The first time as Priestley, the second as Farage - Common Wealth - UKIP's warning from history

UKIP are not the first 'new' party to achieve a breakthrough on the ragged shirt tails of an unpopular coalition. It happened last time.

In 1942, with the war raging and a "LibLabCon"government running the country a leftist group, under the sponsorship of the Picture Post's owner Edward G. Hulton, challenged the then existing agreement that by-elections would not be fought in war time and managed to win six seats in a row. The Common Wealth party, although of the left, had many characteristics similar to those of UKIP. It was broadly populist and appealed to the egalitarian sentiments of wartime British voters, while seeking to derive political capital out of a coalition government which by its very nature was making compromises to weather the crisis on the continent. Sound familiar?

Initially chaired and effectively led by the writer J.B. Priestley,  rivalry between him and the party's first sitting MP Richard Acland led to tensions and then a split.  The party's success was in a very large part down to the electoral pact but it could not keep up momentum in the post war years as the Coalition was replaced by Atlee's majority government. The Common Wealth party split into factions and eventually many of its members were subsumed into the Labour and Liberal parties.

Perhaps, what we are seeing with UKIP is a rerun of inevitable disenchantment inherent in coalition governments in a country that operates on first past the post. History, after all, does have an unnerving habit of repeating itself. The first time as Priestley, the second time as Farage? 

Royal Baby Breaking News - your cut out and keep guide

Newsreader  

We now go live to our Royal Correspondent who is outside the Palace. Nicholas/Sue/Dave what can you tell us?

Nicholas/Sue/ Dave  

Yes the Palace have confirmed that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant and that the Royal couple are delighted. This means that at some point in the next six or seven months, assuming all goes well, she will have a baby. The baby will almost certainly be a boy or a girl. If it is a boy there is an extremely high chance that he will be given the traditional title "Prince" whereas if it is a girl she will be known as "Princess". We don't know what the name of the baby will be at this point, but if it is a girl then we can reasonably assume that the baby will have a girl's name, while if the child is a boy he will be called something male. He or she will be the fourth in line to the throne and remain so until something changes at which point he or she will become the third in line or even second or conversely the fifth or sixth. Or perhaps even the seventh. Or eighth - it really depends on how many other children members of the Royal Family have.

Newsreader

And do we have any suggestion as to how the news was greeted by the Royal couple?

Nicholas/Sue/David

Yes at this point the Palace have confirmed that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant and that the Royal couple are delighted. In the past Prince William has said that he would love to have a little girl, but that he would be equally happy if he had another little boy. The Duchess herself has never commented openly on the topic, but one might reasonably assume that she will be happy with a boy or a girl. The couple have already had one child, Prince George, so we can say at this point that the new baby will almost certainly not be called George or even Georgina, although the latter still remains a possibility. If unlikely. The news was greeted around the world by other media outlets. Everybody is described as being "really delighted" by the news. Stephen Fry tweeted: "A baby that's nice" while Nigel Farage added - on twitter that it was "really good news". David Cameron, unusually perhaps has backed Farage on this, while Ed Miliband added  that he was "very happy for the Royal Family" and that maybe an airport could be named after the baby when it is born. Back to you in the studio Alistair.

Newsreader 

In other news thousands continue to die in ....

Roll Music and Credits.....

Helmer: "astonished by synthetic tide of indignation at his amusing sex change tweet"

Just before the Newark by-election we wrote to Roger Helmer the UKIP candidate about his infamous sex change tweet.

Dear Roger

On the 16th January 2011 you wrote the following on twitter: 

"Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change operation, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to "turn" a consenting homosexual?"

Do you still stand by that? Do you think it is in any way offensive? If so do you think it important that people still stress their point of view? Do you think that a psychiatrist could 'turn' a consenting heterosexual.

Best regards

This was his reply

Dear Zoe,

I can hardly “stand by it”, as I never made a statement.  I merely asked a question.  It was intended to be light-hearted and amusing, and I was astonished by the tide of synthetic indignation it engendered from strident pressure groups.

