Ukip's manifesto: immigration, Europe – and that's it. Among a crowd of political automatons, Nigel Farage is like a wacky neighbour in a sitcom.

Ukip's manifesto: immigration, Europe – and that's it

Despite intense pressure, Nigel Farage refuses to engage on anything but his core issues. Will it work come polling day?

Patrick Wintour

The Guardian, Tuesday 20 May 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/20/ukip-manifesto-europe-immigration

Nigel Farage is coming to the end of a period of probably the most intensive scrutiny any unelected British politician has faced in decades, and with his opponents nervously hoping that, in the last few days, his mask has slipped to reveal if not something dark, then at least a buffoon, or better, someone who unashamedly manipulates truths to feed fear and garner votes.

No one can accuse Farage of hiding. He has done all the tough interviews, and is confident that the recent flurry of accusations of racism has backfired since the public do not see him as such. It is a finding that Labour and Tory polling has also picked up. Farage himself believes that voters will realise he has been subjected to a disproportionate media barrage. Almost as a result, he believes he is still on course to create the long-forecast political earthquake when the European election results are revealed next Sunday.

If he has succeeded, one reason will be the simplicity of his message, and his self-discipline. Ukip, unlike the BNP, travels light. There is little complex ideology or historical philosophy, no discussion on England's spiritual roots, few tracts on national identity, and no critiques of elitist democracy penned by a Ukip court ideologue.

His lodestar is nostalgia, not Nietzsche. Ukip is not neo-fascist, but – in Farage's own description – a patriotic party with a small p. Farage would not go near a balcony, save to lean over it and be ill.

As a result, much of the assault on Ukip has been directed less at him personally than towards to the homophobes, Islamophobes, white imperialists and eccentrics who have stood, or tried to stand, under Ukip's purple. The midnight thoughts of his supporters on Twitter and Facebook have fed newspapers every day. Farage just repeatedly brushes them aside as the irrelevant idiots and oddballs that latch on to any new political movement.

Throughout the campaign, he has tried to stick rigidly to a simple dual-track message: Britain's communities are being overwhelmed by immigrants and the British government can do nothing about this so long as Britain remains in the European Union, a membership Ukip will end through a referendum.

By combining the emotive message about migrants with the abstractions of British sovereignty, Ukip have turned the revolt on the right into the revolt of the disenchanted. Farage explained the importance of the duality in an interview last year: "They [the voters] have made the connection. It took me bloody years to get immigration and Europe together, but I knew at the local elections this year it was now the same thing. For years I tried."

The message discipline on this has been very tight. So he told LBC: "It is completely pointless to talk about immigration figures and targets while we're members of the European Union, when we have a total open door to nearly half a billion people. We have an open door not just to 28 million from Romania and Bulgaria – 485 million people effectively now have British passports. They can all come to live in this country, and so actually nobody can have an immigration policy, nobody can project or predict what will happen all the while we stay part of the EU. 485 million people can come and live here, every single one of them, if they want to."

He has tried to suppress everything outside this dual argument. Thus, well before the elections, he made it clear that Ukip would be providing no domestic policy, even though it has nearly 2,000 candidates in local elections across the country.

Ukip's local elections manifesto, launched away from the scrutiny of Westminster reporters, is a glossy vacuity, promising referenda, weekly bin collections, no more windfarms and a promise to look at the case for shale gas. On housing, the party opposes Stalinist planning.

When Farage was asked by the BBC presenter Andrew Neil about the party's myriad plans for tax cuts, he said: "I'm not talking about any of those things." Neil persisted by suggesting the party would cut fuel duty, and Farage replied: "No, I'm not talking about any of those things. I'm fighting a European election. That is the election we're fighting, that election's all about the European Union."

Pressed again, He later said: "Well, I'm sorry but that is not for now. You know, that is not for now. We have not agreed a manifesto for the general election. We will do over the course of the summer."

Indeed, Farage has made a virtue of Ukip being a blank piece of paper, repeatedly ridiculing the Ukip manifesto written for the last election. He said: "It was drivel, 486 pages of drivel. I didn't read it, nor did the party leader. It was a nonsense, and we've put that behind us and moved on to a professional footing. I said, I want the whole lot taken down off the website. We reject the whole thing, we'll start again with a blank sheet of paper."

The blankness of Faragism helps the party forestall internal divisions and remain attractive simultaneously to disillusioned Labour in the north and disillusioned Tories in the south. When extraneous issues have emerged in the campaign with which he is uneasy, his tactic has been to prevaricate. Asked whether he supported gay marriage, Farage, once a libertarian, avoided an answer by saying: "It is a can of worms."

