Does Nigel Farage want to join the Conservatives??

Does Nigel Farage want to join the Conservatives?
By urging ministers to accept Syrian refugees, Ukip’s leader has played a canny game
UK Independence leader Nigel Farage who is calling on the Government to start admitting refugees fleeing the fighting in Syria into Britain.
Ukip leader Nigel Farage has called on Britain to admit refugees fleeing Syria Photo: PA
By Paul Goodman7:57PM GMT 30 Dec 2013Comments2469 Comments
Why did Nigel Farage say this week that Syrian refugees should be admitted to Britain – a view apparently at odds with his party’s outlook on immigration, and certainly in conflict with the instincts of its supporters? There are three possible explanations.
The first is that he said it because he believes it. Such a straightforward explanation would fit nicely with the breezy, plain-speaking, straight-from-the-shoulder persona that the Ukip leader wants to project.
The second is that he was merely repeating Ukip’s present position. The party’s website helpfully explains that “immigration Policy is currently undergoing a review and update. The full policy will be published in due course.” However, its holding “statement of principles” explains that “Ukip would allow genuine asylum applications in accordance with our international obligations”. So what Mr Farage said was in accord with his party’s policy on the matter, such as it is.
The third is that – since politicians are seldom as simple as they like to appear – the Ukip leader is up to something. What could it be?
Let us consider the evidence of his former colleague and long-time Brussels flatmate, Godfrey Bloom. Interviewed recently, Mr Bloom – a member of the European Parliament, until recently representing Ukip – claimed that the party “is in the grip of an internal battle for its future”, that senior staff “are all stabbing each other in the back”, and grassroots members are being “purged”. He declared: “This is 1933 Germany, night of the long knives. I’m waiting to be dragged out of the pub and butchered.”
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Who was the Führer in this bloody metaphor? Mr Bloom left little room for doubt that he had Mr Farage in mind. And as if evoking the Nazis was not bad enough, he went on to name an organisation that strikes almost as much fear and loathing into the hearts of Ukip members – namely, the Conservative Party. Mr Farage, he said, has always really been a Tory and is “desperate to be a Conservative again”. He is “looking for a deal with the Tories”. Indeed, “the deal has already now been done”. Ukip will allegedly stand down candidates in key seats, and its leader will be rewarded with a title and a seat in the Lords.
To be fair to Mr Farage, Mr Bloom is scarcely a disinterested observer. The former withdrew the whip from the latter, during the Ukip conference earlier this year, with an ease that demonstrates the dominance he has achieved within the party. Mr Bloom’s chief crime was to have hit a journalist on the head with a Ukip brochure. Mr Farage will surely have been tempted in his time to hit the odd journalist over the head with a Ukip brochure himself, but clearly felt that the timing and the manner were unhelpful.
Of course, Mr Bloom’s suggestion of a clandestine deal between Mr Farage and David Cameron – with the Ukip leader perhaps merging his party with the Conservatives, and certainly going to the Upper House – is preposterous. The Ukip leader has no time whatsoever for the Prime Minister, whom he sees as a conviction-free member of an interchangeable political class. But Mr Bloom undoubtedly touched a nerve.
Mr Farage has helped to build Ukip up from almost nothing. In 1997, it won just over 100,000 votes. By 2010, that had grown to just under a million. In between, it won some 15 per cent of the vote in two sets of European elections – beating both Labour and the Liberal Democrats last time round. It has come second in several by-elections, including a major contest in Eastleigh earlier this year, and now holds about 150 council seats. It would be surprising, at the next election, if Ukip were to reach the 10 per cent or so of the vote that it currently boasts in opinion polls. But it is hard to see it being squeezed back down to the 3 per cent it took last time round.
Because Ukip tends to take more votes from the Tories than from any other party, its showing could make the difference in 2015 between Mr Cameron remaining Prime Minister or Ed Miliband taking office. So far, so good for Mr Farage – or at least, so powerful.
But his strength is a wholly negative one. He may be able to turn Mr Cameron out, but he cannot put himself in. Ukip cannot possibly hope to match the third of the vote that remains the Tories’ electoral base. Indeed, first-past-the-post leaves it unlikely to win a single seat in the Commons. For all the distance the party has travelled, it remains as far from office as ever.
This leaves Mr Farage with precisely the choice suggested by Mr Bloom. Does he want to settle down in his snug in the European Parliament – making speeches, writing books, cracking jokes, provoking headlines and ending up as a “national treasure” (heaven help him), secure in his salary and pension? Or does he want to do something rather than just be something – that’s to say, become a man of government rather than a man of opposition?
Mr Farage is clever enough not to answer such questions directly, but also smart enough to show a sense of direction. Though scornful of the Prime Minister, he has been guardedly respectful of other senior Tories, such as Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. He has said that he could “have a conversation” with the London Mayor – who, more sweepingly, has described Mr Farage as “a rather engaging geezer” and, in a Bloom-type moment, as “someone who is fundamentally indistinguishable from us”.
Like the Ukip leader’s earlier attack on the vans advising illegal immigrants to go home or face arrest (which caused just 11 of them to leave the UK), the intervention over Syria was a reminder of Mr Farage’s desire to keep his party respectable – one with which a future Tory leadership could deal. It was also a sign of his growing electoral influence. Fear of what Ukip would say will undoubtedly have been a factor in the Government’s decision not to admit Syrian refugees. Mr Farage is able to have it both ways: first frightening ministers off admitting the Syrians, then attacking them for being hard-hearted.
The headlines he won for the move (and the discomfort he has caused Downing Street) may not be worth the anger it sparked among many of Ukip’s members and supporters – in narrow political terms, at least. Mr Farage seems to agree, since he backed down yesterday, stating that only Syrian Christians should be admitted.
But the Ukip leader seems to have his eyes on a bigger prize. Perhaps, at some point in the future, there will indeed be a Tory-Ukip rapprochement: not the unworkable electoral pact that some are proposing at the moment, but the assimilation of part of the smaller party by the bigger one – in much the same way that the Conservatives swallowed up the National Party and the Anti-Waste League during the early Twenties. And maybe the Ukip leader will be part of such a realignment.
But in the meantime, he has other fish to fry – winning headlines, tilting at David Cameron, striving all the while to push his party just a little nearer the mainstream of British politics. So was he speaking his mind on the Syrian refugees, or repeating his party’s position, or proving some of Mr Bloom’s fears correct? The answer turns out to be: all three at once.
Paul Goodman is editor of ConservativeHome

