Farage Vaults The Racism Barrier

Last year, all had been going so well for Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his fellow saloon bar propper-uppers at UKIP. They topped the poll in elections to the European Parliament (EP). They got their first two MPs, however contrived the circumstances. They secured representation on a number of local authorities. And, what was best of all, the Kippers garnered lots more members from ethnic minorities.

Squeaky not fair and balanced finger up the bum time

That meant that Mr Thirsty could more easily fend off accusations of racism, which kept on coming, mainly because of the views expressed by some of his supporters. But when it came to climbing on the Muslim-bashing bandwagon in the wake of the Paris shootings, Nige has been unable to help himself, and sold the pass in no style at all in discussion with professional loudmouth Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

Farage did not need any prompting: “We have seen the police forces not actually doing their job because we have suffered from moral cowardice. We have, through mass immigration and not checking the details of people who have come to our countries, we have allowed big ghettos to develop. When it comes to the big issues we have been led very badly” he told Hannity.

That might not go down too well with some of those ethnic minority supporters, and neither will Mr Thirsty’s allowing Hannity to get away with claiming “Multiculturalism is in fact to blame for the tragic events last week in France”. No, Nige just went along with him, adding that “We have got no-go zones across most of the big French cities”, although a UKIP spokeswoman was unable to name one of them.

Still, on went Farage: “wherever you look, wherever you look you see this blind eye being turned and you see the growth of ghettos where the police and all the normal agents of the law have withdrawn and that is where sharia law has come in and you know it got so bad in Britain that our last archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of our church, actually said we should accept sharia law”. Except that isn’t quite what he said.

Rowan Williams actually said “as a matter of fact certain provisions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law”. What is being blurred here is the difference between civil tribunals and the criminal law, and Farage clearly has no problem doing the blurring, in the cause of rabble-rousing and cheap populism - along with smearing his own country for the gratification of Sean Hannity and his viewers.

Indeed, Mr Thirsty has been condemned since the broadcast as “the patron saint of normalising racism as common sense”. While a French embassy spokesperson told that “Of course it is not true to say that there are no-go areas in France” and compared the accuracy of Farage’s comments to those of Steve Emerson’s drivel about Birmingham, all those ethnic minority voters who support UKIP might be stopping and thinking.

Farage on Fox News showed us the true nature of the beast. The racist beast.