I simply don’t know if it is possible to change a person’s sexuality through any kind of medical or psychiatric intervention (and I’m not sure I much care).

What I do care about is the right of individuals to make choices regarding their own behaviour and health and welfare.  Take a less contentious example.  I don’t know whether homeopathy works or not (though I suspect not).  But as a libertarian, I defend the right of anyone who believes it works, or believes it might work, to try it.  Similarly, if a homosexual person wants to change their sexuality, and believes that some intervention might achieve this, I would defend their right to try.  The impression I have is that the gay lobby regards any such intervention as intolerable and unacceptable, and vilifies anyone who seeks it.  I find that attitude deeply illiberal.

Best regards.

ROGER HELMER MEP

Vote UKIP For A Better Britain and 75% More Lies

A few weeks ago I got into one of those UKIP troll fights you get into on twitter, where it escalates out of all proportion and suddenly people are calling you four letter words, demanding you retract this that and the other and blocking you in a frenzy of rage, while you're left meekly questioning their spelling and punctuation.

But this wasn't like your usual spat. It went on for days and then weeks and before I knew it I wasn't eating, the goldfish had died and I was checking and cross referencing things on my phone in bus stops and generally acting like Leonardo di Caprio in that film where he keeps all his toenails in jars.

You see the problem was that in all the UKIP posturing, I had developed what can only be described as an unhealthy interest in facts and details. So when someone said that Kippers had the biggest or second biggest BEM vote for example I thought "hmmm that sounds a bit 'wrong' I'd better check it." And it was. Very wrong. Of course.

Well I won't bore you with the ins and outs and Venn diagrams and facts and figures and links to obscure data, but as time has gone by I've become a bit of an expert on UKIP. I could possibly even write a paragraph on Wikipedia about it - well I could - but I can't since they blocked me over some "unpleasantness". 

So let me limit my fact check frenzy to just one figure. 

You see there's been one statistic that has really got my Romanian goat. Since the campaign started UKIP have - on their posters and in public - repeatedly stated that "75% of our laws are made in Brussels". They aren't. The real truth is "nobody actually knows" precisely but it's anywhere between 10% and 50%. Yes 50% is a lot but it's not 75% is it? 

Full Fact has done a pretty good job trying to nail it and this 2009 article also seems to knock the already old figure on the nose. But one thing anyone who has properly investigated this agrees on is that UKIP's 75% figure is wrong. Plain Jane WRONG. Off the mark. Bad sums.

So what? 

Yeah so what? I mean it doesn't really matter does it. It's a lie. It's a big fat bold lie. But who cares? I mean it's only the central platform of this party's campaign? They are lying to you. They are lying to me. Gaily merrily lying. BUT as so many have said to me on twitter - so flipping what? 

Well you could say "so a lot". I mean UKIP's USP is that they are 'different' isn't it. They tell the truth. Nigel likes a pint and a smoke. He says it as it is. So you COULD say that making up a big fib like that and continually repeating it is a fairly big deal.

But I'm not going to say that because frankly anything wet liberal types like me say seems merely to bolster UKIP's poll rating. So let's try another tactic.

VOTE UKIP. Vote for a party that brazenly lies. Vote for a party that condemns taxpayer troughing MEPs in Brussels while taking every Euro it can get from er Brussels. Vote for Nigel Farage. A man who deplores foreign speakers on trains unless they're his wife and children in which case it's OK. A man who takes a salary and expenses from the EU that is greater than David Cameron's earnings.

Yeah go for it. Vote for the party that bangs on about unelected bureaucrats while demanding more UKIP Peers in the House of Lords. Vote for a party that blames all your problems on immigrants and the 'people across the sea' in Brussels. Vote for the good old chaps that tap into the basest nastiest instincts they can get away with while protesting that they aren't racist, or homophobic or bigoted in any way. 

And when you have and they've won (which they will do) and when perhaps even they get some seats at Westminster get back to me........ or rather leave me a message. I'll be abroad. 

