Steve Richardson : Administrator 27th May 2014 10:24 AM |
Well the original thread started as "Political Party or marketing master class?". With the events of the last week, it looks like the answer is both!
I see Tony Blair has come out with his anti UKIP and anti EU protest parties guns blazing...
UKIP 'not the answer' to 21st Century issues says Blair - BBC
He said Britain's future lay in being "outward looking and open-minded", not "closed-minded, anti-EU and anti-immigrant", suggesting such views were "reactionary and regressive".
"Attitudes that are closed-minded, anti-immigrant, anti-EU, 'stop the world I want to get off', those attitudes don't result in economic prosperity or power and influence in the world.
Not being a Blair fan, but he does raise a good point, some of the anti immigrant and insular nation comments getting bandied around or quoted by news agencies are starting to sound aggressive, drawing some scary parallels with modern history. The BNP vote got wiped out in the recent elections, which means people either stopped voting, or changed their allegiance, thinking they would do better under the flag of UKIP rather than Nick Griffin.
It will be interesting to see what analysis is made of the new UKIP manifesto when it is launched, as opposed the previous one which Farage himself apparently called "486 pages of drivel". Hopefully it will show some serious thought into some of the key areas of the UK, tax, NHS, business etc.
The reality is though, ignoring some of the idiots who have tried align themselves under the UKIP banner, Farage himself speaks a lot of sense and says things a lot of people are thinking but frightened to say. In this day and age, politics only seems to be about leaders personalities rather than manifestos Maybe he could run for Tory leader?