For most political leaders it would be a scandal, but for UKIP’s Nigel Farage, one rumour of an alledged affair and his poll ratings shoot up. As the British electorate sleep walks into the Euro vote on May 22nd with the anti Europe far right UKIP in top position on 30% , Bridgwater Labour Councillor Brian Smedley asks ‘what on earth is going on?’
In the 1970’s of course it was a different world. As we can see by the revelations in the wake of the Jimmy Saville scandal. The whole decade is on trial. But maybe this is the lost world of Britain that UKIP want to take us back to. A world where ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ meant calling any black people that moved into the street ‘sambo’ and , as Max Clifford said (at his trial) ‘you never asked a girl for her birth certificate’ . But no it can’t be that because the 70’s were the days of anarchic punk rock, strong socialist trades unions and ‘Rock against Racism’,oh and of course a European referendum where the people voted ‘yes’. So this probably isn’t the sort of nostalgia UKIP must be seeking obviously.
So maybe it’s the 50’s then. Yes, maybe that’s the lost world of UKIP. The end of post war austerity where everyone had a council house and a washing machine and when we still had conscription and could send people who didn’t want to fight to go and put down popular rebellions of people fighting for their own countries, and where film and tv reflected a kind of fond appreciation by the workers of their benevolent capitalist bosses. But, looking around the shadowy figures of UKIP today they do indeed seem to more resemble the out of touch Blimp characters of that generation, the ones that Peter Cook or John Cleese endlessly sent up, the pin striped bowler hatted ‘I fought 2 world wars for this country so you could have the freedoms (I’m now not too happy about)’ kind of person. Well, perhaps there was more certainty in them days. We had the death penalty. We never made a mistake there…did we?…or if we did, well it was a ‘deterrent’ like nuclear war..yes that was big in the 50’s. But maybe not really that popular….and maybe wouldn’t have actually worked out that well…in practice.
So probably the 30’s..that surely was the UKIPPERS dream decade…before we had an expensive tax payer funded National Health Service, where people had real choice. Choice between your health or your dinner. You always had your health. So long as you pawned your sideboard. But in the 30’s surely people knew their place in the scheme of things. People knew they could join the dole queue at the unemployment exchange and if they were lucky there was the job of Prince of Wales or Duke of Kent there just waiting for them. If they worked hard. Really hard. Or were, say, born into the aristocracy. But at least we had an Empire. Well, admittedly most of them didn’t want to belong to it but as General Dyer explained at Amritsar ‘you can shoot obedience into some people’ (or words to that effect). But at least we weren’t in Europe…well, not until 1939 anyway….
So probably…..probably…..it’s likely that the lost world of UKIP is the 1980’s….because that’s the generation where not only most of their policies were actually part of the ruling Tory Government of Margaret ‘how many more national treasures can we lose in 12 months’ Thatcher. And the people who founded UKIP were all IN the Tory party then. Well Farage was a Thatcherite 1980’s tory and only left in 1992 when Thatcher had been ejected by the ‘soft right’ in her party and the new (probably actually communist) government of John Major signed up to the Maastricht agreement. So we can only assume this is the decade Farage and co want us to relive. Where the voice of the Tory shires (and yes, that ‘r’ isn’t a misprint) speaks for the nation, Alan Sked (the actual founder of UKIP) can happily share a platform with Enoch Powell, and Farage himself can set us all an example with his own background as a Public schoolboy who went into the city of London as a commodities broker (as did his father before him)…but people know that Farage was a banker…don’t they?
Still is by all accounts.