The unofficial online home of the UK Independence Party
Who are the real “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists?”
By Julian Conway…
In his latest blog, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph journalist Alex Singleton, explains why he hasn’t voted UKIP since the 2004 European Elections. He says he will not vote UKIP again because he ‘met some of its members’ and this led him to agree with David Cameron’s assertion that UKIP is full of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. Given Singleton believes strongly in UKIP as a party, I believe his argument as to why he will not give UKIP his vote is very flawed.
Singleton is attacking the individual members of the party rather than the party itself and its cause. This is an ad hominen argument, which although not necessarily fallacious often is, and it is in this particular instance. Firstly, although UKIP does contain its fair share of nutters, I do not believe they are in the majority. Yes, there are members of UKIP who are very racist, and I will concede there are members who are Islamophobic and I think this is very unfortunate. However, I do not believe the majority of UKIP members are like this at all. Take myself: I’m soon going to university to study law, I’m a member of an ethnic minority, I’m interested in mainstream popular culture, current affairs and politics.
Perhaps I am a little eccentric, but a fruitcake or a closet racist? I have met many lovely UKIP members with a variety of sensible centre right views from all different backgrounds.
Furthermore, I reckon you can find an even higher ratio of fruitcakes in the Conservative Party. An excellent article in the Daily Mirror yesterday highlights loads of acts of racism and sexism by Conservative Party members which took place last year. There was the councillor last January who had to apologise after he went to a fancy dress party dressed as Madeline McCann. The Conservative MP David Wilshire was disgraced after comparing the outcome of the expenses scandal for MPs to Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. What about Daniel Hannan saying that no ‘sane’ person would ever support the NHS and that his political hero is Enoch Powell?
Nevertheless, for the purposes of evaluating a logical argument and exercising the skills I learnt from what an Oxford Professor called my ‘Un-Critical Thinking’ AS Level in Critical Thinking, let us give Singleton the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say UKIP is the party which is filled with the nutters.
What should Singleton do? He has acknowledged that he supports UKIP policies and is a fan of the ‘brilliant’ Nigel Farage and Lord Pearson.
So Singleton is saying is that despite having the same aims as UKIP, and trusting the people who are in charge, he will not vote for them because of the party members. It makes no sense; surely as long as the leadership is made up of good people with good aims it doesn’t make a difference who supports them. I support a football club. There are lots of horrible hooligans who also happen to support the club. Should this stop me giving my support?
My firm conclusion is that Singleton has bought into a false idea of UKIP and has constructed a very fallacious argument. He may well have met some UKIP fruitcakes and that is very unfortunate but there are lots of Tory flavoured fruitcakes out there too. Singleton is an intelligent writer and thinker who would do well to stand by his political convictions and vote UKIP.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Harry Aldridge on January 3, 2010 at 8:33 pm, and is filed under Independence Home. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |
Comments are closed.
about 8 months ago
Just to let everyone know, I sent the article to Mr Singleton who replied with an email in which he said the post was 'good'.
about 8 months ago
UKIP by its very constitution is not racist.
But every large political party is a broad church, and will have its left wing and its right wing.
The Labour Party has always had its loony left. The Conservative Party has always had a few loony right wingers.
Many members of these big two parties are in the centre ground of British politics, and could be in either party.
All that matters is that the members support the broad aims of the party, and do not violate the constitution of the party.
If you weed out all the odd people, and go for the absolutely pure loyal line of thought only, you doom your party to obscurity.
UKIP must be a broad church if it is to succeed in winning seats in the General Election 2010.
about 8 months ago
At the moment I think we are still too narrow, and we could be a lot more accommodating to people with varying views.
The English Democrats for example want and English Parliament. I think this is a view that could have been perfectly well included in the UKIP fold as a wing of the party.
There could have been an English Parliament wing inside UKIP. A wing that believes something slightly different to most in UKIP, while still holding to the main aims of UKIP.
In fact I know that there are many people in UKIP that like the idea of and English parliament, along the lines of the Scottish and Welsh parliaments.
about 8 months ago
The fact the the English Democrats have gone off and set up their own party, means that the anti-EU vote is split.
This divides the people who are anti-EU, and means UKIP will find it harder to get MPs elected to the Westminster Parliament.
The English Democrats will also find life hard, being a splinter group with one individual idea.
The English Democrats are so close to UKIP that they should really all be brought within the UKIP fold, and we would both be stronger for it.
As with the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, UKIP should be a broad church with a left wing and a right wing.
UKIP should accommodate people with varying views, so long as they stay with in the nonracist constitution of UKIP.