Why the BBC Prefers to Ignore UKIP

[Teddy Bear]

Ukip, the party of England's reticent majority
By Ed West Politics Last updated: November 3rd, 2011

The Telegraph’s big beast, Peter Oborne, has an interesting piece in today's paper about an almost unmentioned phenomenon in modern British politics – the rise of Ukip to become the country’s strongest-ever fourth party.

Almost unmentioned by the mainstream media, the anti-Brussels party now routinely picks up 6 or 7 per cent of the vote in opinion polls, barely below the Liberal Democrats. As he writes:
Ed West has apt observations and a good article in today's Telegraph on the subject.

If a Left-wing party had reached Ukip’s size and consequence, the media would be fascinated. But, because of its old-fashioned and decidedly provincial approach, it has been practically ignored. In the 2004 European elections, the party gained a sensational 16 per cent of the vote. Had it been the Greens or the Communists that had pulled off this feat, the BBC would have gone crazy. Instead it chose not to mention this event, coolly classifying Ukip as “other”.

For the metropolitan elite, the party scarcely exists. This is why last Sunday’s YouGov poll showing that support for Farage’s party had crept up to 7 per cent – just one point fewer than the Liberal Democrats – gained no coverage. But the significance of this is very great. I believe that Ukip is about to take over from the Lib Dems as Britain’s third largest political party.

Indeed. The BBC are only interested in Right-wing parties when they’re unquestionably toxic – such as the BNP – or whether they can be presented as “angry white guys”, like the Tea Party. Because Ukip cannot be be put into either category, they are of little interest to the centre-Left media (and painting Ukip as "hard" Right is a bit difficult when they're half in favour of legalising marijuana).

Where I would differ with Oborne in my analysis is the extent to which Ukip is the Conservative Party in exile. It certainly wins most of its voters from the Tories, but it also gains considerable support from ex-Labour and Liberal Democrat people, many of whom do not share the party leaderships' obsession with Europe or with other high-status opinions.

Ukip’s appeal goes beyond the European issue, which is not an immediate issue to many people. Rather it appeals to the many people who do not share a set of assumptions held in Westminster; people who don’t believe it’s the state’s job to enforce equality or eradicate discrimination; who don’t approve of the educational reforms of the 1960s; who believe that the welfare state has damaged social capital and trust, and in particular the socialisation of children; who don't support most positive human rights; who don’t really feel happy about the growth of the state into so many areas of private life; who don’t believe that immigration has necessarily made Britain a better place; and who think that crime should be properly punished.

That’s a very big constituency, including very large minorities of Labour and Liberal Democrat voters and a majority of Tories – indeed one might call them England’s reticent majority.

[Teddy Bear]

A recent article on The Commentator shows the continual rise on popularity of UKIP, with the BBC preferring to ignore it, so as not to give them any more air of publicity than they must.

BBC Green with envy over UKIP's rise?

UKIP's rise is about more than the EU. Farage Fever is taking hold ahead of schedule and it'd be nice for the mainstream media to report this for once

By Michael Heaver on 20 April 2012

Perhaps I'm just a troubled, paranoid young man. But if the Green Party were outpolling the Liberal Democrats nationally, I think that the BBC would be absolutely all over the story. What do you think?

UKIP's steady rise in the polls has now seen it hitting 9 percent and 10 percent nationally in polls. In one such YouGov poll the figure was 17 percent of over 60s – the group most likely to vote. Let’s not be silly and say this is down to "Europe". Of course, UKIP's well-known anti-EU stance has a bearing on its support. But we are not in a European Election cycle. Nor has there been a huge EU-related story lately.

Yet Farage Fever, which I predicted was going to sweep UKIP into Westminster in 2015 on this very site, has already started to kick-in mid-way through 2012. Britain's on course for an epidemic of straight talking, small state patriotism by 2015.

The BBC haven't shown much interest in the polls, aside from a few mentions on Newsnight which consisted of Tory MPs talking of how they could bring new UKIP supporters back into the fold. There was also a Labour MP who said that people didn't care about the EU but rather about 'real issues' such as immigration and jobs. In the week that it was announced that the number of foreigners in work in Britain rose by 166,000 last year whilst the number of British-born workers in jobs fell by exactly 166,000. Yeah, exactly.

I can't help feel that the BBC are slightly Green with envy that it isn't Caroline Lucas' high-tax, socialist rabble who are rising. I mean the story of 'others' rising due to discontent with the old three parties hasn't even got legs: The Greens and BNP still can't get above 3 percent in any national poll.

Then there's the interesting subplot of the London Mayoral and Assembly race. LBC radio, the London Evening Standard and the BBC have all looked to set the narrative: the race to win is between Boris and Livingstone, with the LibDems and Greens as a bit of fringe fun. Yet every single London poll carried out has had UKIP leading the Greens in the London race, indeed the Greens are on course to lose both of their Assembly seats and UKIP are on course to gain one or two. In a pretty shocking scene, Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics show noted that UKIP are outpolling the Green Party's Mayoral candidate Jenny Jones in London - before saying that he was looking forward to seeing her in Sunday's debate which, yup, excludes UKIP.