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I think Nigel and Boris would lose any chance of votes if they appeal to the British Public to allow Syrian Refugees in.!!! Britain is a small Country and just cannot afford to house more Refugees. Labour were 64 votes ahead at the last poll , they would get a lot more votes if Cameron does a u-turn and agrees to take in refugees from Syria and new Bulgarian and Rumanian citizens

Nigel Farage really wants to join the Circus. Only no self respecting circus would have him.

Iris wrote:Nigel Farage really wants to join the Circus.  Only no self respecting circus would have him.

I don't like him at all Iris , he hasn't had the guts to resign as a Euro MP to canvas for a Seat in the U.K. so what influence can his Party have????

Panda wrote:...so what influence can his Party have????

ukip to the conservatives is not unlike the tea party to the gop, firmly to the right. influence? given that the only party ukip can hurt is the conservatives, i'd say significant.

  

Marky wrote:

Panda wrote:...so what influence can his Party have????

ukip to the conservatives is not unlike the tea party to the gop, firmly to the right. influence? given that the only party ukip can hurt is the conservatives, i'd say significant.

  

I don't like him Marky, would have more respect for him if he had given up his seat in Brussels to fight a by-election before now. How can you have a coalition with a Party which doesn't have an MP?? Labour is reported to have a 64 majority but that is not through popularity it is a vote against the Conservatives. I can see us having 4 or 5 Parties like in Germany , even including the far right.!! Cameron is making all these promises conditional upon him winning the next Election .....why can't he act now.???

What does Nigel Farage have in common with Marine Le Pen? Wrong question!




By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: January 10th, 2014

294 Comments Comment on this article




Ukip and France's Front National are closer than the former will admit, says Marine Le Pen.

Is this true?

Both are led by funny, attractive, charismatic leaders who have had quite enough of the usual politicking by the usual self-interested politicians; both want to restore their nation's sense of pride and its sovereignty over Brussels. And for further details on what Le Front National believes or doesn't believe I commend this article in Standpoint.


So what are the Front National's policies? These were clearly set out before 4,500 rapturous party members in a recent speech by Marine Le Pen in Marseilles. The predominant theme was the restoration of national sovereignty. In terms of specifics, this was taken to mean withdrawal from the EU and the euro, the protection of the French economy from "unfair" competition and the forces of globalisation, priority for French citizens in jobs and housing, an end to mass immigration, a tough stance on law and order issues and a reassertion of French cultural identity. It also means a strong and independent France in defence and foreign affairs.

