UKIP: 'DON'T PANIC, MR CAMERON, DON'T PANIC!'

Oh, what a lovely war. A couple of days from the local elections and the Tories are in a blue funk. And all because of a personable geezer called Farage.

 

Tory Central Office is resorting to the dirty tricks that we associate more with the Blair/Brown regime. They have been scouring 1700 UKIP candidates’ twitter accounts and Facebook messages to see what muck they can rake. A couple of stories have already been published about ‘racists’ and advocates of lynch-law for kiddy-fiddlers, but have not managed to get much traction. The average reader would probably say ‘Yeah. Right’, recognising this stuff for what it is. It is unlikely that anyone ‘shocked’ by such miserable revelations would vote for UKIP anyway.

 

Then we have Ken Clarke showering UKIP with abuse, overlooking the fact that he also implies that anyone who votes UKIP i.e. a Tory. Is unhinged. Not good PR or politics, Ken. But who listens to him anymore? He is a figure of fun, with his Brussels-worship, his hush puppies, and his whiffs. He is a man with a great future behind him!

 

Next we have Dan Hodges, the Telegraph’s teen-aged scribbler, pouring even more abuse on UKIP in a whole column of name-calling – Farage is a big girl’s blouse, he tells us. But he only managed to find 3 reprehensible candidates, one of whom congratulated Russia on banning a gay pride march, a move that many natural Tories might support. Hodges claims to be the only Blairite on the Telegraph staff – not something to boast about, surely.

 

Boris Johnson got it about right. This is what he says in his comment piece:
 

‘…….the problem we Tories face when confronted with these chaps from Ukip. Take Nigel Farage, whom I met years ago and who has always struck me as a rather engaging geezer. He’s anti-pomposity, he’s anti-political correctness, he’s anti-loony Brussels regulation. He’s in favour of low tax, and sticking up for small business, and sticking up for Britain.
 

We Tories look at him – with his pint and cigar and sense of humour – and we instinctively recognise someone who is fundamentally indistinguishable from us. He’s a blooming Conservative, for heaven’s sake; and yet he’s in our constituencies, wooing our audiences, nicking our votes, and threatening to put our councillors out of office. We feel the panic of a man confronted by his Doppelgänger’.
 

The Tories are giving UKIP the oxygen of publicity, doubly welcome in a party against which there seems to have been a media conspiracy of silence, as if not talking about the buggane will make him go away. If Dave wishes to see-off UNIP he must steal Nigel’ clothes.
 

And another thing.
 

Every two weeks Private Eye fills a whole page with ‘Rotten Boroughs’, tales of corruption, sexual misbehavior, fiddling expenses, dirty deals with developers and a multitude of other sins committed by Councillors of all stripes.
 

Two can play at this game.