Any UK DUers have time to give us the lowdown on the up-and-coming UK Independence Party?
They seem to be making gains at the expense of all of the existing parties. Does "anti-immigration" translate as "racist"? Are they really "fruitcakes and loonies" as Cameron has claimed? What about their economic policies? Thanks in advance!
The right-wing party took far more votes than expected from the two parties in the center-right coalition government and from the opposition Labour Party, and won at least 150 local council seats; it held 2 before.
Though the U.K. Independence Party has yet to gain a seat in the national Parliament, its leader, Nigel Farage, said it was now “a serious player.” “The UKIP fox is in the Westminster henhouse,” he said on Friday.
The voting on Thursday coincided with elections for Britain’s representatives in the European Parliament. Though those results will not be announced until Sunday night, they appeared likely to reflect similar sweeping gains for Mr. Farage’s party.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/world/europe/britain-elections.html?_r=0
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Their recent targets have been Bulgarians and Romanians - especially the latter. These are the 2 recently-joined EU countries, for which immigration restrictions were lifted at the start of this year, and UKIP is scare-mongering about them coming to take everyone's jobs:
and Farage called Romania "not a civilised country", and has gone on bizarre rants about groups of Romanian men belonging to 'trafficking' operations (he talks about these as if they are common knowledge, but I still don't know what it is he claims they traffic).
It's not the colour of people's skin he dislikes, I think - it's just that they're not British. So there has been debate as to whether to call him 'racist' or 'xenophobic'. But they do have racist candidates: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10885863
and other dodgy ones:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-27532746
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/22/ukip-candidate-arrested-alleged-sexual-assault
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/05/22/eight-of-the-most-homophobic-things-ukip-candidates-and-supporters-have-said/
http://www.southportvisiter.co.uk/news/southport-news/southport-ukip-candidate-apologies-over-7153602
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/18/ukip-roger-helmer-voluntary-repatriation
Economically, they're right wing - flat taxes, cuts in overall taxation and spending (except defence, of course), tend to say global warming doesn't exist (though I can't tell if that's still official policy or not - at one stage, Lord Monckton was their spokesman on that, but I think he proved too nutty even for them).
