I think UKIP are the middle and upper class division of the BNP.... suggesting compulsory abortion for unborn babies with Down Syndrome

[JakeBullet]

Or rather yet another of their candidates has made a stupid comment. They really are not all that good are they?

Here

Yet another reason not to vote for them.

Bridget,

Guardian readers don't give a shiny shite about the working classes.
( In this country)

In Brazil, maybe. In Mexico-possibly. In India-definitely.

In Britain - they are embarassed by them.

what were they when they were Labour voters?

Probably racist New Labour voters. So people who align themselves with the right but considered themselves too intelligent to vote for the BNP.

Don't forget Flatpack, the current Labour party has the same neoliberal policies you love so much. So if they get in absolutely nothing will change. The people need to start a party of their own.

So 40k would put you in the top half of earners in London boroughs when about £26k would do it in the rest of the country? As Angie says, you have to be quite wealthy to live there.

I agree with you about Nigel Farage. I think that UKIP would be terrible for your average working class voter if they got in. I think that they would be very much in favour of the type of economy where the majority of people had lower standards of living and were poorer for the sake of 'business' and yet they would help a small group of the elite wealthy prosper even more. It would be a disaster for the working classes if they got in.

However the original issue was that they do appeal to working class voters who are concerned about the impact immigration is having on them, even if only as a protest vote. And the denial of the leftwing of these concerns is a very real problem. Farage may be out of touch but on this one issue he has his finger very much on the pulse and 'lefties' aren't really dealing with the concerns of white working class people.

UKIP are all over Shields at the moment with the by election for Miliband's seat. They have rented out a shop , the purple and yellow fuckers give me migraine every time I pop for a sandwich.
Really not very bright of then to stop my Yemeni/English colleague to tell her they didn't agree with immigrants. It was quite a spectacular put down by all accounts .

Thingsthatmakeyou I sadly have to say I think this is true. My Grandad was a union man who used to print the Manchester Guardian.

He would turn in his grave if he could see the £4,000 dresses and £20,000 sofas they promote now, it, and the Labour party, are now for the educated middle class.

As I said Bridget, the overwhelming emotion the left feels for the white working classes is..............contempt.

But don't worry -Polly Toynbee feels our pain.

From her naice villa in Tuscany.

This is ridiculous, it's neither a discussion about immigration nor UKIP. Yet again, it's turned into let's slag off Guardian Readers.
The only benefit I get is Carer's Allowance. It doesn't mean I don't care about the benefits cap, despite the fact that it doesn't affect me. I own my property, I care about the impact of 'bedroom tax'. So, because Polly Toynbee has a decent income and possibly a holiday home, that negates her right to care, does it? Ridiculous.

Neither the Guardianistas nor Torygraph readers, and whatever the LibDems read, nor the parties they support, represent the Working class and their concerns. None of these groups has been hit by the impacts of immigration, globalisation, etc etc, and neither is there any sign of them doing very much about it, they all seem caught in their own dogmas.

Which is why UKIP exists and will carry on growing, no matter how much middle classers sniff at it.

I don't like UKIP but nothing I see from the others tell me they are dealing with the issues it is leveraging.

Let me be quite blunt, as right wing as some of my politics are, UKIP no matter what flavour it dresses up as this week, is not my particular brand of politics.

So that established, there are a growing band of people, probably around my age , late 40's, for whom UKIP, BNP, EDL are an attractive party. These people have major issues with seeing their children struggling for jobs, they themselves are under cut on building sites, as plumbers and focus on immigration as the sole cause of that.

We all know that's not entirely correct, but you try persuading the man in the street who is trying to keep a roof over his familys head that the reason he hasn't got a new contract/job isn't because the Poles (or whomsoever) are under cutting rates. I do listen to these sort of rants from DHs mates in the building trade and I empathise that obtaining work is difficult

I know we've touched on this before, but the round up at the end of Crimewatch doesn't really help inclusion either, when 80% of mug shots are Asian or East European.

Mass immigration is a problem. For a variety of reasons. Plucking one out of the air - housing - again, thread after thread on here about HB and rental prices etc - you open up the borders and allow x thousand people to come in, it is going to drive up demand.

So it is an issue that needs addressing. What the government needs to do is make the UK look less attractive to unqualified migrants.

I don't read the fuckng Guardian, what has that got to do with a tosser who thinks women should submit to a compulsory procedure anyway? If disagreeing with the likes of him makes me a leftie Guardian reading sheep that then so be it....I'll take out a subscription tomorrow, anything but align myself with someone like that.

All the while UKIP members make statements like this AND ARE DEFENDED when it is raised with the party grandees I will shout out against them. Everyone should be doing the same, Guardian reader or not.

"So, because Polly Toynbee has a decent income and possibly a holiday home, that negates her right to care, does it? Ridiculous"

She has become a parody of herself IMO, she and her comfortable generation of champagne socialists have more in common with Tory and Libdem chatterati and haven't a clue about what working class life looks like today.

