I believe in immigration and gay marriage and I’m voting UKIP. I believe in national sovereignty and individual responsibility and I’m voting UKIP. I care about the economy, the rich, the poor and the helpless, and I’m voting UKIP.
But when some people ask me why, there is no little surprise in their tone. Personally I’m astonished by their astonishment. How can anyone who’s experienced such a soulless sea of liars, hypocrites, cravens, traitors, and ultimately useless leaders we seem to have had forever, not find this small dedicated party that genuinely believes in something and doesn’t attempt to shy away from its beliefs, the most refreshing event in politics for a generation? Well, given the quite despicable and shamelessly biased coverage UKIP has received by the mainstream establishment media I guess quite a few people are less than enamoured by the only libertarian and truly conservative party we’ve seen in decades. I wouldn’t wish the mistruths and misinformation, ignorance and ignominy, disregard and disrespect that UKIP has had to endure these past few years on anyone, even my political enemies. So much for the British predilection to route for the underdog.
Even if you don’t agree with UKIP’s policies and ideology, you are compelled to concede that they are about more than playing the vote-grabbing game, and to call them simply populist is languorous and callow. It is undeniable that they have forced extremely relevant and important matters into everyday political discussions. Who was talking about radical Islam, immigration, foreign aid, taxation, the NHS and political correctness ten years ago? No one! Topics, for those too pusillanimous to raise or confront, which do concern the people of Britain are now being talked about by our leaders because UKIP forced the issue. For the second consecutive election and only the third since 1929, we will have a hung parliament next week. Can anyone claim this has nothing to do with UKIP? Clearly they are doing something right, and that is: raising salient and sensitive topics, trying to represent the people of Britain and act in the best national self-interest of our country. In other words, fulfilling their obligations as prospective politicians qua politician. Say what you will about UKIP, and many people have said many things many of which are nonsense, but in my opinion I see the only practical, common sense, real world manifesto out there.
If you want open door immigration, to give more power to the EU, more “progressive” taxation, multiculturalism, political correctness and misanthropic futile “green” politics, they aren’t for you. They will never be for you. They won’t change this fact to get votes. But I suspect that more and more people have become as sick to death of these insipid trite and regurgitated bromides as I have. Guess what? I’m proud to be British, proud of freedom, proud of capitalism, proud of individual responsibility. I do believe the undeniable and painfully obvious fact that some cultures are better than others. I believe that religion is dangerous. I believe that radical Islam is one of the greatest threats to our planet today. I believe that whilst an elite cadre of politically motivated scientists and “celebrities” cry wolf over climate change, that Iran, North Korean, and ISIS are the real enemies at the gate. And because of this climate of fear over what we say and do nowadays, I have to follow such a statement with ‘and I’m not a racist, and I care about the environment, and the poor’, in case anyone thinks I’m a neo-Nazi because I don’t buy the Guardian and I don’t watch the BBC, and I don’t think the NHS is Great Britain’s cultural apex.
Here, I limited myself to a triumvirate of topics with which I hope to best espouse UKIP. One disclaimer: I represent no one but myself. I am not an apologist for anyone. This is my opinion, and whilst I know I appear recalcitrant when I say I genuinely don’t care if you agree with me or not, the truth is I hope this does strike a chord with the honest undecided.
I am pro-gay-marriage
I believe that the State should recognise the lawful union of two human beings regardless of gender. I believe this because the State has no right to oppose those private choices of citizens which do not impinge on the freedom of others. Note: I am not saying that getting married is itself a fundamental Right. Rather, the State has no power to deny marriage to gay people because in a free society everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. Private citizens may choose to associate or not associate with other private citizens, but the government has no such freedom: it must be fair and impartial to all citizens with respect to the law. The government cannot choose to NOT associate with its citizens.
However, because I won’t claim a contradiction, I can’t force private citizens to enter into discussion, negotiation, business or contractual arrangement with other citizens against their will. The government must treat every citizen equally, because whilst all things not explicitly granted to the government are denied, all things not explicitly denied to citizens vis-à-vis criminal actions, are necessary legal.
UKIP’s stance on gay marriage is important because Nigel Farage explained in his own words his objections to it, namely his fear that private organisations would be forced to marry gay people if they didn’t want to. I am certainly not a religious person, but the church (any church) is a voluntary private organisation of free people and who they choose to deal with, or not, is their choice. It doesn’t matter if you agree with them or not. The same goes for cake makers who refuse to create wedding cakes for gay couples. To those who disagree: it’s their life and their property, and you’re a fascist.