Bez vs Brand

You know Bez. Everyone knows Bez. The Happy Monday's mood man. The inspiration for the band's second single 'Freaky Dancin', a kind of living medical experiment who has turned over more drugs than a provincial high street Boots. One of the few people in Britain it is impossible to hate. The Madchester jester that NME once (unfairly) put in a list, alongside Linda McCartney and Andrew Ridgley, of band-mates whose contribution to famous acts was negligible. Bez was no Linda. He shook his spindly arse across the second summer of love like a demented genie let loose from its methadone bottle. And if nothing else Bez was unarguably the greatest Manchester based maraca player of the late 20th Century. 

Earlier this week the northern icon declared his intent to run as an MP at the next general election. His aim is to fight the revolution from within and if you read his manifesto which took the form of a  Guardian Q and A it is a short sharp shot of fresh air - and not in a UKIP/Farage breath of stale nicotine fresh air way - I mean a genuine breath of fresh air. The kind that doesn't make you retch. Pundits often talk about what 'the Commons needs' well here he is -  Bez is what the Commons needs. He has seen more, lived more, met more normal people than most of the stuffed shirts in parliament have or will in a lifetime. You wouldn't necessarily want Bez to be Chancellor of the Exchequer but then that's not going to happen is it. He'd make a mean fucking Minister for Love though.

Bez has nailed a lot of narcotics but better than that he's nailed being a famous human being. He is passionate, down to earth and genuine - rare commodities in anyone - rarer still in celebrities - almost non existent in politicians. This isn't because politicians are necessarily lacking in those characteristics to begin with - but rather because it gets squeezed out of them until by the time they take their seats they have turned an inevitable shade of beige.

Compare and contrast:

Yesterday in Vienna, Russell Brand addressed the UN's 57th Session Commission on Narcotic Drugs - if you watch it - and frankly there's no real need to do that if you've watched any of Brand's word conjuring "serious" performances of the last years - you can sense the frisson of excitement in his audience. They aren't actually listening to what he says, but they are giggling a lot. This is what happens to normals in the presence of A listers. It's the same reason people used to go to the theatre to watch Madonna claim she was acting. Nobody gave a fuck about the play. It was all about being under the same roof as an immortal that mattered.

Brand is undeniably fascinating and not wholly unlikable. You don't get to where he has got by being stupid, although I suspect that if he looked less like Che Guevara and more like Lofty from It Ain't Half Hot Mum we might never have heard of him. But it is true that that he is very good looking and a live-wire and a fairly unique character. A prodigious force - with 7 million twitter followers and an adoring fanbase. And yes - a lot  of quite sensible people like Brand - just like a lot of quite sensible people believe in God. 

There is a good argument that having come through addiction himself (Brand not God) he has every right to stalk the international circuit professing his widely held, though not very original view that drugs prohibition doesn't work. Rusty believes that the only reason drugs are still illlegal  is because Western politicians are afraid of what the opinion polls and the Daily Mail might think. 

To which the only sensible and academic response is DUH - REALLY?

I mean that's hardly revolutionary is it. Lord Rees-Mogg believed something similar and you never saw him doing arena comedy. It's pretty much the mainstream view and something the Lib Dems have been banging on about for years.

A few years ago a now defunct TV channel called RE:Brand paid Rockets a quarter of a million  quid to make a short series on whatever took his fancy. In one show he invited a homeless smack addict called James to 'come and live with him, in my own flat like, for real, for good - this will be his new life.' It is one of the most cynical pieces of rehab porn you are ever likely to watch. In one particularly telling scene Russell climbs into a bath with James and literally cleans his wounds. Yes! Just like Jesus! Geddit!!??! When after two days James decides to leave, Brand becomes so eager to reassure viewers that it has been his choice to go that he repeats it rhetorically five or six times before making James say it directly to camera. The faux-cheery chappy act grates at the best of times, but here the mask falls and exposes him for what he is. An inauthentic eidolon who cares about one brand and one Brand only - Russell.

And in that there is very little difference between him and other global do-gooders like Angelina Jolie and that woman who was in Sliding Doors - photogenic prophets, profiteering from their photogenic proselytising.

