Andrew Whitaker: Farage comeback threat to Labour

Nigel Farage has almost disappeared from our screens, but could yet appeal to the disaffected poor. Picture: Joey Kelly

The unsavoury face of Ukip could cause future difficulties for the comrades, warns Andrew Whitaker

FOR what seemed like forever Nigel Farage was scarcely off our TV screens whether it was his talking up of what he confidently predicted would be the Ukip insurgency at the general election or an appearance on a reality TV show with a “meet Nigel Farage” type theme.

The Eurosceptic party was on the march, we were told by Farage, who promised to break the mould of British politics in a way fledgling minority parties had failed to do in the past.

A master of self-promotion, Farage appeared at one stage to be on the cusp – against the odds – of sweeping gains at Westminster for a party viewed by many as being full of archetypal right-wing pub bores.

Farage was ultra confident he would himself join the two Ukip MPs elected in by-elections in the last parliament at Westminster and go on to take seats from both Labour and the Tories, making it a force to be reckoned with in the Commons.

Since the much-vaunted breakthrough failed to happen for Ukip, with the party keeping just one of its Commons seats and failing to make gains elsewhere, the Farage show now seems to be much less of a TV draw.

True, Farage has been wheeled out to comment on the Greek crisis and will doubtless be again as the in-out referendum gets closer, but it could be almost like a onetime TV regular who is brought back for a one-off variety show or even playing summer season on the pier at a seaside resort.

After the complete lack of humanity the Ukip leader displayed with remarks during a TV leaders’ debate when he suggested foreign-born HIV sufferers should be excluded from NHS treatment, there are many who would welcome him disappearing from our screens in the same way comics such as Jim Davidson did some years ago.

Farage, speaking in the ITV debate, said: “You can come into Britain from anywhere in the world and get diagnosed with HIV and get the retro-viral drugs that cost up to £25,000 per year per patient.”

With another cast member from the Ukip show, former MEP Ashley Mote, now expelled from the party, sent to jail last week for expenses fraud there will always be a circus of one sort or another associated with the party.

It may well be that Ukip will continue to fail to make a breakthrough at Westminster while continuing to perform well at the low-key European parliament elections that attract god-awfully low turnouts.

But just like its more extreme rivals parties in the far right BNP and National Front, it’s always a mistake to write off nationalistic forces like Ukip that seek to appeal to often low-income voters by blaming their predicament on eastern European immigrants rather than the seemingly never-ending austerity and gross inequality that exists in society.

Like the BNP and NF, Ukip has descended into infighting after its failure to make the breakthrough it had predicted with a number of leadership figures withdrawing from active politics including Farage’s former chief of staff Raheem Kassam.

Farage’s party is not an overtly racist one like the BNP or the NF, both of which have had fascistic and neo-Nazi links.

But there’s no doubting that Farage’s Ukip has been gripped by its fair share of race rows, including the notorious episode this year when the party expelled a member caught making racist remarks in a BBC documentary.

Farage himself was accused of calling for laws banning racial discrimination in the workplace to be scrapped, while Ukip’s Scottish MEP David Coburn appeared to compare SNP international development minister Humza Yousaf to the convicted terrorist Abu Hamza in a interview shortly before the election. Ukip has in the past styled itself as an anti-welfare state party that opposes workers rights, principally because they believe many emanate from the EU.

However, as the first majority Tory government in more than 20 years pursues its turbo charged programme of austerity, turning part of the UK’s social fabric into a wreckage, expect to see a Ukip pitch to those hit by such cutbacks.

As things stand Ukip looks more concerned with infighting and does not appear to be much of a threat in the main forthcoming electoral contests such as next year’s Scottish parliament elections and the London mayoral contest.

But parties of the hard right are capable of regrouping where they can smell the whiff of a chance to capitalise on poverty afflicted areas.