What this photo of Nigel Farage doesn't tell you about UKIP

On Tuesday the 17th of February 2015 a few revolting Chelsea fans brought shame upon their football club and, more significantly, shame upon our country when they were filmed repeatedly shoving a black man off the Paris Métro, then singing a song gleefully celebrating how racist they are.

After the incident, efforts were made to track down the guilty parties, and fairly quickly one of them was identified as Josh Parsons, a vocal 21 year old UKIP supporter who was educated at the £30,000 per year Millfield private school in Somerset, who was once photographed with the UKIP leader Nigel Farage.

Many people have tried to use this photo in order to attack Nigel Farage as someone who associates with racists, but in my view these efforts are extremely weak, and in fact self-defeating. Nigel Farage is a famous person who is photographed with all kinds of people on a daily basis. There's absolutely no way that he can be held responsible if one of the many people he's been photographed with goes off and does something unacceptable at some point in the future.

Anyone trying to manufacture the conclusion that Nigel Farage is a racist from this particular photo is really stretching the argument well past the bounds of credibility and, in fact, making other critics of UKIP look rather desperate by association. This is pretty ironic stuff because by using this photo to try and make Farage look racist by association, they're making more rational UKIP critics (who prefer to use facts and evidence to criticise the party) look desperate by association with them.

The really sad thing about such weak efforts to taint Nigel Farage by association is that there is such a mountain of evidence out there to criticise UKIP with, meaning that such desperate tactics aren't even remotely necessary.

To give you an illustration of how many real issues there are about UKIP, I'll briefly list a few of them:

Tax-dodging: In February 2015 UKIP were the only UK political party to side with the Greek Golden Dawn fascists to vote against an EU motion to clamp down on tax-dodging. The motion was passed by 612 votes to 19, with more than half of the votes against coming from UKIP.
Far-right extremists: In October 2014 UKIP prevented the collapse of their EFDD group by signing up an MEP from the extreme-right Polish KNP which is led by a bloke who claims that women shouldn't be allowed to vote, the disabled should not be allowed on television and democracy is the stupidest form of government ever!
Party funding: UKIP is 90% bankrolled by people who used to bankroll the Tory party. Once you know that they get most of their cash from former donors to the most establishment friendly party of all, it's extremely difficult to take their claims to be an anti-establishment party even remotely seriously.
Blatant opportunism: UKIP politicians will say and do anything if they think it will win them votes. They posture as a leftish party in Labour constituencies and an even-more-Tory-than-the-Tories party in Conservative seats. One of the clearest displays of this kind of blatant opportunism is the way that they keep stealing my infographics, even though I'm fundamentally opposed to their Thatcherite economic agenda.
Gay floods: The UKIP councilor who described the Somerset floods as God's retribution for the passage of gay marriage legislation through parliament is just one of dozens of UKIP politicians who have embarrassed the party by using their status as UKIP representatives to spout ludicrous, bigoted, racist, sexist and/or homophobic gibberish.
Neil Hamilton and other Ex-Tories: UKIP is absolutely riddled with ex-Tory politicians. It's shameful enough that they decided to give the disgraced former Tory MP Neil "Cash for Questions" Hamilton a route back into politics, but some of their other failed Tory MPs (like Bill Etheridge and Janice Atkinson) are arguably even worse.
Laziness: In the last European parliament UKIP's band of MEPs were the laziest of any political party in the whole of the European Union. They barely ever turned up to debates and votes, and when they did bother to vote they obstinately voted against almost every motion, no matter whether it was in Britain's national interest to do so or not. Their inherent laziness didn't stop them from claiming millions in salaries, expenses and party subsidies from the "EU gravy train" that they're always so keen to criticise though!
TTIP: The schizophrenic UKIP stance on the TTIP corporate power grab is one of the clearest indicators that they simply cannot be trusted to do as they say. TTIP represents a huge threat to UK sovereignty because it would allow multinational corporations to completely bypass our democratic and judicial systems in order to sue our country every time our government does something that they don't like. Some UKIP politicians like Louise Bours have criticised TTIP, while others are clearly strongly in favour of signing away our sovereignty to corporate interests. William "Dartmouth" Legge propagandised in favour of TTIP in the European parliament and their industrial spokesman Roger Helmer even voted in favour of it when it came before the European parliament!

Returning to the photo of Nigel Farage with the Chelsea fan from the Paris Métro incident, it's simply not possible to conclude that Nigel Farage is racist from that picture, and any attempt to do so actually undermines the many rational fact-based arguments that can be deployed against UKIP.

It is of course possible to use the photo to illustrate the fact that UKIP is a party that tends to appeal to racists, but then that's an assertion that hardly needs any more supporting evidence. You only have to look at the constant stream of fruitcakes who are thrown out of the party for spouting bigoted nonsense, or at the vile comments that appear so regularly in the comments on UKIP social media pages, in order to see that an awful lot of bigots and racists are undeniably attracted to the party. When it's already so clear that UKIP have a strong appeal to bigots, and there's such a wealth of factual evidence to criticise them with, using a picture that can easily be construed as a "cheap shot" against Nigel Farage is simply not necessary.

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