The great issue that has dogged both popular culture and politics since the 1960s is authenticity. We the people say we want it and they the providers are eager to give it. The problem is that, like love, authenticity is an exhaustible commodity. Brand still hasn't made up his mind as to whether he's Peter Cook or John Lennon. He is neither. He is plastic soul. White reggae. Donovan doing his best Bob Zimmerman impression. 

Vote for Bez Salford. He's vinyl in its original sleeve with a big Moroccan lump of happiness. You could do a fuck of a lot worse. 

Sympathy for the Devil: why I feel sorry for Fred Phelps

The Westboro Baptist Church has just 40 members and yet its reach over the last ten years has been far greater than that tiny figure deserves. This miniscule sect famous for picketing the funerals of gay people, soldiers, Jews, Muslims and anyone else that fits its warped vision of the world has attracted opprobrium and documentary makers in equal measure. And often it feels that the Church has revelled in the hatred and the scorn and attention poured over it. 

In some respects the Phelps family have become a sort of extremist version of the Kardashians - a family you hate to watch but can't help watching - a bunch of nobodies who have found global fame for a one note performance. We love to hate them and they in turn love our hatred. Indeed documentary makers have queued up at their door. Louis Theroux has descended on them twice. Lily Allen's dad has poked them with his semi-retired snarl. They have even appeared on the Jeremy Kyle show. Yes really. Jeremy Kyle. So it hasn't all been a bundle of laughs on the road to salvation.

This is the sort of media coverage that the Quakers, with about half a million adherents, or even the Church of Iceland would kill a Messiah for. You probably didn't even know there was a Church of Iceland did you? I didn't until about 4 minutes ago. It has a quarter of a million followers. The Westboro Baptist Church has just 40. Did I mention that?

Forty. 

Slightly bigger than a class of kids in an English primary school.

Half the number of people you can fit on a Routemaster bus.

Ten fewer than the number of Liberal Democrat MPs in Parliament.

Yes - as small as that.

And now Fred Phelps, the leader of this inglorious bunch of inglorious Baptists, is reaching his very own end time. 

Predictably the reaction has been less than sympathetic. There is even talk of activists picketing his funeral and giving the Phelps family a taste of their own very toxic medicine.

And why not? This after all is the leader of a church that revelled in the deaths of innocent people in the 9/11 attacks and who issued a press release after the Boston marathon bomb that read:

"Here's a hint — GOD SENT THE BOMBS! How many more terrifying ways will you have the LORD injure and kill your fellow countrymen because you insist on nation-dooming filthy fag marriage?!"

This is the church that has been allowed - largely via the magic of TV - to get its very odd and cancerous view of the world out to millions more than it would ever have reached otherwise. If it were an alcoholic Louis Theroux would be guilty of enabling it. But it isn't. It's a teeny weeny church with just 40 members.  

I feel rather sorry for Phelps. I feel rather sorry for his family. Those 40 people who have been abused for most if not all of their adult lives. And it is abuse. And it is THEY who have been abused. Sometimes by themselves. Mostly by each other. 

Nobody else has been hurt as much by this freak show. None of their victims has been loved any less because of the picketing or the silly message boards. THEY - the Phelps family have been condemned to a life of isolation, of misery and of suffering because somebody somewhere convinced Fred that an extreme reading of the Bible was the answer.

Of course it isn't. The Bible doesn't teach you much at all really. Although there are some very good knitting tips in Ecclesiastes if you look hard enough.

Fred Phelps' brief time on this planet has been an exercise in futility. He leaves no legacy. He dies a figure of hate; unloved; mourned by none bar his very closest supporters - from nothing he came - to nothing he goes. Unmissed. Unfulfilled. Confused. And wrong. After a lifetime of preaching and professing he leaves a congregation of 40 - just 40 people - behind. And that - in its own purposeless way -   is quite sad. 

