We don’t need to go trawling through old manifestos and historic statements; it’s right there on their website.
We don’t need to go trawling through old manifestos and historic statements; it’s right there on their website
The establishment’s UKIP strategy is failing, and failing badly.
Gaffe after gaffe have done nothing to dampen the party’s appeal, and the latest musical travesty won’t either.
You can expect to hear the phrase ‘more Tory than the Tories’ more and more over the next few months, and this has some value for Labour as a UKIP strategy.
It will work up to a point, but UKIP are likely to offer some lefty-sounding policies in their manifesto to defend themselves when campaigning in traditionally Labour seats.
The evidence base for ‘more Tory than the Tories’ is largely UKIP’s 2010 manifesto, historic statements from senior Kippers, as well as ad hominem attacks on members and donors.
This is a legitimate line of attack, but will be superseded when UKIP releases its next manifesto, which will undoubtedly be less obviously ‘Tory’ than the last.
However, hope is not lost. Instead of (or at least alongside) attacking UKIP for things they’ve disowned, Labour can attack UKIP’s current policies – and there is more ammunition here than you might think.
Making a positive case for immigration or EU membership is difficult to put on a leaflet or turn into a sound bite, but attacking these is simple enough:
1) ‘Locally-elected County Health Boards to inspect hospitals – to avoid another Stafford Hospital crisis’
UKIP want to create a whole new layer of politicians? I thought they were ‘anti-politics’? No. In fact, UKIP want to repeat the disaster of elected Police & Crime Commissioners, except rather than just one new politician for each area, they want a whole board. If we guess that these boards would be made up of around five to 10 people in each of over 80 counties/unitary authorities, that’s between 400 and 800 more politicians.
A vote for UKIP is a vote for more top-down reorganisation of the NHS and more taxpayer money spent on politicians’ salaries.
2) ‘Immigrants must financially support themselves and their dependents for 5 years. This means private health insurance (except emergency medical care), private education and private housing – they should pay into the pot before they take out of it’
So UKIP want to starve the NHS of the millions it receives every year from charges to patients from overseas? In 2010-11, Great Ormond Street hospital alone took in in over £20 million in charges to foreign patients. Under UKIP, all of that money would go into private hands.
What else would it mean? Clogged up A&E departments, ambulance services put under even more strain and millions wasted as EU migrants wait until they need emergency care to get treatment. Worse still, for all Farage’s fears about immigrants bringing in HIV, exemptions for communicable diseases would be scrapped. Vote UKIP, get ebola.
3) ‘Prioritise social housing for people whose parents and grandparents were born locally’
Yep, I’m going to use that word. This is a racist policy and a new spin on a longstanding BNP commitment. Discriminating against someone because their grandparents weren’t born locally means discriminating against the vast, vast majority of black people in this country, and the vast majority of people of Asian descent. Grandparents were Jewish refugees? No housing for you.
It would affect many people identifying as ‘White British’ too, causing huge damage to the economy as people in settled jobs in one part of the country have to quit and move to another area to access housing.
Skin colour doesn’t have to be in the wording of the law for it to be racist: if the reality is that virtually all BME citizens are discriminated against in access to housing, there’s no doubt in my mind. I don’t think the vast majority of UKIP supporters are racist. I don’t even think Nigel Farage is a racist, despite those comments about Romanians. But this is a racist policy, and we should let people know.
These aren’t the typical left-wing attacks that UKIP is used to brushing off, or the hubristic dismissals we are used to hearing from the right. These are calm responses to ridiculous policies that voters of all persuasions will want to hear. They shatter the illusion of UKIP as the party of ‘common sense’. They are the party of extra politicians, communicable disease, private healthcare, private education and discrimination.
Charlie Cadywould is currently completing an MSc in Public Policy at UCL focusing on labour markets and regulation
134 Responses to “UKIP policies: dangerous, costly and yes, racist”
Chalcedon
Go on then, smear away. Kith and kin should always come first. And the last time I looked, Romanians were European Caucasians just like me, just like Farage. So how are comments about them racist?
George Laird
Dear Charlie
Firstly I am not in Ukip.
I would like to hone in on this use of the word ‘racist’, I don’t see Ukip as racist but obviously you do.
When was the last time someone stuck a label on you so you can be simply dismissed as not having an opinion worth listening to?
I do concede that some of Ukip’s policies are appallingly bad and ill-thought-out, much like the Tory poll tax or the Labour lie that immigration was done on economic grounds when it admit it was done as a social engineering experiment by them to change Britain.
“Prioritise social housing for people whose parents and grandparents were born locally”.
Years ago in Glasgow which has a Labour Council, I went to my local housing office because I wanted to move to a ‘better’ area.
I was told because I didn’t have any connection to it, it wasn’t possible.
So, I asked a question, did I pay council tax for Pollok (where I lived) or did I pay council tax for Glasgow.
Simple enough question.
The Council housing officer said Glasgow.
So I then said why am I being discriminated against? I also informed him as I stayed in an urban ghetto why should I pay council tax when there was no way out of it?
Given the criteria you have just set, I would like to quote you back.
“This is a racist policy and a new spin on a longstanding BNP commitment”.
By your criteria you have branded then Labour Council in Glasgow as racist because the policy official or unofficial operated all over Glasgow.
Maybe you should put more time into better research rather than playing to the crowd because there is always someone like me kicking about.
George Laird is a humble Glaswegian pottering about the place, this is in response to your admission:
“Charlie Cadywould is currently completing an MSc in Public Policy at UCL focusing on labour markets and regulation”.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
Dave Roberts
This article is crap and all you are doing James is lowering the credibility of the site. What is wrong with locally elected health boards? The objection seems to be that the idea comes from UKIP and is therefore racist.
The bit in your second objection is beyond parody. What is wrong with expecting people to pay into something that we have all paid into all our working lives? They specifically exclude emergency care and ow do you work out that the system would lose money?
There are of course thousands of foreign patients who come because of the standard of health, pay for it and go home. What is being discussed are health tourists and recent immigrants. Newham General and The Royal London are the TB centres in terms of patients in Europe.
Dave Roberts
Charlie Cadywould is a layabout who as never ad a job and probably never will, not a real one anyway.
Leon Wolfeson
None at all. There wouldn’t be the cash for new social housing.