Making Plans for Nigel: A Beginner’s Guide to Farage and Ukip

by Harry Paterson (Five Leaves, £7.99)

UKIP gained almost four million votes in last month’s general election, making them now the third largest party in terms of votes cast. If a system of proportional representation existed, this would have won them 85 seats and likely put them in a coalition government with the Tories.

Thus Harry Paterson’s thoroughly readable book — published on election eve and tracking the origins and developments of the party, their attitudes, track record and reasons for their rise — is a worthwhile reference point. 

It’s particularly interesting in its exploration of the party’s relationship with the far right. Paterson documents how Nigel Farage has welcomed former National Front members as candidates and overtly fascist groups such as the BNP and Britain First have all gone on to give their support to Ukip.

While Paterson insists that Ukip is not a fascist party, time and again this book reveals that the similarities are uncanny. Fascism has always been a part of an Establishment which poses as anti-Establishment and Paterson notes that, before his current political guise as an “ordinary bloke down the pub,” Farage had a lucrative career as a merchant banker. Once in the European Parliament, despite their tirades against “MPs on the make,” Ukip MEPs have had no compunction about fleecing the expenses budget for all its worth, voting against measures to limit tax evasion and supporting a thoroughly neoliberal programme which amounts to a war on the poor. Anti-Establishment, indeed.

But most interesting is the final chapter, which situates the rise of Ukip in the broader context of a media-driven war on the poor. As Paterson writes: “For decades the ideological terrain has been shifting in favour of a party like Ukip and we’re now in an era where facts have never been as worthless as they are today,” with wild misperceptions of reality totally dominant. Paterson refers to a 2013 Ipsos Mori poll which reveals that the British public believe £24 out of every £100 of benefits are fraudulently claimed — the real figure is 70p — and that 26 per cent of people think that foreign aid is one of the most costly Budget items, when in fact it accounts for about 1 per cent of spending.

This is the environment in which Ukip operates and, in that sense, their attempts to direct popular anger towards vulnerable scapegoated minorities is hardly unique to the party. Indeed, it is fast emerging as the new consensus.

A fascist party then? Perhaps not — but part of the same broad social tendency and a response to the same conditions.