It was always astonishing that so many people still fall for the UKIP 'Trojan Horse' con, but the fact that UKIP have now created the Brexit chaos they wanted and their leader has cleared off as quickly as possible it's beyond explanation why so many people, especially working class people, still decide to support UKIP.
As has been pointed out many times before, UKIP is a Thatcherite political party. It is bankrolled by Tory party donors, it's stuffed full of failed, disgraced and defected Tory politicians and it pushes a "more Tory than the Tories" hard-right agenda.
For four decades the UK has been ruled over by a self-serving Westminster establishment with a fixation for hard-right neoliberal economic dogma. This fixation with hard-right economics has resulted in the deliberate destruction of British industries and the neglect of the communities they supported; an out of control self-serving financial sector elite who have pumped up vast house price and speculative asset bubbles at enormous detriment to the nation; the fire-sale/give-away of hundreds of £billions in public assets; rampant tax-dodging by corporations and the super-rich; and ever increasing levels of inequality.
Margaret Thatcher was the hard-right ideologue who started the process; John Major continued it (with stuff like his utterly botched privatisation of the railways); Tony Blair won the backing of the Murdoch propaganda empire by promising to continue the hard-right Thatcherite experiment; Gordon Brown squandered £1.5 trillion bailing out the reckless bankers with the biggest state subsidies in British history to save them from the bankruptcies they so richly deserved; then David Cameron spent six years pushing the same old hard-right economic dogma that caused the financial sector insolvency crisis as the cure to the crisis, simply by rebranding it as "austerity".
The purpose of UKIP is to soak up the discontent at the appalling consequences of the ideologically driven right-wing economic dogma favoured by the Westminster establishment club, and then channel it into a political party that serves to drag the political spectrum even further to the right.
The concept of a right-wing 'Trojan Horse' protest party designed to hoover up the anger at failed right-wing economic policies of the Westminster establishment and use it to drag the establishment political parties even further to the right is so cynical that it's obscene, but somehow people still keep falling for this faux protest party.
One of the main reasons people fall for it is that they are conditioned into believing in ludicrous right-wing tropes by an education system that teaches them to rote learn rather than apply critical thinking skills, and a mainstream media that constantly frames the political debate in terms of hard-right economics and immigrant-blaming being "common sense" and anything that actually questions the hard-right economic status quo of the Westminster establishment club as being "radical", "fanatical" or "dangerous".
When people are taught to mindlessly regurgitate what they're told from such a young age, it's no surprise that they end up rote learning the hard-right propaganda of the tabloid press and supporting fanatically right-wing political parties.
One of the most dispiriting things is the way UKIP have become so popular in the working class communities that have been completely ravaged by four decades of Thatcherite economic dogma. Given how hard-right economic ideology has trashed their communities, how could anyone from areas like the north east, the Welsh valleys or the former industrial towns in the Midlands end up throwing their support behind a bunch of hard-right Thatcherites like UKIP?
The only way it makes sense is if people have either failed to understand that the Westminster establishment has been dominated by hard-right Thatcherites for the last four decades (perhaps buying into the extraordinarily misleading extreme-right propaganda that people like Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and Osborne were just a bunch of "lefties"), or they've failed to realise that UKIP is pushing an extreme version of the exact same policies that led to the social and economic ruination of their communities (perhaps buying into the simplistic propaganda narrative that immigrants, rather than the political establishment, are to blame for their problems).
Whatever the reason that people allowed themselves to be conned by the UKIP snake oil merchants, their main excuse for supporting UKIP is now gone. They can't continue to say, as so many of them used to, that they only support UKIP to get the UK out of Europe. After the vote for Brexit in June 2016 that reason is null and void.
If you're working class and you still find yourself supporting UKIP, now is the time to admit to yourself that your support goes beyond wanting to get the UK to quit the EU. It's time to admit that you actually support the hard-right economic policies that have ruined working class industries and communities up and down the country; distributed hundreds of £billions in public assets to private interests; repressed your wages; underfunded and undermined the services and welfare system you pay for through your taxes; turned a blind eye to the tax-dodging of corporations and the super-rich; and allowed the bankers to go on one reckless gambling spree after another resulting in an over-inflated housing market that has put home ownership beyond the means of millions of ordinary workers like you.
You need to admit to yourself that you support a "more of the same, but harder" party, and in doing so you're giving material support to the most right-wing elements of the Tory and Labour parties who think that the only way to win back the votes of people like you is to imitate UKIP by offering ever more right-wing policies.
You need to admit to yourself that by supporting UKIP, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
No comments:
Post a Comment