Farage couldn’t understand why people kept calling him a Nazi…writes Yaseen Patel
Hot on the heels of Channel 4’s The First 100 days of UKIP’ which was a fictional account, if the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) ever come into power- incidentally also the most complained about programme ever comes another. The BBC’s ‘Meet the UKippers’.
This being a factual ‘fly on the wall’ documentary following the work of UKIP members at grass roots level in Thanet, Kent. The place the messiah Nigel Farage is attempting to win a seat in Westminster later in the year. Targeted as ‘Prime UKIP real estate ‘ as all his kin reside here. White, retired or semi retired folk sick of the influence Europe is having in the UK and how it has allowed all the foreigners to take up all the decorating jobs in Kent. Something which the natives aren’t very happy with we are shown.
The programme followed a number of characters Martyn Heale the (ex BNP) chairman, an eccentric odd ‘thoroughly English couple’ James and Liz with a penchant to collect porcelain clowns, hundreds of them littered everywhere in the house and the star of the show, a middle aged mobility scooter riding woman going by the name of Rozanne Duncan.
UKIP’s thinking in allowing the cameras to follow their members was to presumedly dispel some beliefs that the electorate may have held about the party, namely its racist overtones and it being a one trick immigration pony and nothing else, this programme only reinforced those widely held opinions and was a definite ‘own goal’ by the UKIP public relations department.
Rozanne Duncan was a councillor for UKIP in the Cliftonville district and a keen supporter of ‘freedom of speech’. ‘Was’ being the operative word as she was subsequently expelled after she got a bit too comfortable with having the camera around and didn’t realise the boundaries of ‘freedom of speech’. She let herself go and told the viewing public what she really thought about the non indigenous folk.
Rozanne confided quite candidly that she has a irrational hatred for ‘negroes’. She did not know why, she couldn’t reason with herself but she did not like the way they looked she said. She couldn’t handle their ‘negroid’ features the ‘wide nostrils’ and the ‘curly hair’. She couldn’t pinpoint why she had this aversion she just didn’t like them. She said she needed a course of hypnotherapy to find out why, must be something they had done to her in a past life she said. Those watching felt she needed therapy of a different kind altogether.
And that was really all we wanted and needed to know about UKIP and its members. The programme could’ve started and ended with just that and a fellow called Martyn Heale, he was the chairman for the area and was a member of the British National Party for one year and two months. He had no idea why people wouldn’t let him forget about his past as he no longer held any views commensurate with the aforementioned he assured us all. It was a mistake of youth. We have all done something we regretted when we were young, was his defence
He couldn’t understand why people kept on bringing it up and kept calling him a Nazi. He also had just escaped the time threshold for ex BNP members joining UKIP, he told us they had since changed their policy and no longer could.
In all the programme told us nothing new about Farage and his acolytes. The little Englanders were for all to see, Heale’s right hand man getting pilloried by a Labour activist on the street about why they had issues about a tweet they got wrong mistaking Westminster Cathedral for a Mosque whilst at the same time another two from Labour telling him they had no chance of doing anything. None of that bothered UKIP man much.
Nor the animal activists taking umbrage at their appearance at a rally to stop the Export of Live animals, considering their views on fox hunting, they felt it was slightly on the hypocritical side how they cared about some animals and not others and wondered what made them turn up. The animal activists were unequivocal in their resentment of UKIPs presence. They were lucky to come out alive after that encounter.
Mr Farage made a few appearances with the obligatory pint in hand and how the rest of the non entities all wanted a selfie with him on their phone. He does not make interesting television, a one dimensional pub bore is Farage, in all these programmes when he is featured, it’s the same old anecdotes, he would put a glass eye to sleep. I fail to see the fascination the media has with him and neither these ‘working classes’ with a posh banker.
What it revealed the party has nothing really to offer, the wind of immigration has been taken out of its sails by Cameron and all it is left with is a load of suited knuckle dragging relics and Rozanne Duncans.. Which is one and both the same. This was by all intents and purposes a party political broadcast by the Anti UKIP Party if they existed they couldn’t have done a better job.