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The Rise of the Right (UK Independence Party/UKIP)

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The Rise of the Right (UK Independence Party/UKIP)
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flag thefiringline
Posted: May 22, 2013 at 13:20 Quote
Following the eyeopening amount of votes that UKIP have gained, i've decided to make a thread. What do you guys think about the party?

Personally I oppose pretty much everything they do, or stand for, and i wish to see them arqued out. Their popularity is pretty much down to the economical turmoil - and the idiotic belief that leaving the EU would help.
flag flatlandwizard
Posted: Sep 6, 2013 at 17:21 Quote
hi,

im from canada, what exactly do u oppose that they do? what do they stand for? and whats your opinion on the eu? has it helped anything?
flag thefiringline
Posted: Sep 7, 2013 at 0:51 Quote
Here is their overly dramatic summary quoted from their website.

"These are anxious and troubled times. As crisis has followed crisis our politicians are seen to be impotent in the face of the dangers rearing up all around us.
Violent crime erupts in our cities. Jobs are lost and services failing under a tide of immigration, pensions have been crippled and cash savings yield almost nothing.
Millions are now without adequate means of existence. Fear of old age darkens the future. Parliament is held in contempt. Our currency has collapsed by 30%. Chaos engulfs Europe’s very financial existence and, here at home, taxation now bears down on those least able to pay whilst Britain goes ever deeper into deficit.
A gulf has opened between the ruling elite and the public. Each of the establishment main parties are now Social Democrats and offer voters no real choice.
UKIP alone holds that the rescue of the British people depends on withdrawal from the EU to regain our self-governing democracy so allowing the relief of business from crushing regulation and the less well off from the burden of taxes, shutting off the flood of immigrants and freeing enterprise."

They also stress they are not racist. Surely if you are not racist you do not have to stress this? I see no mainstream parties mentioning this.

They oppose immigration, which in a way can be useful, but it shuts off a lot of potential culture and talent coming to the UK.
The thing that particularly annoys me is, quoting their leader - Farage -, "opposing wind turbine development". Fair enough, oppose the placement of turbines in the UK - some people will hate them. But to oppose the development of them is just stupid - when you could sell the designs or product the the EU.

The EU has definitely helped, and will help the UK. The UK is not a self sufficient country - and relies on it's biggest trading partner - the EU. If the UK left the EU, it would have to pay more import/export taxes than before - that's the way the EU gets people to join (among other things). UKIP argue that the money spent on the EU is wasted, but of course it's not. The money spent is only 4.7bn of the £694bn spent last year - less than the armed forces budget.
flag philiusmaximus
Posted: Apr 5, 2014 at 12:55 Quote
Nah disagree with u. I'm voting UKIP.
flag B0B94
Posted: May 10, 2014 at 15:35 Quote
I disagree with you and am also voting UKIP.
UKIPs stance on immigration, is to have a similar process as Australia, Canada and America. This means that talented people can come to the UK and work/study. This is much preferable to the open door immigration policy which we have had for the past 15 years allowing anyone into our country, with net migration being 212,000 last year alone. At the end of the day we are a small island with limited space, we are over crowded anyway, so we can't allow this level of immigration and it should be vastly reduced.

The reason alot of people want to leave the EU is for other reasons than just the economic benefits. We joined the common market in 1973, and since then it has evolved into the monstrosity that is the EU, which is not what we signed up for so the British people should be given a referendum on UK membership of the EU.

In 2012 we paid around £12bn to the EU after the rebate.

Which political party do you support ?
flag harriieee
Posted: May 19, 2014 at 6:04 Quote
I'm moderately anti-EU, but the fact that the gaggle of proto-fascists, religious extremists and misogynists known as UKIP is going to win the Euro elections genuinely scares the shit out of me.
flag BryanSP
Posted: May 26, 2014 at 6:11 Quote
As a Yankee, I'm compelled to give Milton Friedman's position on immigration which is as follows:
-The best immigration policy is the one which allows for the free flow of human capital across borders.
-A large welfare state distorts the incentives for people to immigrate, thus resulting in over-immigration to the destination country and a drain of productive workers from the home country.
flag harriieee
Posted: May 26, 2014 at 8:43 Quote
That's solely blaming welfare provision for an issue which actually has a multitude of factors. Higher wages are probably the greatest driving factor, much more so than welfare, as historically shown by immigration to the USA in the 19th century, when many Europeans left states with a more advanced welfare system to go to a country with less welfare but much higher agricultural wages.
flag BryanSP
Posted: May 26, 2014 at 10:49 Quote
It's not an assignment of blame. Aside from that I agree with your statements. You're especially right to assert 1st that the issue has several causes. FA Hayek would strongly agree. I think its important to distinguish between productive and unproductive immigration, the former being defined by a net gain to production, and the later being defined by a net loss to production.
flag harriieee
Posted: May 26, 2014 at 12:09 Quote
The neoliberal is strong within you, I sense.

If you were British, you'd be a fan of UKIP, seeing as their previous manifesto aimed to privatise the National Health Service and impose a flat rate of income tax. These reasons are also, however, why UKIP will never amount to anything other than a European protest vote, as there is definitely no mandate to do these things in Britain.
flag BryanSP
Posted: May 26, 2014 at 12:43 Quote
I prefer "Classical Liberal", but maybe it means the same thing. If you want to see like-minded men disagree on something, ask them to put a name on their political ideology.
flag harriieee
Posted: May 26, 2014 at 13:34 Quote
Hayek and Friedman definitely aren't classical liberals. Also I'm a socialist, so like-minded we are not Smile
flag BryanSP
Posted: May 26, 2014 at 15:14 Quote
I didn't mean to imply that we are like minded, just that if we were that would not guarantee our mutual acceptance of a label. And as for Hayek, he preferred the term "Old Whig", perhaps due to his admiration of Anglo culture and history. Friedman was quick to deny claims that he was a "conservative". He was less open about a label that he preferred, possibly due to the devicive nature of labels coupled with his ties to the American political system.

What is it about socialism that you find appealing?
flag harriieee
Posted: May 26, 2014 at 15:43 Quote
Total thread derailment alert. Who cares.

For the record, though I view the (very considerable) influence of Friedman and Hayek on modern economics as nothing but pernicious, I find parts of their central thesis compelling – particularly the idea that the market is an information processor superior to any human capability. I disagree, but it's a fascinating concept.

It's born out of a lot of things. Studying late-19th and early-20th century Europe and the rise of Fascism was a major one, and reading Marx, Gramsci and Lukacs in particular. Secondly, the reality-denial and historical revisionism of the modern right, which conveniently forgets that for most of the 20th century the Western world (Britain and the USA in particular) had massive redistributive taxes in place – in the USA, the top rate of income tax was well over 70% from 1930 until Reagan's massive cuts to income tax, after which the deficit exploded. The right are having a real hard time refuting Piketty's research showing capital concentration outstripping growth right now; they simply haven't found a way to create a counter-argument. Thirdly, simply the awareness of the appalling inequalities of opportunity in this country and other 'developed' countries, and a sadness at how most of my friends (who, like me, come from supremely privileged backgrounds) just don't seem to care about it.
flag BryanSP
Posted: May 26, 2014 at 15:58 Quote
It seems to me that a thread about politics on a MTB forum is a derailment from the first post.
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