UKIP backlash gains momentum with Farage radio interview

Friends in right-wing places: Nigel Farage with (among others) US right-wingers Ron Paul and James Beeland Rogers Jr. [Image swiped from Pride's Purge.]

Friends in right-wing places: Nigel Farage with (among others) US right-wingers Ron Paul and James Beeland Rogers Jr. [Image swiped from Pride’s Purge.]

LBC radio interviewer James O’Brien’s encounter with Nigel Farage has been gaining attention and approval up and down the UK, after it became clear that the charismatic UKIP leader wasn’t just defeated on many issues – he was routed.

Considering Farage’s own win against Nick Clegg in the televised debates earlier this year, it seems we’ve come to a lamentable situation in this country, where politicians can lose a battle of wits with anyone who has taken the time to do a little research.

That being said, if anyone were to ask who you would prefer to have running the country, it’s unlikely that either profession would figure in the top two.

The interviewer confirmed the findings of many social media bloggers over the past few days, starting with reference to two more UKIP members who had shown their true homophobic and hypocritical colours.

He quoted former UKIP council candidate John Lyndon Sullivan, who tweeted: “I rather often wonder, if we shot one poofter, whether the next 99 would decide on balance that they weren’t after all. We might then conclude that it’s not a matter of genetics but rather more a matter of education.”

And UKIP’s small business spokesman has employed seven illegal immigrants in the last year, said Mr O’Brien.

Farage employed the usual UKIP tactic, which is to demand that the questioner find out “what’s going on in the other parties”. O’Brien put him straight by pointing out that the other parties weren’t the issue at hand.

Later in the interview, he added: “The reason it doesn’t possess the same urgency as the UKIP conversation does is – (a) – the question of quantity; there is simply not the avalanche of bigotry emerging from other parties that emerges from yours, and – (b) – … the opinion polls do not report significant swathes of the country who are fearful that your party represents deeply divisive and racist ideas.”

He was saying it is possible that UKIP is influencing people into adopting those anti-immigrant and racist ideas themselves – and this theory has been borne out by some of the pro-UKIP comments on the Vox Political Facebook page (but you have to catch them quickly, before the perpetrators realise they’ve erred and remove them).

Regarding JL Sullivan, Farage said he wasn’t a councillor but a council candidate, then contradicted himself by saying he had not heard of that gentleman’s name. If that were true, how would Farage know whether he was a councillor or a candidate?

Farage’s assertion that he would face a disciplinary charge on whether he had brought the party into disrepute was punctured by the revelation that his tweet was made in February.

On the illegal immigrants, Farage’s defence was holed by the revelation that his small business spokesman resigned as a company director three days after the immigration raid.

A conversation about Farage’s discomfort, sitting in a train carriage in which nobody else spoke English, was surreal. When I was a student I had the unique pleasure of sharing a carriage with a crowd of French schoolchildren. That was uncomfortable too, but I didn’t attach any unreasonable baggage to it – it wasn’t an indication that French kids were overrunning Britain and it didn’t show that the French were all loud and overexcitable. It was one train carriage and Farage should have more of a sense of proportion.

O’Brien put his finger on the nerve and pressed hard: “The point you’re making is that schools in the East End are filled with children who cannot speak English. .. That’s not true… Children who are typified as speaking English as a second language would include your own daughters… Perhaps [if we checked] we would realise that most bilingual children in this country are children like yours?”

He continued, highlighting accusations of bigotry and hypocrisy: “What the caller asked you was why so many people think you’re racist… and… you talk about children who can’t speak English as a first language without mentioning it includes your own children.”

There was an implication that Farage, who has banned former members of the BNP from joining UKIP in an effort to protect the party from adverse publicity, has himself associated with the far-right organisation; and a question over the far-right parties with which UKIP sits in the European Parliament. Farage said UKIP would not sit with people who didn’t have a reasonable point of view but O’Brien flagged up a member of the group who had said the ideas of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, Islamophobe, Anti-Semite and anti-feminist, were “in defence of Western civilisation”.

Farage’s paper-thin defence was that the European political discourse was very different to the UK, (again) an admission that his party had encountered problems with “one or two members”, and a reference to problems in other parties (the Conservatives, on this occasion)

O’Brien leapt on this: “Your defence so far is that you’re no different from any other political party and yet your unique selling point … is that you are different.” In addition, he pointed out that Farage refers to “members of the political class and their friends in the media”, while writing columns for the Independent and Express newspapers every week and appearing on the BBC’s Question Time more often than anyone apart from David Dimbleby.