God doesn't want Noah to invite my 9 year old son to his birthday party

I stopped believing in God when I was 18. It wasn't a sudden revelation, more a gradual drifting away, although I do remember sitting in the chapel of my public school one day and questioning the authority of the text. It was the Gospel yes, but was it gospel? And as I asked questions and actually read the New Testament it seemed so obvious that it was a bit of a fable that my faith waxed, waned and then slipped away. I didn't feel angry with my parents for taking me along to church, I'd actually quite enjoyed it. Nor was I cross with my boarding school which had made me attend services three times a week for all my teenage years. Most of these people seemed to believe it. It gave them comfort. I felt neither a rebel nor especially cheated when I left it. In fact I never really did leave it. I still went along to the odd church service but if asked my faith I now declared myself an atheist, which is a bit of an ugly word, isn't it. Bald and resonant with negativity.

Later on in life when my father died I found some solace in the fact that I was not religious. I didn't have to rail against the dying of the light or some God in his heaven who had stolen my Dad away. It was just something that had happened. And with the subsequent brickbats that life throws at us as we get older I never felt a need to fall back on faith. I found other things to love and console me. Real things. Like people.

When my first child was born it didn't occur to us to have him baptised. It wasn't a statement. I wasn't being a 'militant atheist' or anything like that. I think we had a conversation along the lines of "if he wants to get baptised later in life let it be his choice" but my mother and probably even certain of my more traditionally minded friends were not impressed. We had one of those 'naming ceremonies' but there wasn't a Celtic drummer in sight. We just got drunk and had a party.

When he was four the question of schools raised its ugly head. I live in inner city London. I filled in the form and put down our choices 1,2,3,4 - which were the nearest primary schools geographically to our house. Choice 1 was a 'normal' primary rated Good by Ofsted. Choice 2 happened to be a C of E school  also rated Good. We got choice 2. I would have preferred option 1 but never mind. One third of all state schools in Britain are Faith Schools and the proportion in primaries is higher in London.

It is a good school. The mix of race, class, education, backgrounds is a complete cross section of our local community and the place is friendly, well ordered and the kids (I have two) are being well educated. Bit too much God, but it's a faith school isn't it - so what would you expect?

My son is a sociable, happy, smart little boy. He is doing well and is both fun and popular. He has a close knit group of friends and one of these - Noah - is probably his best friend of all. It's Noah's birthday on Friday and most of the class are invited. My son isn't. The reason is the same reason my boy was given last year and the year before. Noah's parents are very fervent Christians. As his mother told my wife when they first met "it is important for us that our children's friends are Christians -  are you a Christian?"

So - as Noah explained to my son - it's fine for them to be friends and play at school but he can't be friends outside of school because my 9 year old doesn't go to church.

My boy is upset that he isn't invited to the party. He feels properly hurt. I know this because we had a man to man on the sofa last night. So what do I do? Do I tell him his friend's parents are mad? Do I tell him that it doesn't matter? It does matter. Do I harangue these people in the playground? Do I point out the irony of a faith that purports to be all about love and kindness, encouraging such cruelty and division in children of 9? Or do I just ignore it and tell my son "that's life and put up with it" - yes 'put up with this stupid all enveloping religion that seems to creep by stealth into every corner of our society'. Well I don't want to do that, because as a dumbass liberal I want my kids to make their own decisions about what they believe in and not drum me into them. A naive hope perhaps but it's what I believe and if you disagree with me your kids can't come to my kids' birthday parties - OK?

The problem is of course that his whole learning environment is overwhelmingly Christian. From his Head teacher down. It is the bread and butter of his school life. He - by dint of his parents lack of religiosity is an outsider.

In the last census 59% of the British population described themselves as Christians. I don't believe that statistic, I think they were mostly being polite or unimaginative. I suspect the true figure is much, much lower. Indeed even the church itself admits that less than 15% of the population are regular church goers - and yet this odd state of affairs continues. We put up with it. We allow its adherents to sit in judgement in our Upper Chamber, to run one third of our schools, to take the moral high ground over any number of issues.

Dawkins is often lambasted for being rude or arrogant when he points out the idiocy of faith. Given the way my son feels at the moment I wonder if we atheists aren't being rude enough.

