UKIP, the UK Independence Party, is changing. As it grows in profile and popularity, it is revealing an ugly side. Perhaps that ugliness was hidden, perhaps it is new, but it is on show for the first time.
Debates in the past with such UKIP gentlemen as Nigel Farage and Gerard Batten revealed a party concerned about British sovereignty and British decline that saw in the institutions of the EU the cause of our troubles. Reclaim our day-to-day freedom to make our own decisions, they said, and we could start to put things right.
Of course, this website disagrees profoundly with their understanding of international interdependence and how to deal with the problems it causes, but at least it is something we can talk about. But that’s not the tone of UKIP these days.
A debate yesterday with one of its leading candidates for the European elections next May centred not on the European Union as such but on the foreigners who have come to Britain as a result. What was formerly a non-racist, non-sectarian constitutional project is now dropping the nons.
Why should British people have to wait in queues in hospitals behind eastern Europeans, I was asked, when they need cancer treatment?
The short answer is that hospitals are worth queueing in precisely because there are eastern Europeans working there. The front page of the Times this morning tells me that there are more than 1,400 Romanian nurses registered to work in the UK at the moment, for example. To cut off immigration is to deprive our health service, and our economy more generally, of the skills it needs.
The longer answer is to ask why eastern Europeans – paying their taxes, don’t forget – are less worthy of medical care, are less worthy of cancer treatment, are less worthy of being kept alive. What words should we use to describe that kind of attitude?
Who said anything about cutting off immigration? All UKIP want to do is apply the Australian points system and a system of work permits and visas to EU countries. (Which the majority of the country supports). If anything, it is removing discrimination from the immigration system, because at the moment we have to say to people from India, America, Africa etc – sorry you have to jump through all these legal hoops because of your nationality; but if you are from a European country as many of you can come, claim benefits, compete for jobs whether we need your skills or not or indeed if you are criminal or not.
Complete open borders also helps organised cross-border crime and makes people trafficking easier.
But we are banned from controlling our own borders thanks to the EU. Hence the perfecly reasonable UKIP position of independece.
@ Gadfly,
sorry to disagree with you, UK is not part of the Schengen space where you can move freely from one country to another, and UK still has strict and severe controls of British borders (don’t you travel from time to time ?).
So I guess that “the perfectly reasonable UKIP position of independance” is just propaganda.
But of course, you can believe it.
In poor countries like Romania, nurses are desperately required but receive very low wages. The 1,400 that are working here are seeking better lives for themselves not because they are concerened about the state if our nation’s health nor our economy. The question is, are they better needed there or here?
Never any mention of the several thousand Brits who have moved recently to the Bulgarian coast, between Bourgas and Sozopol, some living in large retirement centres with care facilities for those who need them. Unlike the Bulgarians who star in UKIP propaganda, these people are staying !
THe fact is our wages and salaries are much too high to to compete with Eastern Europe let alone China.
Britain is doomed for the simple reason wages and salaries are far to high for the modern world.
It is simple. UKIP members (and Conservatives, Labour, Liberal etc) make a good living out of Parliament. They like everyone else are afraid of losing their jobs.
Most are unemployable outside politics.
I have met many of them and can assure readers this is true.
Having travelled by car from Calais to the Russian border without being stopped or even seeing a border the atitude of the British is beyond belief.
The nation state is about to vanish. THere is no border between Northern Ireland and the Republic so Northern ireland is no long eflectively part of the UK..
There is no border between Frqnce Italy, Austria, Belgium POland etc. Europe already exists.
Why are the British so different. Do they love their children? Do they make love in a different way yo the rest of Europe. OR are they impotent and are afraid the rest of the EU will find out?
Will someone please tell me. I cannot explain to my many friend in the EU.
When will we join the euro? Last time round we were so weak we did not qualify. Now we are even weaker.
Looks like are are doomed.
So get out while you can.