Farage should count himself lucky he was not also asked about his connections with American right-wingers, including Ron Paul (Godfather of the Tea Party) and James Beeland Rogers Jr who, together with George Soros, engineered the British economic crash of 1992.

Farage tried to defend his way of equating Romanians with criminality by saying that Roma people in other countries have been forced into a situation where crime is their only option – and then was forced into a corner when O’Brien mentioned UKIP’s fearmongering poster, that claims millions of potential immigrants are after the jobs of British people. Wasn’t he demonising foreigners by saying they will take all the jobs and push crime up?

“I’m not demonising anyone,” said Farage, then contradicted himself: “I’m demonising a political class that has allowed us to have an open door that allowed things like this to happen.”

“So when I say Romanian and you start talking about people traffickers, why don’t you say people are perfectly entitled to feel uncomfortable about living next door to people traffickers, wherever they’re from?” asked Mr O’Brien. “Why do you say ‘Romanians’?”

Get ready for another contradiction: “I didn’t say Romanians; I was asked… if a group of Romanian men moved in next door to you, would you be concerned, and if you lived in London I think you would be.”

It was while Farage was being questioned on his expenses that Patrick O’Flynn, UKIP’s director of communications and former Daily Express political commentator, stepped in (claiming that O’Brien was over-running, 19 minutes into a 20-minute interview). Mr O’Brien’s response: “Is this a friend in the media or a member of the political class?”

Homophobia, racism, hypocrisy, and an incitement for others to display the same characteristics.

Does this country really need that kind of alternative to mainstream politics?

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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18 Comments

  1. Big Bill May 17, 2014 at 1:33 pm - Reply

    Ahem, how is “Homophobia, racism, hypocrisy, and an incitement for others to display the same characteristics” an alternative to mainstream politics? I thought that WAS mainstream politics!

    • Mike Sivier May 17, 2014 at 1:34 pm - Reply

      Then we’re all going to have to do something about it!

  2. paul vickers May 17, 2014 at 1:37 pm - Reply

    To answer your question – yes.
    What we certainly do NOT need are more overtly left-wing, vacuously, offensive, hectoring ‘talk over the guest so they cannot reply’ bigoted idiots on the radio.

    So I trust Mr O’Brien is summarily dismissed: Farage’s children are nothing to do with anything in the public domain and their first language will, unquestionably, be English, just as my own bilingual (now tri- and quad-lingual) children were.

    Speak English to Daddy, French to Mummy, grow up in UK = English as first language.

    • Mike Sivier May 17, 2014 at 2:58 pm - Reply

      My personal answer is no – the UK certainly does not need more homophobia, racism, hypocrisy, and an incitement for others to display the same characteristics.

  3. hstorm May 17, 2014 at 2:51 pm - Reply

    ‘Farage’s paper-thin defence was that the European political discourse was very different to the UK, (again) an admission that his party had encountered problems with “one or two members”, and a reference to problems in other parties (the Conservatives, on this occasion)’

    I find it amusing that an anti-European separatist, who is uncomfortable sitting on a train on which people dare to speak in other languages, should pontificate in the name of how political discourse is carried out in other parts of Europe. Surely if he prefers the notion that freedom-of-speech-equals-no-consequences-for-irresponsible-speech then he should live in precisely those countries that, he says, practise that manner of discourse. And yet he wants the UK to distance itself from them?

    Why do so few people spot this enormous paradox in his position?

  4. beastrabban May 17, 2014 at 4:03 pm - Reply

    Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
    Mike here discusses Farage’s interview with LBC radio’s James O’Brien, during which Farage was asked some very tough questions about some of the racist and homophobic comments by members of his party, including himself. Like former UKIP council candidate John Lyndon Sullivan, who tweeted about shooting gays as a possible deterrent to homosexuality. Then there’s UKIP’s spokesman on small businesses, who was found employing illegal immigrants.

    O’Brien also held him to account over his own racially inflammatory and hypocritical views, such as describing his discomfort in a railway carriage in which most of the passengers spoke a foreign language, when his children are half-German; associating with extreme Right-wing, racist parties, like the True Finns and Danish People’s Party in the European parliament, and stirring up fears about Romanian Gypsies stealing British jobs. For all Farage’s invective against the ‘political class’, I doubt he was prepared for such tough questioning as his spin doctor stopped the interview about one minute from the end. Buddyhell over at Guy Debord’s Cat has blogged on how the BBC tends to give very soft interviews to the stormtroopers of the extreme Right, with the example of a ’70s interview with Martin Webster of the National Front, and a rather chummy interview between Andrew Marr and Farage.