Norma Major Ate My Cheese

It all began with the historian Andrew Roberts and an appearance he made on a debate some weeks before the start of the Gulf War. Roberts was on fiery, fulsome, idiotic form defending the case for invasion, the case for the existence of WMDs and the case - the ludicrous, witless, brainless, call it what you will case - that Saddam had the means to attack Britain with chemical weapons in 45 minutes. Now I am no Sun Tzu. The closest I ever came to military experience was a short stint in a cub pack in Essex that involved a lot of stick whittling and staring out of windows, but even I knew that the Iraqi Army was incapable of such a feat. You need missiles to do that sort of thing and Saddam didn't have the missiles. How was he planning to deploy the warheads? By taxi? Roberts went on to suggest that the Ba'athists were as dangerous as the Nazi party in 1939 and that Saddam was potentially more of a threat to world peace than Hitler had been, thus invoking Godwin's Law and looking very silly in the process.

It seemed to me then that Roberts was either lying to support the case for invasion or being spectacularly stupid. At that time I gave him the benefit of the doubt. With hindsight I think he was lying.

I wrote the historian a letter suggesting with all the politeness I could muster that a serious academic would never make such a ludicrous comparison and to my astonishment he wrote back. It wasn't pretty. He seemed to take my critique personally and lambasted my naivety, my impudence and my general ignorance in all matters historical. Bloody cheek. I got a B at A level.

And there it lay. The war came and didn't go. The WMDs were not found. Twitter was invented: "You should open a twitter account" a friend said to me one day "you'd be good at it, you like showing off."

I have long loved pranks. I mean truly great pranks. They are the ultimate subversion. The Dreadnought hoax , Nat Tate  and of course Peter Cook's Sven From Norway are akin to great art and as the social networking age blossomed it seemed that the possibility for subversive pranking was opening up on a global scale.

In the early months of 2011 I opened a fake twitter account in the name of Norma Major and started tweeting about cheese and life as a retired PM's wife. I thought it was an obvious spoof, but as the weeks went by, to my astonishment, quite a few serious journalists followed . I had stumbled across an odd quirk of twitter. The micro-blogging website is effectively a collection of different inter-linked villages and if word spreads through a particular neighbourhood that a 'big name' has arrived, the people in it believe what their friends and followers say without taking the time to make the necessary checks. Word rapidly spreads from one village to the next - like a plague - and in no time at all everyone starts to accept "Wendi Murdoch" or "IDS" as the real deal.  Odder still, the very worst offenders and very best spreaders are often journalists. The greater the lie, the greater the chance that it will be believed. 

Soon 'Norma' had taken on a life of her own. Her Pooterish adventures as she 'wrote' a book about the various amateur poets who had inhabited Downing Street, including a policeman called Bill and some early works by Alec Douglas-Home led to several serialisation offers arriving as DMs from big name broadsheets. Weirder still she talked frequently of John's attempts to write a book about the history of music hall, only for the 'real one' to subsequently do just that.

Then one day, quite unexpectedly, I got an email from Andrew Roberts in which he had copied in all of his quite impressive contact list. I decided that I would cherry-pick a few - and see if I could carry out an April Fool. Norma began to tweet excitedly about her new book "Hard Cheese" and then on the day itself I sent out an email from a Fake PR

Unfortunately, I sent it out to everyone with a rather smug justification on the auto-reply. I am always rather irritated with myself for that smug reply. It should have just been a big smiley face with "April Fool" on it but never mind. It was partly a joke, partly a political act, partly a situationalist prank, part revenge and yes I confess quite a big part "look at me". I am a writer and performer, "look at me" is what I have been doing since I tied a teacher's shoe-laces together at school.

The phoney PR got a really very angry email from Mr Roberts but 'she' also got an overwhelming inbox of mails from people who had taken it in good cheer. In fact most of the 'great and good' congratulated her on a cunning stunt. 

A week or two later "Norma" died in a dalek attack, but I had found a new way to write and reach an audience. For nearly twenty years I had been churning out plays and film scripts, poems and novels - here finally was a ready made audience, a new and untried 'art' and a world of endless possibility.