UKIP Bigot Names His Price

[Update at end of post]

Just to show even-handedness, Andrew Marr asked the question about ruling out a deal with other parties not only of “Auguste” Balls, but also of the Rt Hon Gideon George Oliver Osborne, heir to the Seventeenth Baronet, when both passed before his inspection this morning. The Tories will be hoping to frighten English voters with the idea of the SNP doing a deal with Labour, but their own prospective coalition partners look none too appealing.

Squeaky Indian doctor finger up the bum time

As the SNP have effectively said they won’t prop up a Tory Government at Westminster, and a depleted Lib Dem contingent may not bring enough votes to get Young Dave across the win line - 326 MPs out of a total 650 - the Blue Team would be left looking to, shall we say, more fringe parties to help form a Government. There is the DUP in Northern Ireland, and then there is UKIP, who may have a handful of candidates returned.

In days gone by, when the old Unionist Party took most seats in Northern Ireland, they generally took the Tory whip - hence “Conservative and Unionist Party”. So doing a deal with the DUP might not be so problematic. But getting into bed with Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his fellow saloon bar propper-uppers? Granted, many UKIP members are lapsed Tories, but the borderline racist attitudes of some MEPs could be a problem.

Take Farage for starters: when he suffered problems with his testicles, as the Guardian has reported, “Farage pointedly goes on to refer to the race of the medic whom he appears to blame … ‘An Indian doctor told me that the Bromley doctors had got it all wrong: I had an infection. I was to go home and take a heavy dose of antibiotics. I did not need an operation after all. A few weeks went by and the pain was just as bad’”.

Thet looks like a Coalition over thyah! Jolly good sheow!

Was the doctor Indian? How did Mr Thirsty know? What relevance would there have been in knowing his nationality, in any case? And his criticism of the NHS skates over another accident when he “was hit by a car after an afternoon of ‘steady drinking’ in an accident that nearly cost him his left leg”. But Farage’s ambiguous attitude to the NHS and comments on “Indian Doctors” are nothing to the outbursts of David Coburn.

Coburn has just been elected as a UKIP MEP for Scotland, although he lives in London. The Scottish Daily Mail reported a particularly disobliging remark about Muslim SNP minister Humza Yousaf “during a telephone conversation about the BBC Two show The Big Immigration Debate on Tuesday, which he claimed Mr Yousaf had been due to appear on”. So what had Coburn said of Yousaf?

“‘Humza Yousaf, or as I call him, Abu Hamza, didn’t seem to turn up,’ he was reported to have said”. Yousaf observed “This is Islamophobia of the worst kind … If this was shouted at a Muslim on the street none of us would tolerate it. The fact this abuse has come from an elected member of the European Parliament is even more shocking and completely unacceptable”. Coburn should quit. He isn’t up to that sort of thing. He’s a Kipper.

You think Labour doing a deal with the SNP is bad, Tory people? Your options include Nige and his fellow bigots. This is a highest up the wall contest you don’t want to win.

[UPDATE 16 March 1545 hours: Farage has now made another pronouncement that will make it yet more difficult for the Tories to do any kind of deal with UKIP.

As the Guardian has reported, "The children of new immigrants coming to Britain should not immediately be allowed to attend state schools, Nigel Farage has suggested ... he said his personal view was that immigrants would only bring their dependants after a period of time and after that he would not envisage their children being allowed to go straight into state schools".

Whatever next? Can anyone hear the words of George Wallace? "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"? Because segregation is exactly what the UKIP leader is proposing]