Mass exodus from UKIP to the Tories – whatever happened to ‘the people’s army’?

Defector: Former Nigel Farage aide, now a Conservative, Alexandra Phillips [Image credit: unknown].

Defector: Former Nigel Farage aide, now a Conservative, Alexandra Phillips [Image credit: unknown].

Anyone who still thinks UKIP was a party for the many and not for the (rich) few will be disheartened by the revelations coming out around this year’s party conference.

Alexandra Phillips’s claim that a 50,000-strong increase in Conservative Party membership is fuelled mostly by UKIP deserters makes a very strong argument about where the party’s loyalties always really lay.

Of course, an extra 50,000 Tories isn’t going to upset anyone in Labour too much, because Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership has more than doubled that party’s membership to almost 600,000 – but it leaves any claim that UKIP represented more than the fabled ‘one per cent’ in tatters.

Ms Phillips’s claim that the Conservatives are following policies in line with those of UKIP should be no surprise to anyone but the many left-wing voters who were duped into supporting the party, in the belief that it would support them in return. In fact, UKIP policies were always copied from the Tory book:

[Image: Pride's Purge.]

[Image: Pride’s Purge.]

And it is chillingly telling that Ms Phillips’s advice to Nigel Farage, not to talk about banning immigrants with HIV during the 2015 election campaign, let to her being dismissed as a “pinko” (meaning a ‘soft’ socialist or communist).

She quite clearly isn’t, having just joined the Tories. But where, on the political spectrum, does that put the rest of UKIP?

Perhaps David Whitley, on Twitter, has it right:

“You know what I think we should bring back? Treating the UKIP conference like we would the BNP conference.”

One of Nigel Farage’s closest aides, who headed Ukip’s media operation for three years, has said the party has “disintegrated” and that she has joined the surge of members and supporters turning to the Conservatives.

Alexandra Phillips said Theresa May had delivered on all key elements of Ukip’s 2015 election manifesto “within a matter of months”, leaving her former party with few places to go in policy terms.

“I think ideologically the Tories are doing the Ukip dance now,” she said, pointing to policies on Brexit, immigration, grammar schools and fracking.

Phillips said she believed that a surge in membership for the Tories, with 50,000 people joining over the summer, was coming largely from Ukip deserters, admitting that she was among them.

Looking back at her time as head of media, Phillips said she begged Farage not to talk about banning immigrants with HIV during last year’s general election, warning that it would be a “disaster”, but had been dismissed as a “pinko” by other aides.

Source: Nigel Farage aide defects to Tories claiming a mass exodus from Ukip | Politics | The Guardian

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9 thoughts on “Mass exodus from UKIP to the Tories – whatever happened to ‘the people’s army’?

  1. David Woods

    Well, they had to go to the Tories – the PLP has made it clear, if you’ve ever voted other than Labour you are not welcome in the Labour Party!

  2. Linwren

    The thing is that many of us feel totally let down by UKIP. The rot set in when NEC deselected SW n Nigel buggered off. In no way should it ever be allowed to have convicted fraudsters on any NEC board.
    No matter what tho I’m not going to vote Tory as long as by butt points downwards

    1. Rusty

      Exactly! This was to get the idiots to vote against their best interests preying on people’s fears and then saying they are for working class voters! Ukip = scam.

      1. Mike Sivier Post author

        Fair point. Lots of socialists fell for the UKIP nonsense about not being practically the same as the Tories.

  3. Neilth

    Coincidentally I was talking to my Canadienne niece this morning before I read the newspapers and she asked me about UKIP and its importance in UK politics. My reply that they were really a one trick pressure group whose sole policy was to oppose foreigners coming to UK by getting out of Europe but with no answer to what happens then. I described them as a busted flush that would now pretty much wither and die due to lack of a political focus.
    This news merely confirms my opinion of this appalling, fundamentally racist, populist but nihilist mob who merely wanted to wreck international cooperation to achieve some white power objective. The Brexit Tories who cynically migrated temporarily to UKIP to pursue the nationalist agenda will naturally return to their mating grounds of the Tory party where their bigotry is always welcome.
    The question for us is what happens with ex Labour voters who were equally taken in by Farage and his lies. Have they moved irredeemably to the fascist right as the labour members who set up the British Union of Fascists did in the 1930s. Will they try to return to Labour? Where do they stand on the leadership question given they like ‘straight talking politicians’ as Farage claimed he was.

    1. Barry Davies

      Except that stopping foreigners was never a UKIP policy, having control over which ones who could come, and stopping the discrimination of freedom of movement for 27 nations citizens, whilst stopping those form 166 other nations coming was something that UKIP opposed.

Comments are closed.