He said that while Britain remained a signatory to the European convention on human rights – not an EU body – there was a big risk that the Church of England would be dragged through the courts in Strasbourg and possibly forced to conduct gay marriages against the will of the majority of churchgoers.Similarly, he avoided a view on British industrial policy, or the Pfizer take-over of AstraZeneca. He said "it's irrelevant what anybody in Britain says, this is a European Union competence"

Similarly, on his EU allowances, he has slithered around, promising an independent audit if it would settle the argument, then saying he would be not be singled out for a higher level of scrutiny, and finally backtracking when it was pointed out that Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat MEPs all have their allowances audited independently. He now says Ukip MEPs will decide collectively if they should have allowances audited. A retrospective audit of his own spending is no longer offered.

But the mask has slipped somewhat over foreign policy. Just before the first LBC Europe debate with Nick Clegg, he sided with Vladimir Putin to claim it was probable that the Syrian chemical weapon attack was mounted by rebels and not agents of President Assad.

Asked by Alastair Campbell, the former Labour communication chief, to name the politician he most admired, he chose Putin, and such is his hatred of EU foreign policy he found himself condemning the Ukrainian revolutionaries as credulous creatures of the European commission.

"We have given a false series of hopes to a group of people in the western Ukraine, so geed up were they that they actually toppled their own elected leader," he said. "That provoked Mr Putin, and I think the European Union frankly does have blood on its hands in the Ukraine."

But it has been over cultural issues that Farage sounded more sinister than a saloon bar stockbroker. In his speech to the Ukip annual conference in Torbay, he said: "Whether it is the impact on local schools and hospitals, whether it is the fact in many parts of England you don't hear English spoken any more, this is not the kind of community we want to leave to our children and grandchildren."

Questioned about this at a subsequent press conference, Farage waxed lyrical about a lost Metroland: "Do I think parts of Britain are a foreign land? I got the train the other night – it was rush hour – from Charing Cross.

"It was a stopper going out and we stopped at London Bridge, New Cross, Hither Green. It was not till we got past Grove Park that I could hear English being audibly spoken in the carriage.

"Does that make me feel slightly awkward? Yes it does. I wonder what is really going on. I am saying that and I am sure that is a view that will be reflected by three-quarters of the population, perhaps even more."

That in turn has led to the growing contortions over Romanians and Bulgarians. Ukip posters appeared warning that 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians were after your job, and he has repeatedly highlighted the criminality of Romania.

In a Guardian interview, he said it was not just about numbers of Romanians, but quality: "People hate talking about this, but if you look at the Met crime figures for Romanian arrests, there have been 28,000 in London in the last five years. Is there a problem? Yeah. There is a problem."

Was he saying that there is a culture of criminality among Romanians? "Bound to be. You have to go and see it to understand it. I've visited camps in Romania and Bulgaria – I've got a pretty good understanding."

He was then asked: "Should British people be wary of Romanian families moving into their street? Farage replied: "Ask David Blunkett." The Guardian pressed him to answer and he replied: "Well of course, yeah."

By now Farage was stereotyping, and he made matters worse when James O'Brien on LBC asked him to explain the difference between living next door to Germans – like Farage's wife, Kirsten –and Romanians. Farage said: "You know what the difference is."

In the final days of his campaign, he has been in danger of losing the agenda, and appearing obsessive, taking out full-page adverts containing partial or anecdotal evidence to prove the criminality of Romanians in London. His difficulties are numerous.

The Met's own figures show there has been no spike in Romanian crime since labour market restrictions against Romania were lifted in January. The figures show that Poles are more likely to commit crimes. His claim that 92% of ATM crime is committed by Romanians is based on three-year-old unpublished intelligence reported by one retired policeman in a TV documentary.

Farage now says his claim that 7% of crimes are committed by Romanians should have been that 7% of criminal gangs are from Romania. He now admits the figure was simplified. He says he has "no problem with Romanians. I have a big problem with Romania."

Labour especially is likely to have an intense postmortem on whether it should have gone for Farage more aggressively earlier, or whether establishment name-calling has just solidified his vote. Either way, the biggest test is yet to come. It has been said that challenger parties are like bees: once they have stung the system, they die. Farage has a year to prove this wrong.

Nigel Farage on ... immigration

"We have an open door not just to 28 million from Romania and Bulgaria, 485 million people now have British passports. they can all come to live in this country and so actually nobody can have an immigration policy, nobody can project or predict what will happen all the while we stay part of the EU."

Ukraine

"We have given a false series of hopes to a group of people in the western Ukraine, so geed up were they that they actually toppled their own elected leader. That provoked Mr Putin, and I think the European Union frankly does have blood on its hands in the Ukraine."

The last Ukip manifesto

"It was drivel, 486 pages of drivel. I didn't read it, nor did the party leader, it was a nonsense, and we've put that behind us and moved on to a professional footing."

Multicultural Britain

"Whether it is the impact on local schools and hospitals, whether it is the fact in many parts of England you don't hear English spoken any more. This is not the kind of community we want to leave to our children and grandchildren."

