Is Farage's UKIP a one-man band?

Comments

[A Public Sector Worker]

Yes.

[WIlliam Blakes Ghost]

I think its more a question whether Cameron is a one man band (particularly after the Euros in 2014. He's the one in 10 Downing Street. AS UKIP grow they (talented polticians) will come. The COnservatives now thats a different story.

[Peter Thurgood]

I have been saying exactly this for the last couple of years.

I love the way Nigel stands up for us in the European parliament - I wish we had Conservative meps who would act as tough!

I have met Nigel and he is a thouroughly likeable man, and one who I would love to see join us as a Conservative!

[Phil Kean]

He's a national hero for a people too ignorant to understand what a true hero is.

All I know is that for the majority of patriotic, hard-working, law-abiding Britons, we look up at him on the top rung of the ladder, while we look down at career politician such as Cameron, who are firmly on the bottom rung.

[Paris Claims]

I'm sure there are many good people in UKIP. The trouble is nobody (outside UKIP) know who they are.

[Winston Smith]

I left the Tories last year and have sinced joined UKIP. We have had many new recruits over the past year. So many, we are thinking about hiring the local Conservative Association to hold our committee meetings. Someone needs to use it.

[Surreybill]

The Conservatives should be thankful that Farage has steadfastly kept UKIP a one issue party. IF they started to develop common sense policies on green issues, welfare, immigration, deportation, political correctness, quangos and all the other detritus left over from labour, they would be a very big threat to tory ambitons. As it is, all Farage wants to do is bang on about is Europe.

[David MacDonald]

He seems like a one man band because the MSM in general, and the BBC in particular, will only give very limited air time to UKIP so this usually means NF. However, UKIP were doing well in the EU Parliament elections before NF became leader and there are lots of us just waiting to emerge. So watch it!

Note to Surreybill: UKIP does have a full range of sensible policies. Look at the UKIP website.

[Commentator]

But if you want to know the policies of Cameron's Conservatives, look at the Lib Dem website.

[Scary Biscuits]

Conservative Party membership is a good leading indicator of the health of the Conservative Party. It is declining rapidly. It is declining most rapidly in the parts that should be the strongest, such as Oxfordshire - including Cameron's own constituency. This is not a general trend as Labour Party membership shot up in Blair's early years and is holding steady today.

Cameron thinks party members are idiots and increasingly the feeling is mutual. He goes out of his way to alienate them, backtracking on the veto and arguing for socialist female quotas in board rooms. He apparently thinks he is copying Blair who connected with ordinary voters by taking on the unions. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent of the unions in the Conservative Party and by attacking ordinary members he also drives voters away. It will be impossible for the Conservatives to win the next election unless Cameron changes or is changed for somebody else.

[Bill Brinsmead]

He is one of a dishonest band surely.

UKIP MEPs, plus honorary Ukipper Roger Helmer, sought to be members of an organisation where they do no work and achieve no results and yet they still trouser enormous salaries and generous expenses. I guess they will take their pensions too. This would be deemed fraudulent in any other activity.

Why not get elected, stay at home AND refuse the money. A more honest way of opposing the European Parliament.

[Edward Huxley]

Well, I`m sure all UKIP members admire and support Nigel Farage. From the comments on ConHome it seems a lot of Conservatives are unhappy with their leader and I believe the party`s membership is in decline

Cameron`s cheap "fruitcakes and closet racists" jibe supported by his sister in law Alice Sheffield using a quote from Operation Black Vote as "evidence" will come to haunt him. He refuses to apologise for the insult of course.

[Malcolm Dunn]

I think Nigel is a good man, a good debater and good on the media. However he's a useless party leader and has alienated many of those who should be closest to him. The only well known UKIP MEP apart from Nigel himself Marta Andersson has called for his removal and his own deputy abandoned UKIP.
Nigel also resigned before the last election for a doomed attempt at a Westminster seat handing the reigns to Malcolm Pearson surely the most inept leader of any serious political party in the modern era.

[I Albion]

And of course Nigel supports a Parliament for England ,what's not to like?

[david]

The EU is the core issue of British politics, and I think people are at last seeing that the EU is an economic disaster. That should give UKIP a big push in the polls.

[MartinW]

I see the BBC put its twelve-year old producers in charge of the graphics - again.

