UKIP are more than a man in a pub drinking a pint. Behind Farage's Cheshire Cat grin are some dangerous policies.
You don’t have to have real political power in Britain to shift the terms of the debate. Just look at UKIP. Despite the fact that the party is expected to do well in this year’s European Elections, it is unlikely that this will translate into anything meaningful come next year’s General Election – although don’t bet against Nigel Farage overturning Laura Sandys’ majority in South Thanet.
And yet despite this, the Tories and to a lesser extent Labour appear to be running scared of the eurosceptic party – each week both seem to unveil new ‘tough’ announcements on UKIP pet issues such as immigration and welfare.
However while having a risible influence on the mainstream, UKIP’s distance from any real political power allows the party to retain its radicalism (not actually radical at all, but rather reactionary) which those closer to the summit of power are forced to abandon (remember when Lib Dem conference used to vote to hammer the rich and unilaterally disarm?)
Behind Nigel Farage’s charisma, however, the madness remains. Farage may come across like the mildly amiable chap from everybody’s local, but he leads a party which, from a policy perspective, is completely off the scale.
UKIP aren’t simply ‘anti-politics’, but they actually stand for things, such as:
Charging NHS patients to jump waiting lists
Back in July, UKIP’s ‘health spokesperson’ John Stanley penned an article in which he argued that people requiring urgent NHS treatment should be seen within two hours – a reasonable enough proposition. However he added that those requiring non-urgent treatment should be given the option of paying so as to jump the queue ahead of those who cannot afford to:
“We should accept that if a triaging clinician feels we don’t need treating within two hours required for standard cases then we be either willing to pay or willing to wait longer so cases most deserving are treated best. People should pay a higher charge if they haven’t registered with a GP as being directed back to primary care avoids unnecessary A&E visits.”
Stanley also endorsed GPs charging to see patients and said that, under UKIP, people who qualified for free prescriptions would be exempt from the flat fee – but only if they had not been drinking.
Banning all teaching of climate change
UKIP would ban the teaching of climate change in schools were it to win the 2015 General Election, according to the party’s education spokesperson. This, despite the fact that there is a 97 per cent consensus among climate scientists supporting global warming and the fact that human emissions are behind it.
Climate ‘sceptics’ don’t publish many scientific papers (I wonder why), and UKIP doesn’t want children to know about the vast majority of papers which overwhelmingly support the idea of man-made climate change.
Last week UKIP Education spokesman MEP Derek Clark told Index on Censorship:
“We will still ban Al Gore’s video for use in schools if I’ve got anything to do with it. I will not have much opposition within the party. It is, of course, not just this video which needs banning; all teaching of global warming being caused in any way by carbon dioxide emissions must also be banned. It just is not happening.”
The party has the laziest MEPs in Europe
UKIP’s attendance record in the European Parliament is worse than that of their counterparts from the three major parties. Happy to sign-in and collect their allowances (beer money), UKIP’s nine MEPs missed around a third of the votes in the European Parliament between 2009 and October 2013.
The complete abolition of inheritance tax
Just 2.6 per cent of those who die every year pay inheritance tax. The average taxpaying estate is worth £875,000, according to HMRC. Inheritance tax raises £2.9bn a year for the Treasury from some of the wealthiest people in the country, while estates worth less than £325,000 don’t pay a penny.
And yet UKIP wants to abolish it completely.
At a time of rising inequality, redistributive policies such as inheritance tax are a symbolic bulwark against US-levels of inequality. In this respect, UKIP policy panders to the 2.6 per cent of the population who have some of the biggest estates in Britain. Play the world’s smallest violin.
Has friends on the European far-right
UKIP is part of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group in the European Parliament (EFD). The EFD is comprised of 10 parties and one independent MEP. These include the anti-immigrant Movement for France, the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party and True Finns.
The leader of the Slovak National Party has said the best policy for dealing with the Roma is “a long whip in a small yard”. In December 2011, an opinion poll of True Finn voters revealed that 51 per cent agreed with the statement: “People of certain races are unsuited for life in a modern society”.
Apparently this is ok with UKIP, though. In fact, anyone objecting to such alliances is liable to face severe repercussions. In 2010, UKIP expelled MEP Nikki Sinclaire after she objected to working with “extreme views” of UKIP’s political allies.
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316 Responses to “5 things voters should know about UKIP”
trollthriller
Iceland? Seriously? Did you miss 2008?
Norway has oil – and is in league with Scandawegia.
Go on, tell us the UK is the next Switzerland.
The UK is built upon banking and trade. You will impoverish us.
Steven Dobbs
global warming doesn’t stop because you edit where to look – http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/ ocean heat content has not stopped rising, therefore there has been no pause in global warming.
it is a hyperactive denialist meme, that science predicted a global ice age in the 70’s – there was no IPCC then to review the many peoples written by the worlds scientists, but a retrospective look at the published scientific literature shows that for those papers which made prediction about the future, they said warming was most likely.
but the popular press doesn’t do science like that, it just picks whatever is interesting to the public, and in the USA then, they had a cold winter.
mark conway
I think you’ll find in the real world, where temperatures are actually measured rather than projected via climate models that don’t take account of the complexity and equilibrium of the planet’s eco-system, the world is not warming. It’s just the scientific models that suggest out of control warming that can only be stopped if we are all poorer and hand over more of our money to governments and other countries. How arrogant is it to believe we can control the environment? The problem for the scaremongers is that the predictions and theories are not matched by the reality. Rather the opposite of your thinking I feel.
trollthriller
What a Gish Gallop.
Global warming on the surface hasn’t stopped. 2010 was the warmest year. Then 2005. And this November past was the warmest November globally.
And the oceans, where over 96% of the heat capacity of the globe is, has been heating nicely. See the first chart.
Bet you can’t provide citations from NASA or the Met Office or the IPCC to substantiate your assertions. (You can guess why – they’ve never said those things.)
Global ice levels are declining rapidly. The Arctic has shrunk 80% by volume in the last 35 years. Antarctic *sea* ice extent is growing slightly – whilst its vast land mass is shrinking dramatically. And Greenland’s ice is shrinking. As are the glaciers. See the second chart.
The scientific consensus has been for warming for many decades. The author of the famous Newsweek article has been speaking about it recently. http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2014/01/newsweek-global-cooling-reporter. He spun a story. You swallowed it. Scientists didn’t.
I bet you don’t have a scientific citation to support your assertion that we’re entering cooling. That’s because one does not exist. See http://www.jamespowell.org. Man-made warming is winning sceintists 2257 to 1.
There are more than polar bears at stake. (And they’re only surviving due to conservation).
Next time bring some evidence. You kip.
Mike Stallard
I shall allow myself on e more reply.
In the single market, our trade possibilities are very severely limited by the EU. Outside the single market, there are far less restrictions with our trading partners.
The EU is already regulating our banks because the Frankfurt Banks are based in Germany and they are our rivals. The EU people are European and they, too, are not really interested in London.
So if we stay in, our trade, like that of the rest of the EU, will decline with them and our banking system will be regulated out of its current prosperity. Already bonuses are being looked at by Brussels.
I have, as i say, been to Iceland: it works. I have been to Switzerland and felt like a poor relation. Norway has indeed got oil – and not much else actually. Even so, a round of MacDonalds and Coke for four adults costs well over a hundred pounds: and the Norwegians can well afford it too.