The Farage Labourite is not a myth: I have tweeted with one today. I hope to have more details in a day or two. This article talks about how UKIP, the so-called racist party, is making inroads with ethnic minorities and former Labourites!
Seema Takhar does not fit the normal stereotype of a Ukip voter. Nor is she very interested in politics most of the time. But when she hears what Nigel Farage‘s party has to say on the subject of immigration, it resonates.
It is midway through a weekday afternoon and Seema is busy dealing with clients in the beauty salon she runs in Havering, east London, when Lawrence Webb, a UK Independence party councillor, drops in with some local election leaflets. “Yes, immigration is a big issue for me here,” she tells him, adding she will now consider voting for Ukip. “When our family came here in the 70s they got no help. We had to work for everything. It is all different now.
“Many of the immigrants today come and live on benefits and in council homes. Their children will live on benefits too because that is all they know. I don’t think that is right.”
Wow! That’s pretty impressive. And I mean the quote, not the attractive young lady in the article! Now if I were a single guy again, I’d volunteer to be Seema’s campaign manager for UKIP MP if she ran but to my male readers: Let’s try to actually read the rest of the article! I promise it’s worth it!
Because there is more here! We have real Farage Labourites:
Ukip is on the march because it is exciting interest from people across the spectrum, from disgruntled Conservatives certainly, but also from ex-Labour supporters, the generally disaffected, the hitherto politically disengaged, and longer-established immigrant families with socially conservative views. The party had no councillors in the borough of Havering until last year; it now has seven and Webb believes Ukip will be in coalition with the Tories and Labour after the local elections this month. “There is little doubt it will be in no overall control,” he says.
Down the road in Barking and Dagenham, where Labour won every seat in 2010, there are equally surprising moves to Ukip. Four Labour councillors recently defected to Farage’s party, including the first Asian to do so in the area, Tariq Saeed, who is a practising Muslim and proud to call himself British. Saeed told the Barking and Dagenham Post: “Ukip is not a racist party. Ukip is saying we aren’t gaining anything while we are in the EU. We want to put the British people first.”
Four LABOUR Councillors defected to UKIP? And one is MUSLIM? I think Saeed gets it more than the UK pols that run around and call UKIP purveyors of hate.
It might be hard to keep this a fair use of this article it is so favorable to UKIP. But basically a few tiny highlights:
Up and down the country Ukip is establishing local support in a way the Lib Dems – when untainted by power – used to. *** Ukip, by contrast, [in Stroud] is fielding 10, two of whom, Angie Lyes and Jim Simpson, have defected not from the Tories but from Labour.
Two more from Labour? Hmmm…
Now remember, there are also local elections again in the UK and UKIP could do well here, too. That might be more important than the EU elections because local elections can produce good solid, well-known, resident candidates to run for MP in 2015. Councillors that can show real results at the local level. Councillors with a track record. Stroud is one of those local areas.
Sir Graham Watson, the Lib Dems’ only MEP in the south-west, admitted his chances of re-election next month were low and said that Ukip was sweeping up votes: “I think the Ukip vote is very strong. Ukip, in a sense, almost started here, in that this is the region in which they won their first European parliamentary seat. It’s been going up since then.”
***
In the north, Ukip threatens a similar disturbance to the old order. Edward McMillan-Scott, who defected to the Lib Dems from the Tories in 2010 and is now one of two Lib Dem MEPs in the region, says his chances of extending his 30-year stay in the European parliament are on a knife edge. “It is very tight. If I don’t do it, it will be because of Ukip,” he says.
I do not know how you defect from the TORIES to the LIBDEMs? That’s like going from Libertarian to Green. But, back to the point: UKIP appears to be gaining support in unusual places:
Across the road from Seema Takhar’s Pink Salon in Havering, another local business owner says he is no longer bothered by what Cameron says. He too is thinking of voting Ukip because he is fed up with all the others. It is the parties that have wielded power, not Ukip, that are discredited. “I have seen Tories and Labour have power and not seen any difference,” he says. “They don’t do what they say.”
I think the Farage Labourite will be the story in this year’s EU and local elections. Is it May 22 yet?
Article written by: Elwood "Sandy" Sanders
About Elwood Sanders
Elwood "Sandy" Sanders is a Hanover attorney who is an Appellate Procedure Consultant for Lantagne Legal Printing and has written ten scholarly legal articles. Sandy was also Virginia's first Appellate Defender and also helped bring curling in VA! (None of these titles imply any endorsement of Sanders’ views)
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