In my opinion, forcing private citizens to act against their will, under penalty of fines or prison (!) in order to satisfy the “rights” of other citizens (even for a noble cause) is a gross and evil contradiction. This issue is more important than gay marriage. Why? Because the very principle of recognising gay marriage depends on seeing all people as politically equal. That principle must apply to all private citizens, even the ones we don’t agree with, or it means nothing!
In other words, if you feel you won something by the legalisation of gay marriage, but didn’t understand the price we paid for it — violating the rights of innocent citizens (who may or may not be bigoted religious zealots), I really pity you. I almost hope you choke on the irony, and I say this as someone who wanted gay marriage as much as you did.
I believe UKIP would fully support gay marriage but would not force any organisations (such as churches) to perform a marriage against their will. That is why I would choose them.
I am pro-immigration
I believe that the area of land on this small planet upon which we happen to start our lives is irrelevant to our fundamental nature as human beings. Not only is that the single greatest argument against racism, but it also means a truly free society does not restrict innocent citizens within its borders from living wherever they want. I believe where an individual chooses to live is not something the government, any government, should regulate.
I do find it humorously ironic, therefore, that those most supportive of immigration – those who have no problem with potentially anyone coming to Britain and having indirect access to the accumulated wealth of others, either through the NHS, housing or unemployment benefits – are the ones most vociferously opposed to their fellow citizens accumulating their own wealth. In other words, these people are quite happy to give me their money if I’m an immigrant, but spit blood at the suggestion of me keeping more of my own.
But I digress.
Immigration has been a matter of personal conflict because my belief in real freedom precludes me denying anyone the right to travel and live wherever they will – as if I, or we, have the right to draw a line beyond our own property and say “we, who call ourselves British, collectively agree that this area which none of us individually own is somehow ours to give or to take”. British people do not own the British land. “We” can decide only what to do with the land we actually own, and mind our own business about the rest. The only thing the British government should do is protect those who live on that land.
However, our law and our culture and our way of life is something that all members of this society should care about. And to claim that these things are not affected by, for example, barbaric uneducated unemployed superstitious religious fundamentalists, who mutilate the genitals of women, who see women and gays as second-class citizens, who despise the values of freedom and individualism, who want to see religious law as the law of the land, who believe in “honour” killings, who groom underage girls for prostitution and rape them (as a politically correct Council and police force turn a blind eye), who take what a relatively free society has to offer with one hand and plot its destruction with another… to claim that these things are a result of paranoia or racism and that they are not real terrifying problems that have happened and are happening in Britain – is an act of intellectual and moral cowardice. Anyone who denies the reality of this situation and the real threat it poses is an ethically bankrupt craven or an embarrassingly naïve ignoramus.
If we could adequately police our towns and cities (which we can’t, because no party other than UKIP believes in strengthening the police or army), and if our local councils were not crippled by political correctness and a terror of being perceived as discriminatory (which they are, but which UKIP would not be), and if the UK government could kick out these vermin from our nation (which it can’t under EU law but which UKIP would) and if we could stop such inhuman parasites coming into the country (which we can’t under EU law but which UKIP would), we could solve this social problem in one clean swoop.
You cannot have a generous welfare state and open immigration. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot tell the working people who prop up such inefficient and insolvent services that they must keep paying, keep sacrificing, keep “doing their part”, whilst the largest beneficiaries of such a system are those who have contributed the least, or nothing.
It seems to me that the NHS is here to stay. The welfare state is here to stay. If you care about these things, if you believe we in Britain must have these services then we must restrict who is able to take advantage of them. You cannot have it both ways. (A position that, as UKIP supporters and the polls show, finds agreement especially with ethnic minorities in British.)
I believe that the National Health Service should be a NATIONAL Health Service, not an International Health Service. It was created as a basic safety net for the very poor and helpless in society; a collective insurance policy that we all pay into. Certain party leaders can spout vacuous platitudes about helping people (whilst their own constituents struggle to pay bills), but that’s not the point. I will not even address the non-argument of enforced charity here except to say: if you think that people in this country, who are already playing the role of Atlas for this bloated and wasteful system, should have their money given away to non-contributors (or worse, corrupt foreign governments), at a time when old people who’ve paid into it all their lives are burning books to keep warm and dying in fuel poverty – yours is a position of self-hatred, altruism, insecurity, and misanthropy. Please go ease your fragile little conscience somewhere else, preferably with your own money. You don’t care about people, you hate wealth. You don’t want to save the world, you want to control it. You want an egalitarian utopia where everyone is equally poor.
What on earth is the problem with an Australian-style points system where, in order to live and work in this country, you have to have certain qualifications, not be a criminal (oh the humanity), and have your own health insurance for a brief initial period, after which you qualify for the full range of services the UK offers?
