EU Referendum


UKIP: a matter of little importance


28/01/2015



A gruelling day spent working on the UK's asylum policy took me to one o'clock this morning, with no overnight blog post written. I was minded to develop the post by the Compleat Bastard, as he raises some interesting points about Ukip that are not being properly explored elsewhere.

At least, when we do write on this subject, some of the more asinine comments seem to have been muted, as our output on Ukip is only a tiny fraction of that produced by the legacy media. At one point over the weekend, the Telegraph had no less than six reports about the party on its website, with hundreds more accessible from other media outlets.

Where much of the commentary goes wrong, though, is in the assumption that Ukip is a political party in the conventional sense, and can thus be assumed to be structured and behave in the same way as any other party. This is where piece citing Rob Ford, profiled by Bastard, goes wrong.

From a position of profound ignorance, Ford is speculating on the possible fate of Ukip when Farage steps down. "Everyone in the party recognises Farage's authority and defers to it. It's not clear yet whether there's another figure who could do that. Without Farage we'd likely see an awful lot more arguments out in the open", Ford says.

Blundering further into the brush, Ford then tells us that the Ukip leader has been trying to build up his top team, so one day, they may have the profile to fill the void. "Farage wants there to be a clearly identified second tier who people have heard of", Ford adds.

Actually, it is the shambling oaf Godfrey Bloom who has at least the advantage of having known Farage personally, and thus gets closer to the reality than Ford, the "political scientists". "Unlike his public persona", Bloom says, "he is very impressionable, defensive about his lack of traditional education and, believe it or not, racked with self doubt. I think this accounts for his reluctance to surround himself with alpha males".

And then in a diagnosis that I recognise as very close to the truth, he says: "There are no alpha males left in Ukip, Nigel has left all the alpha males. they're all beta, some of them very charming, but they are beta males, Nigel is very uncomfortable [with anyone] who can take the spotlight or even the intellectual or moral high ground".

It is not so much the "alpha male" that Farage has dispensed with though, as all those to whom he feels intellectually inferior. Farage the boozer embraces "alpha males" – as long as they are prepared to subordinate themselves to him – as welcome drinking pals. What he can't cope with is intellectual competition.

Thus, Ukip as an organisation has never acquired the intellectual core that turns it into a properly-founded political party which transcends its founders. Whatever founding principles it might have had when Sked started the party have long gone, and there has been nothing to replace them.

That makes Ukip not so much a political party as Farage's "gang". And when the gang leader falls, the battle for succession will start. But without a binding philosophy, this will quickly deteriorate into gang warfare, as rival factions make their bid for the spoils. The outcome will be splinter groups forming, probably spawning yet more political parties, as we saw when Kilroy-Silk quit Ukip.

So there we have it. That's the basis of the post I intended to write, but I'm too tired to develop the theme. Basically, when Farage goes, the likelihood is that Ukip will fall apart. But, by then, we'll be fighting a referendum. 

What job Ukip was set up to achieve will have been done, and we will not need it any more, so it doesn't really matter. Perhaps I won't bother writing that post.