Nigel Farage’s interview on LBC was no short of a political
disaster. This being said from a member of the UKIP party. Farage got pinned
down on several occasions where his answers were less than convincing and the
interviewer James O’Brian was more than adept at hanging Farage out to dry on
them such as his personal financial affairs and his associations with rather
ugly far right elements in the European parliament and his less than competent attempts
to disassociate himself from them on what should appear to most people as clearly
a matter of principle. Over the 20 minute bout one person clearly won and the
other clearly lost and already many people who don’t care too fondly for the
future prospects of the UK independence party are jumping for joy and
registering a clear success.
However this being said it also seems to be particularly
apparent that some people should step back and take a reality check and put
things into their correct proportion before they get a bit too carried away celebrating
the potential demise of UKIP or the public disgracing of its leader. If one
thing can be learnt and taken on board by the party it is that Farage has not
done very well in defending himself on this specific occasion against a very
pernicious set of tactics which he himself should more than well know are out
there and seem to be the mainstay of the anti-UKIP lobby, namely character assassination
and sensationalist point scoring which is completely abstract from the actual
political issues at stake. I hope to explain why, being intellectually honest
and recognising this specific episode as a defeat, one can still be firm in
their support and campaigning for UKIP whilst learning some important lessons
and that I have every faith in Farage as the brilliant leader I sincerely
believe that he is as long as he takes notice and learns them.
One of the most important cases in point was Farage’s
comment about the prevalence of foreign languages in public. At the root of this
misguided comment is a very important and credible concern that should hopefully
be far from illegitimate to make. Which is that in order to foster greater social
integration, as well as economic productivity, immigrants should be required to
have a certain aptitude in the English language. The second follow up point
being that achieve this as well as other perfectly sensible controls on
immigration it is necessary to leave the European Union which requires us to
maintain an open door immigration policy to the populations of all of the nations
of the ever expanding EU. Not doing so also means that controls can and will
have to only be unfairly placed on migrants from outside of the EU. However the
manner of Farage’s comment means that all of this lovely logic can easily be
tossed aside, even though most of the British population would likely be in
agreement, going by opinion polls, or at least treat it as a more than half
reasonable position to uphold. By announcing an instinctive fear and un-comfort
simply to the sound of foreign languages being spoken you unsurprisingly open
yourself up to allegations and criticisms that Farage of all people should
realise and know his enemies are just waiting more than ready to make against
him.
That Farage can so easily walk head first into such a trap
is disappointing especially because he has done so well in public debates at
continually ramming home the key arguments against the EU which are distinct
and separate from the little Englander prejudice and bile that is too often associated
with the anti-European right. The need to stem back the tide of EU bureaucracy
and regulations, the benefits of controlling our immigration and trade policies,
a chance to exit the common agricultural policy or traditions of law alien to
our own. All of these points and more were fabulously laid out by Farage in his
debate against Nick Clegg who showed that he couldn’t hold a candle to the
charisma and common sense logic of Farage instead resorting to nauseating
political sound bites such as continually referencing that the EU is ‘the world’s
largest economy’ and that we shouldn’t ‘pull up the drawbridge’. It is level
headed and robust public displays like this as well as another impressive speech given
at the LSE which have personally motivated somebody like myself to join UKIP
not the scare tactics all too often associated with the party. To have come so
far and to have achieved so much as the 4th or possibly now even the
3rd strongest party in the UK it’s excruciating to see such off the
cuff remarks needlessly endanger the party’s public image.
However to place the blame wholly at Farage’s door would be
horribly tendentious. Any person who sees this particular interview as a
victory against Farage and UKIP surely must have noticed by now that this is
yet another interview and debate in which the EU itself and policy towards it haven’t
even got a mention? Instead of discussing trade or immigration O’Brian like a
line of interviewers before him has decided to dedicate all of his questions
and allotted time to the lunatic fringe of UKIP and the personal finances of
its leader which after the 100th episode of doing so really is no longer barely
enough to keep the mind alive of anyone watching. It’s a stone wall tactic which
ignores and stifles the advancement or discussion of anything approaching substance
which compares almost to the tactics of coercion utilized by the members of Unite
Against Fascism who have been resuscitating the 1930s brown shirt styled tactics
of disrupting public meetings. It’s a sad tribute to the state of public debate
and journalism which is perhaps best encapsulated in the latest article of
Laurie Penny who calls for the nation to start taking the threat UKIP poses
seriously instead of glibly dismissing it and then goes on to inexplicably call
Farage a ‘thug’ and compare his party to the NAZIs. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/04/ukip-understands-people-will-always-want-someone-blameThough best of all after
displaying such contorted logic of taking UKIP seriously by slandering them
because taking them seriously might well mean you have to take them seriously,
Penny has the audacity to then quote Orwell in her defence. And all of this is
only one notch below the other favoured tactic of the anti-UKIP lobby of
dragging out anecdotal evidence as to the impeccable valour of an immigrant
they might happen to know as if it’s a substitute to an actual argument about
the relative merits of controlled or open door immigration. And then for those
who feel altogether more intellectually distinguished in the discussion a generic
comment about the dangers of blaming the ‘other’ is usually not far amiss.
So in conclusion it should be and most probably
already has been noted by Farage that he has unnecessarily fallen victim to the
tactics of his opponents rather than playing to his strengths, though noting
such is not to excuse the despicable and intellectually lazy nature of those
tactics. The success of UKIP will depend on its members learning from this particular
incident because if there is one thing
is for certain then its that there will be more James O’Brians in the future
and such trolls need to be starved of the ammunition which only UKIP itself can
best give them.
