UKIP’s Thanet South chairman regrets National Front past – BBC News
Martyn Heale
UKIP’s party chairman in Thanet, Kent – the constituency where leader Nigel Farage hopes to become an MP – has said he “deeply regretted” his past membership of the National Front, according to the BBC.
Yet another UKIP member – and in a high position, at that – has admitted an extremist past. Many will see this as further proof that the right-wing party attracts – shall we say – undesirables, and many more will say they expect him to hold the same views as he had in the NF (the “a leopard can’t change its spots” argument).
Evidence is mounting that shows UKIP isn’t the ‘People’s Army’ that Nigel Farage says it is.
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Only regrets it because he’s been rumbled.
Not true, he has been quite open about this past. I know him to be an honourable man who has, like most of us, matured in his political outlook and regrets being mislead by previous associations. It is easy to take politically motivated pots shots at personalities rather than debate the real issues facing this country, which I might add where heavily added to by you own partly that you are so ready to defend at all costs as the saviours of our future. I was a labour supporter until Blaire arrived on the scene and wrecked the party with his Thatcherite policies. I don’t see Milliband doing any better. So come the election next year ‘Who you going to turn to’, as the songs goes. Who will protect our interests against the fascist Euro-state in Brussels?
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt until you started ranting about Labour.
Anybody who’s been here for a decent length of time will be happy to tell you that I don’t defend Labour “at all costs”, so where is your argument now?
You ask who will protect our interests “against the fascist Euro-state in Brussels”, but who says there’s such a situation? UKIP. Who says our interests need to be protected at all? UKIP.
This is a party that has created a bogeyman in order to look good ‘defending’ against it – in much the same way as the Conservatives have with the ‘feckless’ unemployed. See the similarities now?
Rai, you say we should be free to debate the real issues this country faces. What is the United Kingdom Independence Party’s position on Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnerships and Investor Trade Dispute Settlements?
I find the problem with UKIP is trying to work what exactly their position is on any issue of importance.
If one bad person gets into a political party then it’s not the party’s fault. But UKIP has had dozens of bad members, from the one who said the floods were from God’s anger at gay marriage being allowed to the one who wanted to put down disabled children to the one who did a Nazi salute on Facebook with a knife in his mouth, to many more.
I take it Mike that you have read the relevant treaties on the EU and understand that they feature a single EU identity with one parliament, one state, one police force and one army within a single state. Also it will be an absolute offence to criticise said state. That by definition is a fascist state.
You also seem to assume that I am a UKIP supporter, I am not a member but if voting for them will remove us from the EU then I will vote for them next May.
I might point out that I started the ball rolling with 38 Degrees on the TTIP as no one sensed what that would mean to the UK if we signed. What is Labours position on TTIP as I have not heard them condem it?
As it will be agreed at EU level we, the UK, will have no vote on the issue so it does not matter what UKIP or any other party thinks it will be signed anyway. The only way out is to withdraw from the EU, who’s going to do that. Not Labour, Con-Liberals, or anyone else for that matter.
I follow you Mike because you have a lot of sensible things in your blog that give me a balanced view from your perspective, sometime an unbalanced view but that’s your right. So give me the credit and right to have a view of my own also.
When I wrote about Martin I merely sort to put the record straight about the man, not his politics.
You say you started the first petition on TTIP with 38 Degrees, and that this “started the ball rolling”. When was this? Was it before George Monbiot started writing about it in the national press, for example?
These relevant treaties on the EU – where in them is it stipulated that all members of the European Union will merge into one state, with one parliament, one police force and one army, and where does it say that free speech of the kind you mention will be an absolute offence? You see, it seems to me that no national leader in his or her right mind would agree to those provisions, yet you want to convince me that they have already done so.
Also, who told you that these treaties contained such provisions.
Labour’s attitude to TTIP is well-documented and has been covered here before. You are wrong in your claim that the UK will have no vote on this issue; all member states would have to ratify it, along with the USA. Its future is currently looking very shaky after the President of the European Commission announced that he plans to scrutinise it critically.
I seem to recall Farage stating that it wasn’t possible for someone to join UKIP if they had been a member of the NF It’s written into their constitution…