Well said Jake.

Well said, Jake

Lazy It doesn't matter whether or not they have a clue, the fact is that they still want fair play for all.

"I don't read the fuckng Guardian, what has that got to do with a tosser who thinks women should submit to a compulsory procedure anyway? If disagreeing with the likes of him makes me a leftie Guardian reading sheep that then so be it....I'll take out a subscription tomorrow, anything but align myself with someone like that"

You are missing the point about UKIPs attraction, it is promising the very hard pressed less skilled working class in the UK some respite from the impacts of immigration and globalisation, and that impacts them far more than the fate of a few unborn foetusses.

Spot on Hollyberrybush.

And just to add - very few 'real' white working class people support Labour anymore.

I am sure that IS their attraction lazyjayne. However, many of those hard pressed workers might well be mortified if they read statements such as this. It's not just the middle classes who find such views abhorrent...forcible and compulsory medical procedures against someone's will. No matter what appeal they have, this is disgusting....,and the party defended him too.

I have to go to work now but navada if n no working class people vote Labour, how come they win seats in Sunderland, hartepool, Middlesbrough etc?

Jesus, lazyy do you have such contempt for the working class voters that you think they'd agree with forcing women to have abortions and all of the other misogynist creep they agree with?

HollyBerryBush

I know we've touched on this before, but the round up at the end of Crimewatch doesn't really help inclusion either, when 80% of mug shots are Asian or East European.

Perhaps then we ought to bring in quotas for mugshots?

JakeBullet

I am sure that IS their attraction lazyjayne. However, many of those hard pressed workers might well be mortified if they read statements such as this. It's not just the middle classes who find such views abhorrent...forcible and compulsory medical procedures against someone's will. No matter what appeal they have, this is disgusting....,and the party defended him too.

Except that they didn't, as you can see from the BBC News report. They said he wouldn't be standing as a UKIP candidate if he won, they said they didn't know about his views when they offered him the chance to stand for them, and they apologised to anyone who was upset by his statements. He couldn't be removed from the ballot paper, of course, because it was too late.

Isn't it that you surface with this 5-month-old story just before the local council elections?

I'm white working class (although married to a MC home counties bloke - who reads the Telegraph) living in East London.

UKIP disgust me, as do the BNP (who won council elections down the road from me in Barking and proceeded to do precisely fuck all apart from claim expenses so were chucked out on their sorry arses next time around). Same ugly view of women, minorities and immigrants, just different economic policies, as far as I can see.

Stereotypes benefit no-one.

Yes..some people are being rather patronising about the working class IMO.

It's interesting that the ukip are only doing well in particular parts of the country. There is absolutely no visible support for them up here in the north-east. Maybe that's because most of the decent jobs up here went decades ago, so there's little point grumbling about immigrants. There's also the fact that the London government clearly doesn't give a shit about this part of the country, so the whole 'governed from Brussels' argument doesn't really resonate.

I don't see how ukip can offer anyone any respite from the pressures of globalisation, no matter how much they would want to pretend they can. Opting out of Europe won't make any difference to the structural issues in the global economy that mean jobs get moved abroad.

She has become a parody of herself IMO, she and her comfortable generation of champagne socialists have more in common with Tory and Libdem chatterati and haven't a clue about what working class life looks like today.

What utter bollocks. Polly Toynbee is one of the only journalists in this country who regularly stands up for the working poor see this article on the difficulties of making ends meet on the minimum wage for example and here's another one about the damage being done to the working poor by cuts to tax credits. Oh and here's another about how difficult life is for working families on low incomes.

She is also one of the few national journalists to have attacked the privatisation of the NHS and to have explained what the NHS bill actually meant. She frequently calls for fairer taxation, ie the rich actually paying their share.

But none of this matters because she is middle class and has a holiday home That instantly invalidates her research, opinions and writing.

I live in the South. We have a huge problem here with schools, public services & house prices. There's been an exodus of people, priced out of London, moving here. There's been no investment in the local infrastructure to match, so local schools are massively oversubscribed etc. That's not down to immigration. That's the result of our fucked-up housing market.

As for low wages, we have unemployed people doing work (that previously used to be paid) for companies like Tesco. Most people who claim housing benefit are in work - wages have been driven so low, taxpayers are in effect subsiding these companies. This isn't down to immigration either, it's down to governments letting industries like banking, the supermarket run wild.

UKIP have no solutions to these problems that stand up to any kind of analysis. And for supposed anti-Europeans, they certainly seem more than happy to claim eyewatering expenses from the EU

Anyway, I live in a small but naice town in the South-East-ish. We have a lack of housing, not great amenities although they are improving, and a pretty large Eastern European population, with a lot of other nationalities mixed in. Basically somewhere where people might be likely to blame immigration for lack of housing/nursery places and other such shite.

Opinion poll showed UKIP raking in a massive 0% of the vote
Faith in humanity slightly restored!