Due to technical problems, the following posts did not appear during earlier in the year:
Are UKIP and BNP identical
when it comes to policies? UKIPwatcher came across this telling and detailed comparison of their policies, carried out by a religious think tank:
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So now we know who the UKIP collaborators are in other political parties. They have announced the list of sitting MPs against whom they will not put up candidates.
The list consists of Conservative candidates Philip Davies (Shipley), Douglas Carswell (Clacton), Janice Small (Batley and Spen), Alex Story (Wakefield), and Philip Hollobone (Kettering). They also manage to find (presumably to show some balance). One Labour candidate, namely David Drew in Stroud and independent Bob Spink in Castle Point. Lord Pearson revealed that he was trying to convince the local UKIP party in Wells to withdraw its candidate against ultra eurosceptic David Heathcoat-Amory.
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According to UKIP’s website, their "top straight-talking politicians today introduced the most
statesmanlike strategy seen in recent British electioneering."
Statesmanlike? This hardly tallies with reports of their launch which consisted of "party workers giggling admiringly at the official campaign T-shirts" emblazoned with slogans such as "I love it when you talk straight to me," and "Withdrawal! Before it's too late".
One of the reporters asked "Ah, an ejaculation joke. Will this do much to dispel your image as 19th-hole bores?"
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The Chairman of UK in London has been
caught out making offensive racist remarks, saying "You Left-wing scum are all the same, wanting to hand our birthright to Romanian gypsies who beat their wives and children into begging and stealing money they can gamble with, Muslim nutters who want to kill us and put us all under medieval Sharia law, the same Africans who sold their Afro-
Caribbean brothers into a slavery that Britain was the first to abolish"
But most astonishing of all is his excuse for having made the remarks in the first place: “When I read the lies about Ukip being a racist party, I just saw red, and fired off an angry email." You couldn't make it up!
Of course, UKIP loudly suspended him and
then quietly reintegrated him after the media furore died down!
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A striking feature of organised Euroscepticism in Britain has been its discreet but massive backing by a handful of multimillionaires who keep UKIP, certain so-called think tanks, and various other Eurosceptic groups going when they would otherwise fizzle away. After Stuart Wheeler and Paul Sykes, another one has now been unmasked.
It has now
been revealed that one of the Eurosceptic's biggest financial backers is a publicity-shy Swiss-born banker who funds a network of obscure eurosceptic groups, including one run by UKIP leader Lord Pearson. Little known outside the City,
Henry Angest has funnelled vast amounts of money to Eurosceptics, according to an Observer investigation.
The Observer has established that he donates to Global Britain, a thinktank run by Pearson, which attacks the "project of European union… as a bad idea, like slavery, communism and high-rise flats". In 2008, a year after Pearson quit the Tories to join UKIP, Flowidea's accounts show it donated £10,000 to Global Britain. Filings at the Electoral Commission reveal Global Britain gave £80,000 to UKIP in 2009.
He also backs groups that question scientific claims for climate change, and seek to further Britain's ties with the US radical right. Reportedly worth £45m, the 69-year-old is a trenchant critic of attempts to impose greater regulation on the City. He is equally scathing about the UK's "punitive tax system", including the recent levy on bankers' bonuses.
Yet, he has also given almost £7m to the Tories in loans and donations over the past nine years. The fact the Tories are being bankrolled to such an extent by a fiercely eurosceptic UKIP-sympathising City grandee threatens to embarrass David Cameron, who has tried to cast off his party's image as virulently anti-Brussels.
But Angest's support for Pearson's anti-Brussels thinktank suggests one of the Tories' most powerful backers does not share Cameron's belief that Ukip members are "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists". Pearson yesterday confirmed Angest had donated money to his thinktank. "Henry is a fine egg," he said. "It's a shame he's giving money to the wrong party."