There are major differences too, though. Ukip's impulses are far more libertarian and small government than the essentially statist Front National's. Also, the traditions from which it springs are much more British. The French revere the state in a way that few Britons ever really could: they had Louis XIV and Napoleon; they like that kind of thing; we don't.

Let me pose a different question, though, and one which I think addresses the far more important underlying issue: why does Nigel Farage have to tread on eggshells when the subject is raised?


Nigel Farage, the head of Ukip, ruled out joining forces, stating on Thursday: "We keep getting this every fortnight or so don't we? Look, we've made it clear that we don't intend to do a political deal at any point with French National Front."

The answer, of course, that he operates in a world where for years the terms of the debate have been defined almost exclusively by the liberal-left. For example, I have a suspicion that a Britain run by the Green party would be a country subject to no less toxic and destructive a form of extremism than were it run by the BNP; that the President Hollande's sclerotic socialism is but a cigarette paper away from Marine Le Pen's commitment to nationalisation and protectionism; that – with notable exceptions like Greece's vile and genuinely fascistic Golden Dawn – the anti-EU parties springing up across the Continent are truer to the principles of democracy than the European Union. Yet our lazy and parti-pris media – even many newspapers notionally on the right-wing side of the debate – continue to do the liberal-left's dirty work for it by labelling any party with instincts which are nationalistic, anti-immigration, or anti-EU as belonging to the "far-right" – and therefore automatically beyond the pale of reasoned political discourse. The loons of the green-left, on the other hand, get a more or less free pass to spout their anti-democratic drivel at will.

This sly trick was eloquently exposed by Dan Hannan in a recent Spectator article.


To lump together fascist parties (Golden Dawn in Greece, Ataka in Bulgaria, Jobbik in Hungary, the BNP) with bellicose but essentially constitutional anti-immigration movements (FN in France, PVV in the Netherlands, Freedom Party in Austria) is clumsy. To add in eurosceptic parties of the democratic right (AfD in Germany, Mouvement pour la France, Danish People’s Party, Ukip) is deliberately tendentious.

When someone groups all these parties together under the label ‘extreme right’, he is telling you more about himself than about them. Parties like Golden Dawn are not right-wing in any recognisable sense. They favour workers’ councils, higher spending, state-controlled industries; they march on May Day under red flags. They could just as easily sit at either end of the European Parliament’s hemicycle (our closest equivalent, in its combination of mystical nationalism and loathing for capitalism, is Sinn Féin). Calling such parties right-wing isn’t intended to make anyone think less of them; it’s intended to damage mainstream conservatives by implying that the difference between them and the Nazis is one of degree.

Something similar has been going on for years – since 1968 to be precise – with the debate about immigration. It has been effectively closed down thanks to a speech given by a great classicist, poet and distinguished war veteran (one of only two men to have risen from private to brigadier) warning of the break-down of social cohesion which might occur as a result of unchecked immigration.

This is the subject of another excellent article in the Spectator, this time by Rod Liddle.


Dermot Murnaghan tripped up Mr Farage by the devilishly clever tactic of reading him some anodyne quotes from Powell’s exciting and controversial ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech and asking Farage if he agreed with them. But only later did he reveal that they were the words of the sulphurous Antichrist Powell! Brilliant. The quote Murnaghan used was about how mass immigration had led people to consider themselves strangers in their own neighbourhoods and placed a bit of a strain on local infrastructure. Farage, like I suspect a good 60 per cent of the population, nodded along in agreement, and the trap was sprung. Ha! You love Enoch, you do. You probably want to marry him.

A terrific ploy. They must take it further. When David Cameron is a guest on the Murnaghan Show, Dermot should ask him if he agrees with the following: ‘As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have a duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.’ And when the Prime Minister says yep, that’s me, down to the bone, Dermot can pounce: ‘Hitler said that! You’re Hitler, you are.’ And for Nick Clegg: ‘I’m quite modest. I don’t want to tell people I’m a leader.’ That’s Pol Pot! Nick’s Pol Pot! Maybe if they have Archbishop Welby on one day they can ask him if he agrees with this: ‘Man is subject to certain desires and needs which are as natural to his being as they are to that of any other animal.’ And then reveal that it comes from the head of Stalin’s NKVD, Laventiy Beria, you evil episcopal bastard, who do you think you’re fooling with this love and peace rubbish? You want to eliminate enemies of the state in a dark basement.

So, no, I don't remotely blame Nigel Farage for his awkwardness on the Marine Le Pen front. I do very much blame the utterly dishonest, intellectually and morally bankrupt, bien-pensant culture which has made such awkwardness necessary