by Solomon Anker
The results of the European Elections have lead to many people being very worried about the rise of the BNP, but few haveany fear for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) despite them having great success. While it is true that UKIP are far from the aggressive racists of the BNP, still the nationalism of UKIP as well as their right-wing agenda on other issues is all very damaging. UKIP came in 2nd in the recent European Elections ahead of both the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats, and due to this strength, in many ways they are even more dangerous than the BNP.
Out of the 16% of British voters who supported UKIP, very few of them know anything about what UKIP really believe in except for their anti-EU attitude. But in general these voters are not that ignorant of UKIP because as UKIP are a very shallow party there is not really much more to understand. In short UKIP’s basic ideas are based on a victim mentality that poor Britain is being oppressed by Europe and needs to escape from this occupation. In their fantasy, Britain is also this heroic country of Winston Churchill who defeated the Germans in World War II and is the home of freedom, peace and justice. This is of course the type of thing that all nationalists think about their country and it is a mixture of truth and non-truth. Britain has achieved many great things but Britain has also committed some of the worst crimes in history and its economic policies towards the 3rd World continue to be oppressive. But of course UKIP don’t care at all about the 3rd world.There is not the danger of racist policies towards Black, Jewish, Muslim and other people which the BNP believe in, UKIP is dangerous in the fact that they are totally useless and a complete waste of energy. Their level of “uselessism” in being able to achieve any of their objectives is extraordinary. And this is exactly where they are dangerous because while politics should be about a struggle to make the world a better place, UKIP are living in their little Holy Britain fantasy world rather than fixing the problems in this country.
Unfortunately it is in this fantasy world that they have had success as the British public are so fed up of the three major parties and these suit-wearing, ugly, selfish, boring and elitist politicians that UKIP has seemed like a fresh change. But infact this is the cruelest part because UKIP’s politicians are certainly not any different: in fact they are even more elitist than the Conservative Party and most probably left the Conservative Party because it was not elitist enough.
This does not mean that the European Union is perfect. The European Union is full of problems but it is not the major reason for why people are unhappy in Britain and infact it is a very minor aspect Capitalism itself and the lack of Direct Democracy in the British Parliament. And anyway, UKIP are not the only party criticizing the European Union but all the parties on the left outside the mainstream such as the Greens, Respect and so on all heavily criticize the E.U’s bureaucracy and they do it far better as it does not come from a close-minded nationalist point of view.
UKIP have a much darker and ‘good old’ nasty conservative side to them on all the other issues in politics from immigration to crime. Their right-wing attitude to crime is basically the same as the BNP and represents the old Tory attitude of abuse criminals as much as possible, with no consideration of why people commit crime. While revenge always feels good for the victims of crime and wins votes, the reality is that this never works and society has been waking up to this more and more. Yet UKIP want us to forget all this and instead have a American system of punishment whereas in fact the USA has a far higher level of serious crime.
On immigration, which has been a major racist policy of the BNP, UKIP also take a hard right-wing line. They use terms like Britain is “full up” as if our country is a night-club and no extra people are allowed in, and again use this victim card as if Britain is being exploited by all these Polish and Nigerian workers who come over to fix our cars, clean our streets, take care of our elderly and even are the husbands or wives that a British person will fall in love with. But, UKIP in a traditional right-wing way, would never say anything positive about these immigrants who help us all in Britain, but they instead just play their fantasy story of Britain being the poor victim of immigration while at the same time being a Brave and Heroic country of ‘Lions’. Finally UKIP’s economic policies are crudely pro-rich. They have absolutely no compassion for the poor in Britain or the 3rd World and like all right-wing parties in history get a decent level of working-class vote yet do not care whatsoever for the financial problems of the working-class.
Luckily there is not too much to panic about because UKIP’s fantasy world does not really win them votes outside the European Elections. While in the European Elections they have come 2nd in 2009 and 3rd in 2004, in General Elections they have done extremely badly. In the 2001 and 2005 elections they did not even come close to winning one seat and in the 2010 election they probably will equal this achievement again. Furthermore in the London elections of 2008 they came 7th in the Mayor vote behind the Christian Party and 9th in the Assembly elections behind the Congestion Charge party. In the Scottish Parliament elections they did even ‘better’ coming in 14th behind the all three tiny socialist parties and behind two different even more tiny Christian parties…
the commune 