Thinking of voting for UKIP tomorrow? If you care even a jot about the rights of women, think on.
Thinking of voting for UKIP tomorrow?
If you care even a jot about the rights of women, think on.
Here are 15 reasons why women (and men who believe in equality of the sexes) should sooner drink poison than vote for the Kippers tomorrow.
1. Nigel Farage on women: “Godfrey’s [Bloom, former UKIP MEP] comment that ‘no employer with a brain in the right place would employ a young, single, free woman‘ has been proved so right. With this lunacy, that if you have children you get three months paid leave off work, or six months paid leave off work – he absolutely got it spot on.”
2. UKIP want to scrap paid maternity leave (in line with Lesotho, Swaziland, the US and Papua New Guinea).
3. UKIP want to make it legal for employers to discriminate on the basis of gender (as well as race).
4. This would also entail the scrapping of employment regulations against sexual harassment and safeguards for part time and irregular workers, the majority of which are women.
5. Nigel Farage informed City high flyers that they are “worth less” to employers if they become mothers or that motherhood is a lifestyle choice.
6. Patrick O’Flynn, MEP Candidate, also say that pregnant women in the workplace are a “disaster”.
7. UKIP’s MEPs have consistently failed to represent the interests of women. They have voted against or simply not turned up to key votes in the European Parliament on ensuring equal pay, combating violence against women and ruling out FGM, to name but a few.
8. Since the 2009 European Election UKIP’s only two female MEPs, Nikki Sinclaire and Marta Andreasen, have both left the party. Andreason said Farage “doesn’t try to involve intelligent professional women in positions of responsibility in the party. He thinks women should be in the kitchen or in the bedroom”. Nikki Sinclaire won an Employment Tribunal claim for sex discrimination against the party.
9. Roger Helmer, UKIP MEP and candidate in the Newark by-election, said, “Rape is always wrong, but not always equally culpable.”
10. Godfrey Bloom, a former UKIP MEP, was not reprimanded for hugely sexist statements such as, “[feminists are] shrill, bored, middle-class women of a certain physical genre” and, “Women, in spite of years of training in art and music – and significant leisure time in the 18th and 19th Centuries – have produced few great works”
11. Stuart Wheeler, the party’s treasurer, said that women were “absolutely nowhere” when they compete with men in sports where they are not physically disadvantaged. He said, “I would just like to challenge the idea that it is necessary to have a lot of women or a particular number on a board… Business is very, very competitive and you should take the performance of women in another competitive area, which is sport where [men] have no strength advantage.”
12. In November 2013, UKIP MEP, Stuart Agnew said (in a debate on women in the boardroom) that “Women don’t have the ambition to get to the top, something gets in the way. It’s called a baby… Those females who really want to get to the top do so”.
13. David Chalice , a senior party official in Exeter, has voiced his belief that women should stay at home and that “cash-strapped Moslems” should have multiple wives.
14. Demetri Marchessini, the party’s sixth-largest individual donor in 2013, said there was no such thing as marital rape, arguing: “If you make love on Friday and make love Sunday, you can’t say Saturday is rape.” He also claimed women should be banned from wearing trousers because they “discourage love-making”.
15. Need I go on?
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James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
512 Responses to “15 reasons women shouldn’t vote for UKIP”
Edwin Pickett
We need less politicians who have never done a real job in their life. We need more politicians that really give a damn about this country.
HeartShaped
Well I’m female and I am voting UKIP, because I actually read some of their policies and they are basic common sense, read their ‘100 reasons to vote UKIP’ to see their policies on the environment, the NHS, and we will also get national referendums on big issues so we can iron out any kinks in their policies with ‘people power’. Please read up before falling for this anti-UKIP shilling. Also, I recall they were the only party to give a damn about the 1400+ victims of the muslim rape gangs of Rotherham, this happened for over a decade in a Labour dominated area and even now the Labour MP, Sarah Campion makes callous statements trying to gloss over the fact we have imported rape culture into the UK. This is a UK wide epidemic that our establishment, especially the so called socialists of Labour, are ignoring. I have been a victim of one of these ethnic gangs myself, so I know more than anyone how our three main political parties, and all the feminists we have on this island, have utterly failed to protect British girls.
HeartShaped
He’s not an ex banker actually, he was asked about that by a panel of hand picked Leftie students, there was even a Guardian plant among them FFS, and he talked openly about his background. It’s all captured on video so you can watch yourself.
HeartShaped
What Far Right would that be? The Muslim Brotherhood who openly support Adolf Hitler’s very own SS? Or the little collection of British men such as the EDL who march in places like Rotherham without murdering anyone, because they can’t believe we have ethnic rape gangs and corrupt political leaders who allow it in our so called civilised first world nation. I’ll take a wild stab in the dark as to what constitutes “Far Right” to you.
HeartShaped
Europe has always been diverse, we have English, German, Spanish, Polish, Italian and all their little sub cultures etc, and we’ve usually been friends and shared culture and experiences, why do we need the EU to get along and trade freely? Do you need to be locked in a Communist superstate to love your European brothers and sisters? I don’t,