Farage UKIP Conference speech and Lord Stevens defection

[-:Undertaker:-]

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Is Nigel Farage becoming a serious threat to Tory party unity?

"When you were the Yorkshire Ripper's assistant how many of his victims did you personally kill and dismember?" Though this wasn't one of the questions John Humphrys actually put to Nigel Farage on the Today programme this morning, you could tell from his tone it was the sort of thing he'd much rather be asking than all that tame stuff about whether a Tory/UKIP alliance might ever be on the cards. The fact is that Humphrys/the Today programme/the BBC generally all loathe Farage and UKIP probably even more than they detest the BNP or even Israel or the Tea Party.

Why? It's a visceral thing more than an intellectual one: bien-pensant snobbery mixed up with frustration. The frustration comes from not being able to pin on UKIP the charges that it would like to pin on UKIP, viz, that it is racist, uncaring, snarlingly right-wing. It won't wash because UKIP isn't any of those things. Look at its manifesto. It's the most reasonable, people-friendly manifesto of any political party in Britain. You might quibble with the details: has its championing of grammar schools been rendered irrelevant by Gove's education reforms? Isn't it fence-sitting, rather, on fox-hunting by declaring it a "local issue." But by God, if we could get a government in power which ticked even half the boxes on UKIP's wish list Britain would once more become a land well worth living in.

Farage sounded uncharacteristically discomfited and defensive before Humphrys' hostile, sneery questioning – as well he might. But there was one line in what he said which really struck a chord with me and made me admire this brave, outspoken, charismatic man more than ever.

"If the opportunity arises to put country before party we would always do so."

One of my more cynical Twitter friends commented that this is the sort of thing the Lib Dems used to say. If that's even the case, there's a key difference here: Farage – and UKIP generally – actually mean it. As anyone who has ever had any electoral dealings with the Lib Dems knows, they're more slippery than an eel smeared in KY jelly. They will say or do simply anything to get elected, a) because they can: no one knows – or ever has known – what the Lib Dems stand for and b) because for them power comes before principle.

With UKIP it's precisely the other way round. Say what you like about UKIP's membership – that they're swivel-eyed, that they're saloon bar bores, that they play golf….. – but what unites them is the kind of passion for and selfless dedication towards Britain and British values that simply doesn't exist in the three main parties any more. With LibLabCon it's all politics – not about doing the right thing or asking what's best for the country but, as Fraser Nelson noted this morning, asking "how to win over suburban homeowners; what to offer northern women." UKIP, however, are different because they're post-politics. The beliefs and values and principles come first; weaselling into power, by whatever means, comes a very poor second.

Of course if you're an instinctive statist clinging to the old bankrupt system this will seem like a weakness. When Farage gave his answer you could almost hear the urinous swish of an interviewer wetting his pants in excitement. In Humphrys' eyes, for a party leader so explicitly to state that climbing up the greasy pole is not his main priority is a sign that his party is not to be taken seriously.

I'd say, au contraire, that a leader bold enough to declare that his party is prepared to sacrifice its own interests for those of the country it wishes to serve deserves to be taken more seriously not less.

The other main political parties had plenty of media coverage, and I know a few on here like Farage so here goes for those who are interested..

Former chair of the Express Newspapers group, Lord Stevens, has also defected to UKIP.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19627027

Thoughts?