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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Suddenly people are wondering whether Farage is losing it
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Suddenly people are wondering whether Farage is losing it
There’ve been several pieces today about Nigel Farage’s performance on Question Time last night held in what became a UKIP stronghold at the May local elections, Boston in Linconshire.
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However, most people (including activists) don't care about the European parliament, and most voters don't care who they send there but are interested in sending a message - whether about the EU, Westminster or whatever. On that basis, UKIP should still do well because there'll be little campaigning for the elections anway and what there is will pass most people by. What Farage's media difficulties may do is place a ceiling on their potential support rather than diminish what's already there.
The general election, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish.
For once I fear OGH may be being a tad generous to the Tories.....
However it happened, the Tories do need more strong women on the box. Esther McVey is making a decent fist of things too....
'back off Putin, or we open the borders....'
I saw the whole QT and while Nigel wasn't at his shining best he easily outshone the rest of the panel . Anna Soubry was particularly dreadful. Vicky, mouthed for the EU, the labour lady was a nonentity and the so called poet was a laugh in himself.
The most telling point in the show was the immigrant in the audience complaining about the lack of integration in Boston, the luvvies didn't know which way to look.
When you use the working class and British as pawns to patronise, it must come as a shock when they don't read the script
Will concede it wasn't Farages best outing, he probably expected a friendlier crowd.
I think Anna Soubry's point is the crucial one, and it's one the MikeK and others fail to address: education and our benefits system has allowed the creation of a group of people who either have no marketable skills, or for whom work is not economically attractive.
I live in Hampstead, North London. We advertised in the local paper for a job for a part-time cleaner, paying £10 or £11/hour. We got about 100 responses. Of which none were from British citizens. None.
We live walking or short bus-ride distance from Brent, from Kilburn, from areas with quite serious unemployment. We are paying 40% more than minimum wage. Yet no British people even applied for the job.
That is not, I'm sure, because there are Brits who don't want the job. It is because the benefits system discourages people from working - especially working part-time. If all the immigrants went home, there wouldn't be 100 British people lining up for the job, instead we simply probably wouldn't have a cleaner, and I'd have a grumpy wife.
I do not say this to be smug. I think it is a local and national disgrace. Dundee City Council spending per pupil is pretty equivalent and their results are just shocking. In fairness, they will have the very considerable costs of making provision for children with special needs and the schools support a significant bureacracy but I cannot believe that any amount of social adjustments is going to make them value for money.
When I attended a state school in Dundee 35 years ago it was not like that. My state school used to compete with the High in how many kids went to University in "hard" subjects like medicine and in Oxbridge entrants. It is shocking how the gap in performance has grown. The implications for social mobility in this country as well as economic performance are serious.
The test for all educationalists is to explain this desperate failure and explain how their ideas are going to get the kids in this country back into the top 20 of 24.
This may be hair splitting, but how do you know that some of the responses were not from British citizens with foreign sounding names?
I blame the romanians and their dodgy umbrellas.
(Although not arguing against your main point).
Meanwhile Peter Hain appears to be leading a filibuster to time out the referendum bill - no doubt the Kippers will be blaming Cameron for that.
Of course, the Party will do far less well than that in the general election.
To be fair, I've watched only that short clip which Mike posted, but on the basis of that excerpt Soubry was truly excellent, and Farage very poor. Farage trying to make out that the UKIP leaflet was accurate because in theory 27 million Romanians and Bulgarians could come (if they emptied the entire two countries and none went anywhere else) was particularly hilarious.
Anecdote alert number two. About three years ago when were also looking for a cleaner, we did get British people applying. But when my wife indicated that we were going to do it all properly with paying tax and NI, and everything, then the British people all dropped out.
Perhaps people are more inclined to see the upside to immigration when the economy is improving
It is very hard to find a single issue on which Soubry is rightwing. She is well to the left on social issues and moderately centrist on economic ones. Must be among the most left wing Tories in the HoC.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10435860/Nigel-Farage-says-Tory-attack-on-his-prejudice-shows-they-are-terrified-of-Ukip.html
There is nothing the Conservative Party can say, without Farage saying it's because they are frightened of UKIP.
[Note edited to change "its" to "it's"]
It's hard to say how much of the electorate takes this view, but I'd be surprised if it's less than 5%.
Whatever - it seems it won't win back any kippers. Tim's post below seems to agree with that - though of course the Soubry effect if any has yet to sink in. Probably no change in the polls I reckon over the next week...
It's been like this for at least a decade. When I worked in Norfolk there were 30k Portuguese plucking turkeys and picking veg.
UKIP needs to move on from this argument, quickly. It is going to put big holes in their immigration argument as people slowly realise that there is an underclass of British people who just don't want to work and do the lower paid jobs.
This is Eastbourne. We don't have a big unemployment problem - but that the largest supermarket has a huge Spanish unskilled work crew whilst Brits sit around watching TV tells me something.
