UKIP – Self Inflicted Smear

The bear pit that is Telegraph blogs is alive with election fever, and more to the point with enthusiasm for UKIP, together with concern that someone is being terribly unfair to Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his fellow pub bores. Editor Damian Thompson, fresh from attempting – and failing – to bring the “liberal cover-up” meme on the Kermit Gosnell saga to the UK, senses dark forces afoot.

“The Tories' Nixon-style campaign against Ukip: something you should know” he warns, having read Adlai Stevenson’s speech of October 27, 1956 at Los Angeles’ Gilmore Stadium, the text of which was revisited many times during the Watergate crisis to show Stevenson’s prescience in judging the character of the man who became the 37th President of the United States.

Thompson indulges in nudge-nudgery in suggesting that the Tories are behind recent revelations about some of UKIP’s less than savoury candidates and their associations. He is not alone: James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole proclaims “The Tories are panicking about UKIP. Good!”, but then sprays any residual credibility up the wall agreeing with Bozza’s blathering this morning.

A not particularly august trio is completed by Tim Stanley, who you can tell as he’s a doctor, who asserts “Ukip might be bullies, but the establishment are a bunch of nerds who deserve a good wedgie”. Wedgie? As in Benn? Whatever. The electorate, he tells, are so fed up of the three established parties that they will even vote for Nige and his pals, even if they are a bit too close to the EDL.

But this is so much tosh: there is no need for any grand conspiracy to explain the recent attacks on UKIP. It is nothing more than a continuation of what has been going on for months: catching their MEPs dozing off in the European Parliament, A London Assembly candidate saying homosexuality is a “fashion choice”, and the idiot Godfrey Bloom not wanting to employ women of child bearing age.

And, as the man said, there’s more: a UKIP councillor saying allowing the unemployed to vote is “dangerous”, a candidate calling for compulsory abortion of disabled foetuses, and calling welfare claimants “a parasitic underclass of scroungers”. Another candidate called gay adoption “child abuse”, while another asserted that physical exercise “prevents homosexuality”.

That’s before the links to the EDL and BNP, leading even Farage himself to admit that there were some candidates “we’d rather not have”. No organised Tory campaign is needed to pick up on these stories: rather, what we’ve seen over the weekend is the result of an accumulation of revelations. UKIP is gradually becoming a comedy genre, and this status is richly deserved.

Still, it keeps Damian Thompson and his pals out of mischief. Mustn’t grumble.