[Iain Gill]

the biggest problem with UKIP having checked out their policies in detail at the last election was that by strict interpretation of their policies they wanted my wife kicking out of the country, not a policy i am likely to support. i know more than most how out of control immigration is and how badly it needs sorting out but there are plenty of things that need doing to immigration before you start kicking good members of the community married to brits and parenting british children out of the country...

on the other hand the current conservative party are little different to blair and really need a kick up the bum

[christina Speight]

I am not in UKIP precisely - and only - because of Farage. Their policies are fine (see website). As a member I exposed the machinations of him and his clique of supporters AT THAT TIME and got threatened with a libel action! A robust legal response ended that nonsense for their lawyers soon saw that I could prove everything [and still have the evidence] . As long as he's there I will not rejoin though as long as our neo-LibDem PM is wrecking our future I'm being left with little option but to vote for them.

However, more importantly nobody seems to have noticed though that this hatchet piece is totallty destructive of a national party leader without him being given a nano-second to reply. This appears to me to be totally at odds with the BBC's Charter and deserves immediate censure and a head - or heads - should roll. I have no standing in the matter but I hope UKIP has the matter in hand.

[David MacDonald]

To Ian Gill: My wife also is a foreign national; she is also a UKIP member as foreign UK residents are emcouraged under UKIP rules; we have met a few. There is no UKIP repatriation policy for those who are legitimately living here. I would not be a member if there was.

[Blink]

It is a fact that ALL members of the Cabinet are well known down at the Dog and Duck.

[Three Wheel Van]

Not so much a one man band but a three wheel van!!! A yellow one at that!!! lol

UKIP = LOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooL!

[Iain Gill]

David MacDonald,

Cannot find the reference right now I will see if I can find it. They also recon folk with indefinite leave to remain but not citizenship should not be entitled to benefits which if I died in an accident would leave my wife stuffed (despite the fact she has worked and contributed here more than most British females, with kids, of her age). There needs to be a better more thought out set of immigration policies starting with "we UKIP will stop the Indian outsourcers flooding the country with Indian national workers by stopping prining intra company transfer visas for them, and we will stop anyone from gaining indefinite leave to remain or citizenship simply for working here a few years" etc

[john.stevens]

I think it a mistake to view UKIP as a "one man band". It gives expression to a very significant body of opinion in the country and has exercised an immense influence on the Conservative Party. This sort of superficial treatment evades the issues at stake, including the diminishing respect for professional politicians.

[CDR]

If looking for dirt to dish, I think there's more than ample inside Labour, Tory and Lib-Dem to keep dirt-dishers happy for years, before going to UKIP. It is the only party broadcasting the dangers of EU membership and highlighting the enormous problems of immigration, amongst other things. I don't see any of the main 3 doing that. I prefer to support a party that speaks truthfully and directly about current circumstances and tells it like it is....I don't support the word-weasling and treacherous manipulations going on right now in the Coalition. UKIP is the only choice a voter would have (other than not voting at all) to get away from the identical agendas of Lib/Lab/Con; a vote for them means more of the same, and more Europe and more immigration, as we have now, on and on ad infinitum.
A lot of people might not like Farage for various reasons but he does attract attention, for both himself and the aims of UKIP; and that's precisely what NONE of the other leaders do. They all have the charismas of damp rags.

[David Parker]

As David MacDonald says above, UKIP do have some very sensible policies in their manifesto. The problem for them is that, like any fairly newborn party, they are not seen as a credible alternative party of government and many voters, even though they agree with UKIP's manifesto, and will not vote for them (except in the European elections) since they see this as a wasted vote. Farage may have his faults, but there is no doubt that no other leadership candidate could have raised UKIP's political profile as much as he has.

Again, like other new(ish) parties, UKIP has suffered from internal divisions arising from those with ambitions to become large fish in a small pond. But, what hampers them most of all is the lack of candidates with previous parliamentary, let alone ministerial, experience. This will not be solved by a few Conservative members or MPs (even very senior ones) "defecting" to UKIP, but by the unlikely event of UKIP (whose conservative sympathisers probably account for less than 60% of their membership), joining the grassroots Conservative members in trying to overthrow the present leadership and ruling junta of that party.