Winston Churchill once wrote "Criticism may not be agreeable,
but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body; it
calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is
heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper
may develop"
Of course nobody could legitimately argue that UKIP and
its leader Nigel Farage haven't received more than their own fair share of
criticism over the past few months and years, a great deal of which is entirely
unreasonable; and often arising from an individual critics own personal
antipathy for the party, or the man, or even perhaps both. However, that isn't
to say the both UKIP and its leader are completely blameless when it comes to
having giving its critics grounds for complaint, because believe it or not,
they are fallible, they are human and they do make mistakes, as shocking as
that might seem to some of its most fervent supporters.
But before anyone assumes that this blog article is just
another critical piece, attacking UKIP for the sake of it, let me just say, I'm
generally a fan of Nigel Farage; and a UKIP voter, but I'm not blind to the
fact that he and they are not perfect, because if they were, he and they would
now be sitting in 10 Downing Street, putting the finishing touches to
implementing their election manifesto. No, the truth is that UKIP and its
election candidates did fantastically well to garner nearly 4 million votes on
May 7th 2015, taking around 13% of the popular vote, but still, one cannot help
but think, that it could have been so much more, if some pretty basic mistakes
and oversights had been eliminated by the party right from the get-go!
First of all and like it or not, one of the most common
criticisms levelled against UKIP is that it's a one-man-band, something that
the most recent piece of theatre involving Nigel Farage's resignation, or
un-resignation, will have done little to dispel that particular myth amongst
wavering or non-UKIP voters. Quite apart from the fact, that by linking his
entire political future with electoral success in Thanet South, Mr Farage
incentivised his opponents to throw everything, including the proverbial
kitchen sink, at the seat, making his task almost impossible to begin with.
There was never any need to make such an offer, in a book, or in person,
because there is no actual rule that says the party leader has to be a member
of Parliament, unless of course there was a real likelihood that the party was
going to help form the government, which even by UKIP's own electoral
expectations wasn't going to happen.
But there is a wider point here, for me anyway. Quite
whether it was personal vanity, or just a political miscalculation on his part,
the fact that Nigel Farage inextricably linked himself and therefore the
party's perceived success almost entirely to Thanet South was a mistake; and
one that he was under no obligation to make. Don't get me wrong, I believe that
Mr Farage is an outstanding politician, standing head and shoulders above the
most of the political pygmies who now inhabit the House of Commons, but even
our greatest parliamentarians have their personal flaws; and that is also
certainly true of Nigel Farage, because he wouldn't be human if he didn't.
As regards the un-resignation debacle itself, it just
seems to me that a new role might have been created by the UKIP national
executive, which would have allowed Mr Farage to continue as the principal
figurehead of the party, whilst at the same time allowing someone else to take
on some of the more mundane and arduous aspects of promoting the party
throughout the country. It is also true to say; and I don't imagine that
everyone will agree with me, but Nigel Farage is fundamentally a "Marmite"
politician, loved and loathed in equal measure by the British electorate; and
for every vote he gains for UKIP he'll lose another one just as easily. That's
just plain human nature for you, but not to recognise it, or to deliberately
ignore it, does disservice to the party and will almost certainly continue to
damage the party's electoral prospects going forward. Unless and until the UKIP
members can resolve that particular dilemma, then the commonly used allegation
of UKIP being a vanity project, or a one-man-band will continue to persist,
probably right through to the next election and beyond.
Mercifully though, unlike the 2014 European Elections,
the party's campaign this time round wasn't completely dominated by instances
of new UKIP candidates making complete "tools" of themselves and the
party, by making ill conceived and often outrageous statements via their
Twitter or Facebook accounts, although the fact the mainstream media chose to
try and make the party largely invisible to the voting public during this
election campaign, ultimately proved to be a double-edged sword for UKIP.
Overall and from a purely personal perspective, I thought UKIP's campaign this
time around was very slick and highly professional, even though it obviously
suffered from a lack of coverage in the media, most notably regarding its
outstanding manifesto being generally ignored by the likes of the BBC.
However, on a small number of occasions in the print
media there was a suggestion that UKIP would unreservedly back a Conservative
budget, in return for an early EU referendum, which I would have thought would
have been an immediate red line for any Labour voter who was thinking about
switching their vote to UKIP this time round. After all, why would anyone who
was implacably opposed to the Tories, consider voting for a party that was
threatening to support or endorse that particular party's proposed austerity
measures? In truth they wouldn't and although there is little doubt that some
former Labour voters actually did lend their votes to UKIP this time round, who
knows what will happen in the next election, with a different Labour leader, a
different set of Labour policies, no actual SNP threat, with austerity just a
distant memory (hopefully) and the question of our European membership having
been resolved once and for all? Just as careless talk was said to cost lives
during wartime, one would imagine that careless quips, or off-the-cuff remarks
can just as easily cost a political party votes and for a relatively new party
that loss of votes can prove to be particularly damaging.
One only has to look at the mileage that's been made by
the British media today over the subject of what is referred to as "short
money", public funds set aside for the smaller political parties to help
offset their lack of civil service help. Although not a subject that is
generally discussed in polite society, because of someone's personal
involvement in the matter, it has now become yet another stick with which the
Fourth Estate, the press and media, can beat the UKIP cause, in addition to the
already discussed issue of Nigel Farage's un-resignation. And it is no use the
party complaining about the heightened press interest in such matters, or the
amount of negative publicity that it generates in the media, because that was
entirely foreseeable, given that the British media have been so determined in
their pursuit of anti-UKIP stories over the past five years. Surely it must
have been anticipated by the UKIP leadership that such a highly emotive issue, the
allocation and handling of public funds, would not only be picked up by the
media, but would be ruthlessly spun by virtually all of them, in order to
damage the UKIP brand?
Of course, purely as a UKIP voter my personal investment
in the project is minimal; and if the party disappeared tomorrow I probably
wouldn't bother voting at all, along with possibly hundreds of thousands of
other voters, who lent their support to UKIP ostensibly on the basis of
improving our country's current situation and its archaic electoral system. It
would be a shame though if the poor judgement of a small number of individuals
were to undermine the invaluable work that thousands of party members, up and
down the country, have invested in the project, simply because some well placed
person has not used good personal judgement and therefore has shown scant
regard to the public's perception of the party as a whole. Only time will tell
I guess, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens!
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