The Problem with UKIP and the EU

Reading of the shenanigans and horse trading within the EU and it's institutions is quite interesting. Dan Hannan says this, Chris Davis (remember him?) says that. The Tories leave this group, UKIP form that group, admittedly with a bunch of embarrassing nutters. This fella in the new group that the Tories have joined/formed is desperately trying to shed his far-right image, he's a Pole, rather than pole dancer, and so it goes on.

But do real EU withdrawalists actually give a shit? No, I don't believe they do, at least not the real ones. I think UKIP, and others, have seduced many patriots into the 'political game'. By seeing MEPs swanning around, many people think that the cause is being furthered. No, it isn't. Those same MEPs claim that MEPs are pointless and have no influence within the EU and it's institutions, so why are they there? The answer is they shouldn't be.

I left the Anti-Federalist League in about 1993 or so when it became UKIP, because I didn't believe a single issue party could achieve. I was right. Where I was wrong was being seduced in 2000 into believing that UKIP's aim was to use MEPs funds to fight our national parliamentary elections, where the real fight lay. I was then an elected councillor, a real asset to an aspiring party. I was naive and and I am happy to accept that I was wrong. I met many genuine people in 2000 but I also met Nigel Farage, I instinctively knew he was bad news. Farage, and his coterie have controlled and destroyed UKIP. What I soon saw was that there was no real stomach for a domestic fight, our MEPs had gone native, and sadly the 2004 intake soon went the same way. Ashley Mote? Tom Wise?

The policies that members have been promised for years have never materialised. Working groups on various policies have met for years, to no avail. Where have UKIP been on the big issues of the last 10 years? Nowhere. Where were UKIP in the fight against the Lisbon Treaty? On the sidelines, Farage decided not to bother because UKIP couldn't gain by getting involved. Really?

So UKIP has become a self-perpetuating Eurosceptic soap opera. It is more likely to consume itself than it is the EU and, in the meantime, the EU rumbles on. UKIP is now the inward looking, self-absorbed outfit that EU fanatics claim the Eurosceptic movement to be, and most of us aren't but maybe UKIP always was. UKIP is more interested in personalities than the fight, and the gravy train more than the ideology. It is a sham.

Even though a majority would like to see us out of the EU today, only around 8% would put withdrawal at the top of their list in voting for their MPs. Let's face it, only 16% voted UKIP in the EU election. As I thought in 1993, a single issue protest party will not achieve, it can't achieve.

So my advice to those who oppose the EU, because you mistrust government, especially big government and support individual freedom and the rights of the individual and free speech, is to join the Libertarian Party, because a single issue party, without a cohesive set of policies, takes you down a cul-de-sac.

UKIP, Farage, Nuttall and Andreasen are a sideshow. Don't be sidetracked.

And don't even start me on the Tories' 'Euroscepticism', including Dan 'The Twat' Hannan.