UKIP downplays its racism

THE UKIP must be at the point now where it could raise funds by turning the lovable quotes from its supporters into a diary, with a different one at the top of each page to brighten up your day.

For April 3, there's probably been a councilor from Margate saying: "Spaniards are only 3 percent human and 97 percent seaweed. It isn't racist to say this, as they would prefer to live between rocks on the beach rather than be forced into houses, which upsets them as they miss the crabs."

Then November 9 could feature a candidate for Exeter saying: "Maps in schools shouldn't include Africa, as its shape frightens children." Maybe December 2 could start with a financial backer insisting that climate change is caused by breastfeeding. And Christmas Day can be a spokesman saying: "Bangladesh should be annexed to Kent. Then the Bangladeshis should all be forced to move, as Kent simply can't take in that many Bangladeshis."

At the bottom, they could have the excuses, such as: "The councilor bitterly regrets any offense caused by the film of him putting on blackface and pretending to boil a vicar in a pot at a 'Let's fight Ebola' charity event." And "Our MEP's comment that 'Bulgarians have glands that sweat sulphuric acid and that's why every single one without exception stinks like a polecat, and that's a scientific FACT' was taken entirely out of context. Furthermore, he was undergoing a reaction from eating an unripe banana that made some of his words come out racist."

You have to feel for Nigel Farage, because all he set out to do was construct a party around the idea that Britain could only be great again if it won back its independence from meddling foreigners, and in particular by stopping "floods" of immigrants who destroy everything--and for some reason, this party seems to attract a few racists.

RECENTLY, THE UKIP has added a new fun element, which is to announce a policy, and then declare this obviously isn't the policy. To start with, its deputy leader issued a statement favoring privatization in the NHS, but then the party claimed it was a smear, and that UKIP had never supported this idea at all.

So the most likely explanation is the original document wasn't a policy, it was a poem. The line that reads: "I would argue that the very existence of the NHS stifles competition," is a romantic cry from a lovesick blacksmith to a bishop's daughter, that to any reasonable person suggests songbirds whistling in the summer breeze, but the Establishment that hates UKIP can only interpret it as meaning the NHS stifles competition.

Then the UKIP issued a document insisting it would bring immigration down to 50,000 a year, but this week, Nigel was adamant he couldn't give that figure, with an explanation along the lines of: "No, no, no, when we said that figure, we were simply stating a number that could be taken as a total number of all the numbers in Australia, which has a sensible but fair number of numbers."

Part of the problem may be that many people tempted to vote for UKIP are anti-immigration without being racist. But the more you pursue the idea of blaming immigration for the country's problems, the harder it is to avoid a racist conclusion. Because UKIP logic depends on accepting that "they" are lazier than "us," more likely to claim benefits and commit crime and catch fire and summon the devil. And they don't integrate like the British, who move to Spain and within hours are indistinguishable from the locals, singing folk songs about carrying buckets of squid into the Granada Mountains in the local dialect.

Then you have to distinguish between good immigrants and bad immigrants. So there are few complaints about the 300,000 French living in London. Maybe it's because they can only be a benefit to the country, having gone to all the effort of getting the Eurostar, whereas Somalians have only sailed to Italy on a packet of Weetabix, travelled to Calais cello-taped to the exhaust pipe of a lorry and come into Britain hidden in a tanker of diesel, so we can't be expected to cough up for these lazy bastards.

Even people who say they object to immigration often don't mean it as much as they think they do. They'll moan that immigrants are coming over here robbing us, then it turns out half their mates are immigrants, and they're an immigrant. Then they say: "Oh yeah, I suppose coming from Trinidad does make me an immigrant, I hadn't really thought of it like that."

So the UKIP's dilemma is that moaning about immigrants is popular, but declaring certain types of foreigners are unpleasant types who are inferior to us isn't popular. So it wins support for a vague sentiment, but as soon as it tries to explain it, it gets in a marvelous tangle.

That leaves Nigel on the radio every morning, saying: "Look, we've already apologized for this candidate in Weymouth, who had a difficult moment, and under pressure said Romanian Gypsies make more mess than anyone else because they've got two arses, and our straining sewerage system simply can't cope with these levels of effluence, but let's not be distracted by minutiae like that, and get on to what really matters, which is our policies that I rewrote 20 minutes ago."

First published at the Independent.