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In other minor party news, the day started appallingly for
UKIP – the Sunday papers were running an all-out assault on Nigel Farage’s
party. First there was that much loved slow news staple – the Kip of the
tongue, as the party's General Secretary said that they should ‘stand-up for bigots’.
Serial Party-goer: Amjad Bashir
This
was one of those classic gaffes – a politician uttering an uncomfortable truth.
Like it or not, a significant proportion of the population hold views that are
unsavoury to the body politic, unpleasant, bonkers or all of those. Recently in
a pub I heard a serious proposal to tackle ISIS – it was to drop Ebola victims
from West Africa on them. Of course UKIP don’t hold those sort of views as a
party, and I don’t think their senior members are ‘bigots’ or racists (certainly in the fascistic BNP sense, xenophobes perhaps)– but they’re
certainly number 1 with bigots, who hear the anti-immigration message and blank
out all else.
Yet this was overshadowed by the big news, horror of horror
for Farage, a UKIP MEP defected to the Tories. On The Sunday Politics the Con(servative)-artist
formerly known as Sebastian Fox (aka Grant Shapps) could barely spout his
endless slogans so full of glee was he. Amjad Bashir was the rat leaving Nigel’s
sinking ship, who called Farage’s party ‘racists’ and ‘amateurs’. On the face
of it it was a huge scalp for the Tories – Bashir had been UKIP’s small
business spokesman and was in the post of communities spokesman. As an
immigrant of Pakistani origin he was also a useful man to have around to rebut
the aforementioned ‘bigot’ charge.
Then a different story began to emerge – Bashir had been
under investigation by UKIP for attempting to rig a selection, financial and
employment irregularities and consorting with an organisation named by Canada as
a terror group. Suddenly David Cameron spending two hours buttering up his
shiny new defector began to look a little less of a triumph. Later we found out
that prior to his time aboard the HMS Kipper Bashir had been booted out of
George Galloway’s ultra-left Respect Party, which he’d joined after 15 years in
the Conservative Party (others claimed he'd also been a Labour member). With Nigel Farage nonchalantly brushing off the latest
mud thrown onto his tweed jacket, it actually ended up rather a decent day for
the purples’ army.
Perhaps Dave though will take a leaf out of Galloway’s book,
see past his new pal’s foibles and salute his Churchillian indefatigability –
after all it was the great Sir Winston, who died 55 years ago this weekend, who
said: "Anyone can
rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat."
Yesterday’s winner: UKIP
Yesterday’s loser: The Greens
Chump of the Day: David Cameron – for obtaining a defective
defector, and pushing the Green Party into the spotlight.
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