Even the argument that the Greens are represented because they have representation on the GLA already doesn't work, because in that case, where are the BNP who snuck in and got a seat in 2008?

Just what the hell is going on? I see no other explanation outside of pure bias and rigid incompetence.

The BBC, and the media establishment more generally, need to stop treating UKIP as some sort of 'Tories in exile' group which is temporarily having its day in the sun. This is a Party, despite Daniel Knowles's ill-informed jibe in The Telegraph, that has growing branches nationwide and an increasing set of Councillors. As The Commentator has covered before, many young right-wing activists are now bypassing the Conservatives and finding their natural ideological home with UKIP. Five years ago this just wouldn't have happened.

I don't doubt that come May 4th, when UKIP hasn't swept the board with the election of thousands of Councillors, lots of people will jump on their keyboards looking to choke the Party out. Look, that UKIP isn't really gaining popularity.

The truth is it’s not the number of UKIP Councillors elected, but the average vote share that really counts. A 10 percent vote boost in lots of wards won't see a UKIP Councillor get in, but the same again the year after and the year after that will be enough to ensure genuine local breakthroughs nationwide coincide with the Euro and General Elections – which the Party is set to do very well in.

Polling currently at a level that could see UKIP pick up 3 million-plus votes at the next General Election, it really is time for the BBC and others to look more deeply into this rise of the Right.

I believe the anti-establishment, anti-politics feeling is ready to be unleashed on ballot boxes, not temporarily, but over the longer term – such is the disgust of many who hate the likes of Labour and see little reason to change when Ed Miliband and Ken Livingstone are the new (old?) faces of its damaged legacy.

Cameron and Theresa May as right-wing inspiration ain't really gonna cut it either. UKIP's rise is not, I predict, a matter of 'a little local difficulty' on the issue of Europe for the Tories, but the representation of millions giving up on the three biggest parties forever.

It'd be nice for this possibility to be reported for once.

[Teddy Bear]

James Delingpole at The Telegraph heard and comments on an interview today between Nigel Farage of UKIP and BBC's John Humphreys. I see his article has already attracted over 1200 reader comments.

Sorry: but what exactly is wrong with UKIP wanting to put country before party?

By James Delingpole

"When you were the Yorkshire Ripper's assistant how many of his victims did you personally kill and dismember?" Though this wasn't one of the questions John Humphrys actually put to Nigel Farage on the Today programme this morning, you could tell from his tone it was the sort of thing he'd much rather be asking than all that tame stuff about whether a Tory/UKIP alliance might ever be on the cards.

The fact is that Humphrys/the Today programme/the BBC generally all loathe Farage and UKIP probably even more than they detest the BNP or even Israel or the Tea Party.

Why? It's a visceral thing more than an intellectual one: bien-pensant snobbery mixed up with frustration. The frustration comes from not being able to pin on UKIP the charges that it would like to pin on UKIP, viz, that it is racist, uncaring, snarlingly right-wing. It won't wash because UKIP isn't any of those things. Look at its manifesto. It's the most reasonable, people-friendly manifesto of any political party in Britain.

You might quibble with the details: has its championing of grammar schools been rendered irrelevant by Gove's education reforms? Isn't it fence-sitting, rather, on fox-hunting by declaring it a "local issue." But by God, if we could get a government in power which ticked even half the boxes on UKIP's wish list Britain would once more become a land well worth living in.

Farage sounded uncharacteristically discomfited and defensive before Humphrys' hostile, sneery questioning – as well he might. But there was one line in what he said which really struck a chord with me and made me admire this brave, outspoken, charismatic man more than ever.

"If the opportunity arises to put country before party we would always do so."

One of my more cynical Twitter friends commented that this is the sort of thing the Lib Dems used to say. If that's even the case, there's a key difference here: Farage – and UKIP generally – actually mean it. As anyone who has ever had any electoral dealings with the Lib Dems knows, they're more slippery than an eel smeared in KY jelly. They will say or do simply anything to get elected, a) because they can: no one knows – or ever has known – what the Lib Dems stand for and b) because for them power comes before principle.

With UKIP it's precisely the other way round. Say what you like about UKIP's membership – that they're swivel-eyed, that they're saloon bar bores, that they play golf….. – but what unites them is the kind of passion for and selfless dedication towards Britain and British values that simply doesn't exist in the three main parties any more. With LibLabCon it's all politics – not about doing the right thing or asking what's best for the country but, as Fraser Nelson noted this morning, asking "how to win over suburban homeowners; what to offer northern women." UKIP, however, are different because they're post-politics. The beliefs and values and principles come first; weaselling into power, by whatever means, comes a very poor second.

Of course if you're an instinctive statist clinging to the old bankrupt system this will seem like a weakness. When Farage gave his answer you could almost hear the urinous swish of an interviewer wetting his pants in excitement. In Humphrys' eyes, for a party leader so explicitly to state that climbing up the greasy pole is not his main priority is a sign that his party is not to be taken seriously.

I'd say, au contraire, that a leader bold enough to declare that his party is prepared to sacrifice its own interests for those of the country it wishes to serve deserves to be taken more seriously not less.