Crowd laughing at Soubry's evasiveness at 03:45
Man describing himself "as a foreigner" complaining about lack of integration in Boston "it doesn't exist", immigrants deliberately rinsing the benefit system and loss of the British identity at 27:53
Soubry doesn't believe him at 28:53
Only the metropolitan elite refuse to believe it, even when immigrants admit it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhFL6vWoJ9k
I was reading last night in the Evening Standard the plans that the chinese have for investment in London, Mindboggling. Incredible. stunning. And very exciting. and these are the ones that we know about.
Are we seriously going to shut the door to all that? We'd be mad to.
In my book, there are a handful of countries causing all the trouble with regard to immigration. Just a handful.
Conning a living doesn't come close
Lab 991 Con 836 Ind 308 Harrow1st 173 UKIP 168 LD 70
It's not particularly about policy - that's a separate debate. Step one is to stop calling the voters who you need to win nasty names.
Quote facts to pin the blame on the scare-monger and not the scared.
I do think that there has been over-immigration recently in this country (thanks, Labour), and it has caused problems. But UKIP's scapegoating of immigrants is not the answer.
Nigel Farage and UKIP = The Fuzzy Wuzzies
They do not like it up 'em.
'I saw the whole QT and while Nigel wasn't at his shining best he easily outshone the rest of the panel . Anna Soubry was particularly dreadful.'
Get real,Soubry wiped the floor with Farage,beyond the EU & the Niqab, Farage has got nothing to say.
We've been playing defence not offence when it comes to UKIP.
Time for Cameron to stop being Varro and time to play the role of Scipio.
Anna Soubry tears into UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage
The pair clashed on BBC's Question Time over immigration controls
Defence minister says UKIP spread prejudice about eastern Europeans
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2492481/Anna-Soubry-accuses-UKIPs-Nigel-Farage-putting-fear-peoples-hearts.html#ixzz2k4HhUSi1
I think it would be fair to say Mail readers are not happy.....
Mind you in parts of the Highlands coming from the next village or different clan was considered until recently as dangerously foreign !!
Are there votes available to the left? (Not saying there aren't, just asking)
Soubry's not winning anyone back she's just shoring up the LibLabCon vote. Think SeanT is the only possible Kipper waverer on here so why should it be a surprise that all the other posters are championing Soubry?
I prefer the Times comments - at least you have to pay to leave a comment so are less likely to be trying to Twittermob articles.
PB LibLabCons, Tories, Kinnocks, whatever names you call each other in your little circle, declare it a victory for Soubry....
Hmmm
Of course it is scare mongering to Soubry, given that she considers immigration to be, holistically, a good thing, and so a bit of wobble on the numbers really doesn't change the picture. She obviously struggles to empathise with the section of voters she requires, for whom immigration is not a net good.
Whether it's immigration or cost-of-living there are genuine concerns, but they provide simplistic and impractical "answers".
I have to say it was the best set in space since 2001.
Though 2001 had the better soundtrack, the geek in me, noted a few scientific inaccuracies in the film.
If only you paid more attention to my efforts to educate you such an elementary mistake as considering Varro too cautious would not be made.
Anna Soubry does a very good Thatcher impression, it was spooky. But I was never a Thatcher fan so I wasn't impressed.
Farage did make a serious point about immigration "management" being impossible in the EU, and no one really answered it. Immigration may well be a financial plus for the area but the problems it causes are real. Emily T even mumbled a sort of apology for getting it wrong. But lessons have been learned, let's put a line under it and move on. Forget it ever happened type of thing.
My nephews didn't have the choice of land-work as I did (most of my out-of-school hours in the season from age 13 to 17) because the farmers prefer immigrants who work hard and don't complain. Good for the country (and the farmers), bad for the local youths.
This helps the sense of alienation from politics. We know what's best for you so just suck it up. If you moan, it's because you don't understand the benefits, you're racist, or you're too stupid to look at the bigger picture.
Farage stands accused of being a populist - exactly what Ed and Cammo are on a regular basis.
Vicky Pryce will never make a politician but I thought she came over best. And I reckon Nick P will beat Mrs T in 2015
I think if the Tories can frame the debate on say, inter alia, benefit reform, and the polling shows the Tories doing well there, despite having IDS in charge.
Labour is losing argument over benefit reform, says Ed Miliband aide
Polling expert Mr Morris told a trade union meeting that voters on average backed David Cameron’s reforms by about two to one — but that among Labour-Conservative swing voters the divide was a huge 64 per cent to nine per cent.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labour-is-losing-argument-over-benefit-reform-says-ed-miliband-aide-8929119.html
In some areas we need more rather than less immigration. Funnily enough Farage would probably disagree with me on where some of those areas are but we would at least be able, as a country, to have the debate which is simply not practical at the moment under our current arrangements.
The 'simplistic' answer is the one being provided by Cameron and Soubry which seeks to make people believe we can have any control on migration whilst still remaining in the EU. That is simply a lie.