UKIP candidate tells Lenny Henry to move to a "black country"; party says reporting this is a "smear campaign"

He already comes from the Black Country.

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Bless you for the HIGNFY. Lovely moment from Paul Merton there -

Edit: 18:08 or so, if the bbs/youtube combo hiccups

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Sorry but how is this critical? He is presented as a loveable old rouge. Why exactly does he even get air time? All this does is popularise Farage and increase the recognition value of his name. The most valuable currency to a politician!

And really Nick Robinson took a year of courting Farage to ask the question?

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“Were we to return the favour we would find an even greater wealth of embarrassment and disgrace in the other three parties’ ranks to also spread across the media.”

Do it then. Show us how moderate and wonderful you are compared to everyone else.

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It’s quite skillful satire I think - the show is presenting his party as a group of sexist, racist and homophobic bigots, based on their own statements, and it’s doing so without resorting to any ad hominem attacks against Farage himself or saying anything that Farage could refute or sue over. I get the sense that in a different context, Farage probably would be a fun and entertaining guy to have as an uncle, or to jest with down the pub, but that he has absolutely no place in politics.

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There’s a few more than 2.34m of us!

I happen to have been born and live in the UK, and regard myself as an EU citizen. I hold an EU passport which happens to have been issued in the UK.

To suggest there are EU citizens and Brits, as mutually-exclusive groups, is rather supporting UKIP’s twisted views…

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I was in the same boat for over a decade. I love Britain to bits, but it’s really tragic that they’d much rather be America’s catamite than an equal partner in the EU.

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UKIP: for those who find the BNP too working-class.

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Thank you for that correction, you are of course spot on.

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Well, here in Canada we have an historical example of what happens when the old Tory party starts to fall apart.

In the early 1990s a group of business interests and far-right wingers gathered in Alberta to form a new political party called the Reform Party. At the time they were a wide open door for every disaffected right wing nut and racist out there, mixed in with a lot of hardcore free marketeers and social conservatives. This formed as a reaction to the blatant incompetence of the then-ruling Tory party (which collapsed down to two seats in 1993). It pains me to admit that some of the founding members included some of my favourite relatives (we don’t talk politics at family events much).

At first they were rightly seen as dangerous anti-government loonies combined with authoritarian bigots and social conservatives, and had little success outside their roots in Western Canada. Each election would invariably include some doofus candidate saying something stupid and intolerant, and the party stayed in opposition. After awhile they merged with the remainder of the Conservatives, which helped their prospects a bit (though they still had doofus leaders and candidates).

And then they got a smart, iron-control leader who keeps a locked muzzle on all the knuckleheads in his party. They have massive funding and got very smart about campaigning. And they have been in government for many years now. The hardcore social conservatives and bigots remain in the party, and they have done all sorts of damage behind the scenes, but the surface appearance is tightly controlled and pure gloss. Only now are they starting to falter (due to corruption issues), yet they are likely to win the next election as well.

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I think there is real disillusionment with the Big Three right now. We voted for Labour - they fucked up the economy and installed millions of CCTV cameras. We voted for Lib Dems, and they turned out to be spineless lying pieces of shit. We voted Tory, and got exactly what we deserved.

People are now quite rightly turning to parties with Actual Politics™. Unfortunately, with the UKIP, it’s xenophobic racist nasty Actual Politics.

I for one hope that the UKIP do really well, gain many seats, and put the fear of Christ up the Big Three and force them to return to real politics.

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Or attempt to pander to the newly unbridled xenophobia.

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Oh crap, I hadn’t thought of that, I’ll get my coat.

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I doubt there’s anything ‘primal’ about xenophobia. Hard to check though.

I know there’s nothing ‘primal’ about disabled-phobia, since it’s clear that it’s been basic humanity to provide for disabled people since prehistory (A) and yet there are ongoing hate campaigns against disabled people today. Hate doesn’t have to be ‘primal’.

(A) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Chapelle-aux-Saints_1

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Well yes that was the conventional political wisdom in 1930s Germany. Didn’t turn out too well!

One of the few German Politicians with a backbone at the time, Kurt Schuhmacher, described the Nazi phenomenon like this (I am translating freely and poorly ) “The national socialist political agitation is appealing to the bastard inside humans. If we have to recognise anything it is the recognition that the Nazis have, for the first time in German Politics, succeeded in mobilising human stupidity.”

…wenn wir irgendetwas beim Nationalsozialismus anerkennen, dann ist es die Anerkennung, daß ihm zum ersten Mal in der deutschen Politik die restlose Mobilisierung der menschlichen Dummheit gelungen ist."

Of course for the following decade he was interned and tortured and died a physically and mentally broken man, shortly after the war.

I wish the British would come to understand that playing with xenophobia on home territory (as opposed to in far away colonies) is a very slippery slope.

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Isn’t referring to “the British” and attributing singular same knowledge, opinions and attitudes pretty much doing the same thing as you’re arguing against in terms of stereotyping and prejudice of an entire nationality?

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It is only the British voter who can vote for UKIP in Britain–so no it’s not prejudice it is pragmatism! Wanting UKIP to succeed in the election is just not a particularly good idea–history would suggest.

Much better to force e.g. the Labour Party to come out of the shadows and take stand! or encourage Russell Brand to lead the Nation.

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Even a majority is not a whole. And in terms of pragmatism there is no single elected UKIP member of parliament. And by your logic I really hope you don’t treat “David Cameron” and “Britain/British” as interchangeable terms.

>(He had previously tweeted a comparison between Islam and the Third Reich)

First, not quite clear whose this last tweet was.
Second, so what? It’s a comparison, and there’s no law against comparing mind control systems.

That is the point I was making–stop talking up this full of himself balloon / buffoon. Without the media love in he is nothing–his party has no reality. Let’s starve him of PR oxygen.

As to Cameron–Bush was probably more in touch with the common man he was charged with representing in the US than Cameron can ever be (at least he was a recovering Alcoholic which would have given him some life experience shared by others).

Cameron & friends life experience has nothing in common with any one I have ever come across in the UK.

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