UKIP – Nutcases And Criminals

[Update at end of post]

In the cold war spy film Billion Dollar Brain, Harry Palmer receives an unannounced visitor to his Riga hotel room. It is his old sparring partner Colonel Stok of the KGB, who has discovered that Palmer is to attend a meeting the following morning with the Crusade for Freedom organisation. “Do not go to this meeting, English”, he warns. “It is a bunch of nutcases and criminals”.

He might as well have been talking about UKIP: hard on the heels of Tom Pride’s discovery that UKIP councillor David Silvester has blamed recent flooding on same-sex marriage has come the piping up of namesake Brian in Crewe. First the nutcase, then the criminal: Brian Silvester had been a leading light of the Conservative Party before he was convicted on eleven counts of flouting fire regulations.

Count your fingers if shaking hands with this man

Silvester’s rented bedsits were such a fire hazard that one former resident told “The first thing I thought was how to get out in case of fire. I tied a long scaffold rope from a beam which I could throw out of the window. I literally had a lump hammer and a pair of gloves on the window sill so that I could smash the frame ... It wasn't a joke and it wasn't for show, it had been there from the day I moved in”.

Not wanting to harbour a convicted criminal in their midst, the Tories suspended Silvester pending an investigation, only for him to jump shortly before the meeting at which he was due to be pushed. But he was still an elected councillor on Cheshire East Council. So he joined UKIP, who clearly have no problem welcoming crims into the fold of Nigel “Thirsty” Farage.

Once settled within UKIP, Silvester soon changed his views to align them appropriately: “In UK ethnic minorities doubled 2001-2011 ... In London, white British down from 58% to 45%. Close the open door” was his latest attempt to frighten anyone who was listening about the hordes of migrants. And he’s been particularly vocal – but only since arriving on the Farage fringe – about EU migrants.

“There are already several thousand East Europeans, mainly Polish, in our major towns like Crewe, Congleton and Macclesfield. Parts of towns like Crewe have been transformed since 2004 and the local population, who have lived there all their lives, feel rightly aggrieved” he wrote recently on the Local Government Association site. Sadly he didn’t actually ask the local population first.

And then came the pièce de résistance: “100s [of] acres of employment land at Basford have been allocated for over 30 years but not a brick has been laid” he whined the other day. But for most of those 30 years, the local council was Crewe and Nantwich, and when the Tories were in control most recently, their head man was none other than ... Brian Silvester! You really couldn’t make it up.

And Farage hasn’t yet explained why UKIP welcomes nutcases and criminals.

[UPDATE 19 January 1600 hours: UKIP has now suspended David Silvester, not because he claimed that same-sex marriage led to the recent inclement weather, but as a result of his being told to keep schtum and then giving an interview to BBC Radio Berkshire.

It seems that Nigel "Thirsty" Farage is having a clear-out of "extremist, nasty or barmy" elements ahead of the European Elections later this year. The thought occurs that there may not be much of the party left if he follows through on this pledge.

And, if he's going to clear out the "nutcases", what about the criminals? Is he going to leave Brian Silvester in place, and leave it to the electors of Willaston and Rope ward to kick the SOB out at the next Cheshire East poll? I think we should be told]