might have previously commented that people have told me I sound like I'm from Leeds. My accent is a weird hybrid of South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Weirside, and apparently the outcome is somewhere in the general Leeds-Bradford area. But I've never lived there; I've never even been there.

Nationalists and racists do use the national insignia of whatever country they're in. That's a given anywhere. What insight are you trying to get at?

"Whatever country" isn't a given, though. That's something people define for themselves. Why are some elements of the Italian far-right "Italian", others "Padanian"? Why are some elements of the German far-right "German", others "Bavarian"? And why do some on the English far-right identify as "British" and others as "English? This is a choice that people make, and the fact that they make it- moreover, when and how they make it- has significance.

Also, I've got to wonder: if UKIP is in phoenix-like ascendancy you proclaim, why do you take every attempt to discuss national and ethnic identities in England as an attempt to put you, personally, on trial? As a matter of accusation and defence, rather than observation and explanation? For somebody who expects to be running the country in a couple of election cycles, you don't exude confidence.

 

[Flying Pig]

I don't know.

My best guess is it's because it started as affiliated to a football supporters thing, and, as far as I know, there's no British Football team.

It may be something as simple as that, but it's an interesting question.

It's also because it's essentially an anti-Muslim organisation, and the overwhelming majority of British Muslims - and people who hate them - live in English cities.

 

[dutchfire]

That's not trivial, most non-Western immigrants in the Netherlands live in the cities, but Wilders gets most of his support from the countryside.

 

[Flying Pig]

True, which is the paradox of UKIP, but in the case of the EDL their popularity matches that of the Muslim population reasonably exactly. They're most active in places like Luton and Bradford, for example.

 

[Takhisis]

OK, we've passed the thousandth post. So, 'UKIP go froms trength to strength, Part II'?

Anyway… Quackers, I can sell you some straw at reasonable prices.

 

[Truronian]

It's also because it's essentially an anti-Muslim organisation, and the overwhelming majority of British Muslims - and people who hate them - live in English cities.

That's not trivial, most non-Western immigrants in the Netherlands live in the cities, but Wilders gets most of his support from the countryside.

Indeed. The 'problems' of multiculturalism seem to mainly be a concern for people that don't live in multicultural areas.

OK, we've passed the thousandth post. So, 'UKIP go froms trength to strength, Part II'?

Anyway… Quackers, I can sell you some straw at reasonable prices.

Or we could just let the thread die... Open one called 'UK politics' or something instead so we're not confined to looking at publicity shots of Nigel Farage.

 

[Flying Pig]

Indeed. The 'problems' of multiculturalism seem to mainly be a concern for people that don't live in multicultural areas.

Well, that's interesting, because it's true of 'respectable' political groups like UKIP but not really for violent ones like the EDL or the BNP. Nick Griffin's European Parliament seat was NW England and their traditional heartland is places like Burnley - all of which have unusually high Asian populations.

 

[Traitorfish]

I've read stuff that suggests groups like the EDL are most successful in places that are becoming multicultural. In places that are still overwhelmingly monocultural, racism remains respectable and people vote UKIP; in places that already multicultural, people either get over it or they leave. It requires a particular combination of novelty and immediacy to make people turn to the fash.

Iirc, this was particularly looking at support within different London boroughs, so I'm not sure if it translates in quite the same elsewhere; aside from anything else, London has a large immigrant population since the early 19th century, so you're working with a longer history of multiculturalism than you are in somewhere like Bradford. But it does seem to make a lot of sense.

 

[Quackers]

In areas with high immigration, immigration is popular, funny that. You would think the immigrants would condemn themselves.

 

[Traitorfish]

Yep, that's exactly what I meant. You've perceived the veil, there, no doubt. Keen eyes of a hawk, that man.

 

[Flying Pig]

I've read stuff that suggests groups like the EDL are most successful in places that are becoming multicultural. In places that are still overwhelmingly monocultural, racism remains respectable and people vote UKIP; in places that already multicultural, people either get over it or they leave. It requires a particular combination of novelty and immediacy to make people turn to the fash.

Iirc, this was particularly looking at support within different London boroughs, so I'm not sure if it translates in quite the same elsewhere; aside from anything else, London has a large immigrant population since the early 19th century, so you're working with a longer history of multiculturalism than you are in somewhere like Bradford. But it does seem to make a lot of sense.

I think that may be right. Bear in mind that most of the historical immigrant groups in London have in a sense disappeared - people don't really think of descendants of French or Irish immigrants as 'a different culture' any more.

 

[Takhisis]

Or we could just let the thread die... Open one called 'UK politics' or something instead so we're not confined to looking at publicity shots of Nigel Farage.

Isn't most of UK politics Farage doings?

Yep, that's exactly what I meant. You've perceived the veil, there, no doubt. Keen eyes of a hawk, that man.

Well, Quackers is an immigration hawk.

 

[Traitorfish]

Isn't most of UK politics Farage doings?

Don't go falling for that! It's entirely within the interests of the establishment for people to think that Farage is a driving force in British politics, because if "politics" describes only the negotiation of exactly which flavour of Thatcherism we get, the rest of it, the stuff that puts us in this position in the first place, that's just "governance", and is placed beyond question.

 

[Takhisis]

I know several places in Britain and British Politics! The West End, the East End, Chelsea, Kent, Sussex…

(you know I'm for Anarchy in the UK and down with the monarchy anyway, wee Traitorfishy )

 

[Quackers]

Link to video.

Farage schools "know it all" youngsters. What a man. Any audience, any time, any place he will #wreck you.

 

[Quackers]

Link to video.

Farage-gasm

 

[Quackers]

Farage corrects mistakes made 100 years ago:

Britain and its allies should have continued the first world war for another six weeks in order to achieve an unconditional German surrender, even at the cost of another 100,000 casualties, according to the leader of Ukip, Nigel Farage.

Describing the armistice that ended the first world war as the biggest mistake of the entire 20th century, he claimed that a slightly longer conflict would have prevented the conditions which gave rise to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis coming to power in Germany some 15 years after the Treaty of Versailles.

“I believe we should have continued with the advance,” Farage said as he delivering the annual Tom Olsen Lecture at London’s St Bride’s Church, the spiritual home of the media, on Monday night, hours before Armistice Day was due to be marked across Britain, parts of Europe and the Commonwealth.

“We should have pursued the war for a further six weeks, and gone for an unconditional surrender. Yes the last six weeks of the war cost us 100,000 casualties, and I’m prepared to accept that a further six weeks of war might have cost us another 100,000.

“But had we driven the German army completely out of France and Belgium, forced them into unconditional surrender, Herr Hitler would never have got his political army off the ground. He couldn’t have claimed Germany had been stabbed in the back by the politicians in Berlin, or that Germany had never been beaten in the field.”

The UKIP leader said that the reason why Hitler had been able to get his party off the ground in Germany – drawing on “the myth of the stab in the back” at the Treaty of Versailles – was because one of those marching through the streets in support of him in 1923 was Erich Ludendorff, a commander of the German Army during the first world war.

He added: “It was Ludendorff who gave Hitler credibility. Yet none of this would happened if someone had made Ludendorff surrender unconditionally.”