A wheel seems to have come off the UKIP bandwagon north of the border. Describing student\u00a0protesters\u00a0as Fascist Scum will not sound right to many democratic ears. It is, of course, a feature of nationalist parties that their leaders tend to go for\u00a0inflammatory\u00a0rhetoric, although the other nationalist active in British politics, the much more successful Alex Salmond, has always been powerful in argument though restrained in rhetoric. That is part of the charisma of his leadership.<\/p>\n
The electoral duel between these two in Scotland is something of his mis-match, not only in political weight but also in objectives. One wants to take Scotland out of England and the other wants to take England out of Europe. Farage talks about Scottish racism\u00a0against\u00a0the English. That is clearly piffle.<\/p>\n
In fact the impact of Farage’s\u00a0imbroglio\u00a0will, in Scotland, be small. In England it could be bigger. It may reveal a side of UKIP that shocks even the Tory right. Activists and MPs should take note. The British en masse<\/em> will never vote on any scale for this kind of stuff. If Nigel Farage is not to follow other far right leaders in British politics to oblivion he will have to change his tune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A wheel seems to have come off the UKIP bandwagon north of the border. Describing student\u00a0protesters\u00a0as Fascist Scum will not sound right to many democratic ears. It is, of course, a feature of nationalist parties that their leaders tend to go for\u00a0inflammatory\u00a0rhetoric, although the other nationalist active in British politics, the much more successful Alex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5553"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5560,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5553\/revisions\/5560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}