  5. Backlash, fascist, name calling, protests. The truth is that left wing forums that say they care about all the losers in welfare reform actually could not care less about the starving at all.

    If No2EU for the European Elections and TUSC (Trade Unionist and Socialists Coalition) for the council elections, has received even half the exposure on these forums that UKIP has received, when UKIP will barely win a counillor place on May 22, then perhaps all the victims of welfare reform would know of real alternatives and have someone to vote for, that are guaranteed to not implement cuts and be with all the victims of Europe’s government throughout the EU.

    Labour sacks Labour councillors who vote against council cuts budgets.

    The Greens did Austerity in the one council The Greens rule, Brighton, a town with a lot of poor students, working poor and poor pensioners.

    The working class today are the urban and rural poor, with at the very most half the average wage, but most not five grand, not two grand, but nil.

    Women, young people, disabled, chronic sick, working poor, the homeless kids of the working poor, the enslaved in Workfare of all ages from 18 to beyond 66, by the raised retirement age that is the biggest lie in politics.

    • Mike Sivier May 18, 2014 at 9:24 pm - Reply

      I hope you’re not including this blog in your list of left-wing forums that couldn’t care less, because you’d be wrong.
      I haven’t just been through a lengthy tribunal process, in an attempt to help victims of the government’s changes, to be told I don’t care.

  6. Nick May 17, 2014 at 5:39 pm - Reply

    it’s a shame ‘Farage’s attitude is way off the mark with those from overseas and yet when i had a garden party to attend a few years back by the queen i took at the last minute because my wife couldn’t attend the Tunisian ambassador to the uk a man chosen at random just because i love the Tunisian people

    just goes to show how far both ukip and conservatives are from running the uk in a global manor

    • Mike Sivier May 17, 2014 at 5:59 pm - Reply

      I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, here.

      • Nick May 17, 2014 at 6:39 pm - Reply

        i don’t have a problem mike with anyone ‘all that’s needed is for the uk to adopt what the majority of countries adhere to where immigration is concerned and that’s that you stand on your own two feet and are qualified to do work in which you wish to undertake and are financially solvent with a place to live it couldn’t be any simpler either to implement or understand

        • Mike Sivier May 17, 2014 at 8:52 pm - Reply

          Ah, well I do understand that.

          • Nick May 17, 2014 at 9:45 pm

            as ‘Farage trying to make immigration a political football is to ridiculous for words. what he has highlighted however is that both he and a large proportion of UK citizens dislike people from overseas for many reasons

            The proper way forward for all concerned is to strike a balance of common sense with immigration’ in this way all people see that you have a balance of fairness and that in keeping with the vast majority of other countries of the world this issue sooner rather then later can be put to bed and put a end to Farage right wing way of conservative thinking

            i should add David Cameron shares the same views as Farage but is far more careful when he opens his mouth in other words he seams more balanced but you can be sure both men think alike in private

  7. John Elwyn Kimber May 17, 2014 at 6:44 pm - Reply

    I suppose the crux question here is how much UKIP’s adverse publicity, essayed here, is actually affecting voter-intentions. Your headline suggests that it is, but we could do with some polling evidence. Europe-wide, EuroSceptic parties are on the march and are perhaps everywhere being bankrolled and used, or so it would appear, by new-money oligarchs and very rich ‘outsiders’ mounting takeover-bids against long-entrenched plutocratic interests, who tend to bankroll parties of the established ‘centre-left’ so-called.

    • Mike Sivier May 17, 2014 at 8:53 pm - Reply

      I’ve been having a similar conversation on Twitter. The trouble is, I don’t think the pollsters will have enough time to carry out polls in the wake of the information that has come out. Maybe they will but I don’t know.

  8. Bryn miller May 17, 2014 at 7:27 pm - Reply

    I certainly would not like a bunch of rromanians o Bulgarians living next door to me.

  9. John Lyndon Sullivan May 17, 2014 at 11:49 pm - Reply

    I’m not a Councillor, I have never been a Councillor neither am I a current paid up member of UKIP. Now why can’t you people get the facts straight before you present me as something that I’m not?

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