Among a crowd of political automatons, Nigel Farage is like a wacky neighbour in a sitcom

TV can't get enough of Nigel Farage because he adds a bit of colour, which is ironic considering what he represents

Charlie Brooker

The Guardian, Monday 19 May 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/19/political-automatons-nigel-farage-wacky-neighbour-sitcom

There was a curious moment midway through Sunday's Bafta ceremony that didn't quite make it on to TV. Host Graham Norton introduced the traditional "roll call of the dead" VT in which clips and photos of recently deceased TV veterans fade in and out while poignant music yearns away in the background. The first face was Bob Hoskins, prompting a wave of respectful applause through the auditorium. He was followed by a photograph of the writer Eddie Braben.

Silence.

Eddie Braben, of course, wrote most of Morecambe and Wise's classic material, and thus deserves at least as much appreciation as Hoskins, but Braben's wasn't a familiar face, or at least not familiar enough to prompt a groundswell of applause among a crowd, even a showbiz crowd who really ought to know who he was. The effect was rather eerie, as though he'd somehow been judged not deserving enough.

The silence continued until a more recognisable face popped up in the form of David Frost, permitting people to applaud again. This continued throughout the VT and photos of some director or writer or lesser-known performer would be greeted by a soundless vacuum and general unease. You got the sense everyone present realised it was a bit creepy, applauding some dead people while snubbing others, but by then the pattern was established. To applaud every dead person on the roster would've seemed patronising and over-compensatory, or downright ghoulish, like actively cheering on the grim reaper. But the alternative – only applauding the famous ones – turned it into an edition of Corpses Got Talent.

The lesson – if there is one, and I'm hell-bent on pretending there is – is this: crowds crave familiarity. We'll literally applaud it. That's why most truly popular things are more predictable than a bowel movement. Soap operas. Pop songs. Talent contests. Chain restaurants. Superhero movies. You know what you're getting – it's that thing you like, done the way you like it, with no alarms and no surprises.

Of course, now and then something comes along which breaks the predictable mould, and quickly becomes wildly fashionable partly on account of its sheer novelty. This freak success then spawns imitators until a new formulaic norm is established. Take politics. Not so long ago, "character" politicians were frowned upon. We wanted slick, predictable salesfolk. Then, after about 15 increasingly disillusioning years of that, we suddenly embraced Boris Johnson: Bogus Man of the People. Now we've got the sequel, Nigel Farage: Bogus Man of the People 2.

Farage is a bulletproof fusion of novelty and familiarity. Among a crowd of guarded political automatons, he's Mr Novelty, poking his head through the window like a wacky neighbour in a sitcom, breaking the monotony with some side-splitting anti-Romanian slurs. The news can't get enough of him, because in TV terms he adds a bit of colour – ironic considering what he represents.

Farage says the unsayable. He says things so unsayable they're said nigh-on constantly, often in large letters, on the front page of a newspaper. The sayable. He says the sayable. ROMANIAN STEALS WAR MEMORIAL. ONE IN THREE FOREIGNERS ISN'T BRITISH. NOW IT'S HALAL SMARTPHONES. That's what he says.

All of which means that, as well as being a bit of sore thumb stunt casting, he simultaneously represents familiarity; specifically the cosy familiarity of a world in which you could walk down an English high street without your ears getting bunged up with foreign accents, unless someone was doing a hilarious Gunga Din voice in order to mock the waiter in a curry house.

That world is a corpse, but it's a corpse that many want to revive, some because they feel financially or culturally threatened, others because they simply don't get along with our current reality full of lesbian retweeting and so on. When Farage evokes the lovable corpse of the past, people applaud that vague nostalgic thing they like, and the no-nonsense pint-swigging I'm-every-woman former commodities broker reminding them of it.

The combination makes him somewhat unassailable to the mainstream party leaders. The more they criticise Farage, the more of their uncanny lifeforce he absorbs, because his entire schtick relies on seeming different to them, which isn't all that difficult considering they all look and sound like wind-up waxed pigs possessed by the spirit of Tupperware, harder to relate to on a basic human level than a Playmobil character or a deck chair. Imagine being stuck in a lift with Cameron, Miliband or Clegg. Imagine being stuck in a lift with all of them. Trying to make conversation. Staring at your shoes. A deafening howl building in your head. You'd slash your own throat with a house key after five minutes, whereas at least with Farage you'd last about three minutes longer, until he finally ran out of filthy limericks and started muttering instead about lifts being better in the olden days before they ran on Polish cables and were full of foreign air.

Anyway, back to that death VT. The confused audience response was omitted entirely from the broadcast version, thereby robbing the viewing public of the full effect of this bizarre rank-a-body clap-o-meter of death. Probably just as well. And thank God the deceased were only represented by photographs, because if they'd wheeled their corpses onstage one by one, to be applauded like Crufts finalists, the awkwardness would soon have become unbearable. As would the smell.