National sovereignty and the EU
Surely the most basic principle of evolved politics is that politicians are chosen in a free election by the citizens of a country, and the politicians represent and serve those people as best as possible. They then pursue the wishes and interests of their citizens and protect their value and freedoms. Did I miss anything?
Well that doesn’t happen anymore, if indeed it ever did. Being a politician today means using the power your people gave you, their money and their trust, like virtual resources in a computer game to trade with other politicians for favours and privileges. It means sacrificing and compromising on things that should never be sacrificed or compromised, to gain prestige, power, votes, or the goodwill and plaudits of others. Some might say that’s the whole point of politics. Well, forgive my innocence. I don’t think it should be that way.
National sovereignty isn’t about nationalism. It’s about the most important and sacred principle of free civilisation; something humanity spent thousands of years and millions of gallons of blood to fight for: that those who hold the most dangerous and corruptible of positions, our leaders, be these things to us: transparent, scrupulous, electable, impeachable, accountable, limited, delimited, and partisan.
A society where its leaders are not elected, cannot be unelected, cannot be vetoed, cannot be questioned by its people, can pass any law or statute without ratification or consensus, and are immune to referendum and resistance — is not free. It is feudalistic, elitist, oligarchic, and tyrannical. It will necessary descend, as all powerful and irremovable men of power have done, into totalitarianism.
If you hadn’t already guessed, I’m talking about the European Union – a lie that was sold to us as a mere trading partnership, but which is and always was intended to be, a supranational federal union. A utopia conceived by we-know-best elitist socialists even before the Second World War, the European federal government continues to accrue ever greater powers and authority to itself, with less and less autonomy residing in member states. Like all central planners, they refuse to let the facts of reality get in the way of “the dream”.
This isn’t the place for an exposé of the EU. You must do your own research and decide if those of us who dislike this insidious monstrosity are Europhobic “little Englanders” or not. What I must say is that there are those out there who love the EU. They are of a kind: they want globalisation, they care little about accountable government (because people allowed to choose might make the wrong choice), and they all say the same things and tow the party line on everything from climate change to Palestine to welfare to taxation to nationalisation to regulation to big government. They want this to happen. I have nothing to say to them and you should challenge everything they claim about Europe and Britain’s relationship with it (because most of it is lies). Don’t take my word for what I’m going to say. Please, research this yourself. When I say that the EU is run by fascist elitist undemocratic power-hungry megalomaniacs (many of whom are unabashed former communists and Marxists), obsessed with control over private life and property, who want to take away your precious right to elected representation, I am not revealing a conspiracy. This isn’t even a secret! This happens every day before our eyes, but most media sources don’t choose to report it. I wonder why. (That the EU gives ‘charitable donations’ to the BBC is surely a coincidence.)
If you care about personal freedom, accountable politicians, a say in what happens to you, your country and your government, you must oppose the EU.
I cannot emphasise this next point strongly enough, because it transcends the political spectrum (except for those on the far left and far right who only care about freedom of choice if they’re making the choices): it doesn’t matter if you’re left or right. It doesn’t matter if you’re pro-immigration or anti-immigration. It doesn’t matter if you’re a socialist or capitalist, pro-freedom or pro-statism. It genuinely does not matter whether we agree or not on anything. Why? Because if we, the British people, do not have control over the laws of our own land then nothing we say or do about politics matters. The EU can dictate to us if we should open our borders or close them. Today we are told to open them. Tomorrow we might be told to close them (yeah, right), and we’d have to comply. You might think terrorists should be allowed to live in this country. I think they should be deported. What does it matter? If the EU says they can stay, end of debate. They can give away our fishing waters, give away our borders, give away our money, ban our vacuum cleaners, have trackers installed in our cars and negotiate our trade deals. What does it matter what you think, what I think, what you think should be done, how much we argue, debate the matter, exchange opinions and maybe even agree – it does not matter – because we have no real power anyway. A bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels, people you’ve never heard of, who you didn’t elect, who you cannot remove from office, have control over the law of our land.
I find it so macabrely funny seeing the political parties falling over each other to bribe what they think is a credulous and capricious electorate with everything from: more of someone else’s money, NHS spending, less austerity (let’s pretend the debt doesn’t exist), increased foreign aid, stamp duty, devolvement, neo class warfare and envy, and (god forbid) more useless green taxes. They must think we’re all stupid. And does any of it matter in the long run anyway? When over half our laws are made in Brussels (a deliberately modest estimate at best), isn’t it pathetic to see these Party leaders squabbling over the fraction of power that the great EUSSR has deigned to let remain with us? (For now.)
This is why, in my opinion, the question of whether Britain remains in the EU is the single most important one to be answered in British politics today. It is why you have to vote UKIP if, regardless of whatever else you believe, you believe in this: that you’re voting for a British government.