UKIP if you want to

There’s something or other that bit different about the United Kingdom Independence Party.  I say ‘something or other’ because one senses that to use the conversational French expression for that phrase would be inappropriate, and might provoke something of an Anglo Saxon response from any UKIP member.

And what is the right title for a UKIP party member?  ‘UKIPper’ sounds a bit too upbeat for a collection of people that, whenever they appear on the telly, appear furious about something, usually about having a camera pointed at them come to think of it.  ‘Kipper’ then?  ‘Kipper’ sounds about right as, if they are anything like their fuming Beloved Leader, they are no strangers to smoking.

So what is it that’s just that bit different about Kippers?  Well, they are probably not alone in starting sentences at dinner parties with ‘I’m not a racist but…’ but they are probably alone in having conversations like that before the first course is uncorked, and talking about that sort of thing to the exclusion of everything else.

These are the sort of people who make it very clear that they get on very well with foreigners, and make a point of telling you that they know the name of the lady who cleans their office, and she’s foreign.  One presumes.  Never spoken to her but she wears a headscarf.

The Kipper worldview is that things were a lot better in the 1950s.  This is, of course, utter tosh and if anyone wants to argue, I advise them to first pop back to the mid-50s in the time machine of their choice and try to stream Netflix.

By the way, the time machine of choice is always the Time Machine from the classic film of the same title.  Blue police boxes are fine, as are gullwing sports cars, but any time traveller who decides to fling themselves into an uncertain future at a rate greater than the standard one second per second, and does so in a machine built around a comfy armchair, deserves huge respect.  Indeed, a comfy armchair is a reliable way to travel into the future in the conventional way, meaning you arrive at your destination, say lunchtime or when the pub opens, refreshed and ready for action.

To the media, the Kippers are an amusing distraction posing no real threat.  Unlike conventional far right political movements that shave their heads and beat up ethnic minorities, Kippers are usually sedate right up to the point when they say something so unbelievably racist your arse clenches so hard it squeaks.  Then they keep on talking as if nothing had happened.

There is a school of thought that Kippers are not racist at all, and that they just consider that the EU is a failed project that the UK would be better off out of.  Judging by what’s reported however, that’s far too sophisticated a school of thought.  The school of thought occupied by UKIP is not one, one feels, that would be highly rated by Ofstead.  More likely, Kippers consider that the EU is a failed experiment of the type usually devised by mad foreign scientists in old Universal movies and the UK, or more precisely the paler parts of the UK, would be much better off out of it.  It would mean we could pass our own laws, eat whatever cheese we wanted, and birch homos without some jumped up foreign judge who has never touched cheddar in his life.

The media bloody love Kippers but I’m not sure what’s more dangerous, taking them seriously or not taking them seriously?  A sixty minute programme about the economic impacts of EU policies on, say, fish, would hardly make for riveting viewing, but a slightly overweight woman with views even more worrying than her hairstyle, who is not afraid to express those views?  Now we’re talking, usually about forigners.

The interesting thing is that all the mainstream political parties dislike UKIP, either because it poses a threat to their share of the vote or because their policies are repugnant.  Part of the English national character is to side with the underdog, and maybe that’s part of the appeal of being a Kipper, and proud.