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If you didn't laugh at Bremner's Cameron you can always think of UKIP...

Did anyone watch tonight's Bremner, Bird & Fortune?  The funniest sketch parodied Rowan Williams for attacking the US over Guantanamo Bay whilst he was in Sudan - where he ignored the Darfur crisis.  But I digress.  More relevant to this blog's focus was Rory Bremner's impersonation of David Cameron.  What did people think?  I felt the impersonation was very Blairite - something Rory Bremner has admitted before.

RB attempted two main lines of ridicule...

1. David Cameron says he wants to distance himself from the past but has brought back IDS, Ken Clarke, Michael Heseltine, John Gummer etc to devise his policy agenda; and
2. David Cameron is all things to all people - a liberal Conservative... the heir to Blair... someone who wears ties for some audiences and is tieless for others... We won't know the true David Cameron until he has been put out to an eighteen month period of consultation...

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Someone beyond parody is UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom.  Today's Yorkshire Post reports Mr Bloom admitting that "as a Hong Kong-based businessman he used to visit whorehouses as if he were going for a curry following an after-work drink".  Apparently there were so many after work drinks, however, that his visits were never consummated.

Mr Bloom criticised the popular way in which prostitution is portrayed:

"Terrified young women beaten into prostitution often from Eastern Europe... is only a very small aspect of the flesh trade... In short, most girls do it because they want to... If they (prostitutes) wanted a job as a Tesco check-out girl, they'd go do that instead."

Unbelievable.

Mr Bloom had previously gotten himself in trouble for saying that "no self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age".  After arriving in the European Parliament he said: "I am here to represent Yorkshire women, who always have dinner on the table when you get home."  His other famous statement was to say "I want to deal with women's issues because I just don't think they clean behind the fridge enough."

UKIP rebrands as 'Independence'

Confirming its anti-Tory positioning, UK Independence Party chairman David Campbell Bannerman, great nephew of former Liberal Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, told yesterday's Yorkshire Post that the party's legal name would stay UKIP but for popular consumption the party would be totally rebranded.  He told the Post:

"Independence as a name is catchy, reduces the emphasis on Europe a little and allows us to focus more on domestic policies... Rebranding will help show that we're not just about leaving the European Union but about being a party of opposition to the three main parties, who share the centre ground.  We will push for independence for local schools, councils, hospitals and planning and champion low taxes, which the Tories no longer seem interested in doing."

Shipley Tory MP Philip Davies is also quoted in the newspaper.  Mr Shipley, like Daniel Hannan MEP, is one of the very few Tories who openly support Britain leaving the EU but he dismisses UKIP's latest tactics:

"I've every sympathy with their view on Europe, I'm just not sure what it is they're trying to achieve.  They'd be much better off remaining a pressure group.  Shouting from the sidelines with five per cent of the vote doesn't seem like a particularly constructive way of advocating their cause."

UKIP to swing Thatcher's handbag at Cameron

An interview with Nigel Farage MEP on last night's Westminster Hour confirmed UKIP's determination to undertake a significant repositioning and attack Cameron's Conservatives from the right (see our 15 January post here).

Mr Farage told his Radio 4 interviewer that there were now three social democratic parties in British politics and that UKIP was repositioning to the centre-right because no-one else was there.  David Cameron, he said, had abandoned traditional conservative territory on school reform, tax policy, immigration and protecting the greenbelt and this had given UKIP a tremendous opportunity.

He did not disagree with the interviewer's contention that UKIP was trying to pick up the Thatcherite torch and said that UKIP was now determined to reach the many stay-at-homes who had stopping voting for the Tories or any political party in recent years.

He said that UKIP was talking to Conservatives in the Lords and Commons and that he hoped that a straw would soon break the camel's back and a defection would occur.

The danger in UKIP's strategy - apart from looking very opportunistic - is that it will frighten the non-Tory-minded voters who have supported UKIP in the past. Although 45% of UKIP's supporters came from the Tories at the 2004 European Elections (according to an ICM/ Guardian survey at the time) 20% had been Labour voters and 11% had crossed from the LibDems.  A decidedly Thatcherite UKIP may also upset some of its MEPs and other leading members who have been UKIP supporters because of a Shore/Benn-like Euroscepticism, rather than because of any the party's domestic policies.  The whole Kilroy-Silk episode showed how UKIP was capable of vicious infighting and this strategy may yet cause more internal problems.

After gaining 16.1% of the vote at the 2004 European elections UKIP failed to come close to winning any seat at the 2005 general election.

UKIP prepare to attack Tories from libertarian right

The extent to which Britain's economy is being 'Europeanised' by Gordon Brown is revealed in today's Business:

"Britain's tax burden will surge ahead of Germany’s for the first time in a generation this year. It signals the end of an era for the UK as it decisively turns its back on economic liberalism, a report reveals this weekend.  The news, which confirms that Chancellor Gordon Brown has Europeanised the British economy by stealth through a massive programme of extra public spending and higher taxes, was condemned by top City of London economists this weekend. They said higher taxes will lead to an inevitable collapse in Britain’s economic performance, a rise in unemployment and a decline in foreign direct investment."

The same Sunday newspaper reports that Britain's United Kingdom Independence Party is determined to fashion itself as the only UK party willing to offer an alternative to what it intends to label Westminster's “social democratic consensus”.

The Business' Fraser Nelson implies that UKIP intends to woo traditional Tories upset at Mr Cameron's caution on both tax competitiveness and public service reform.  UKIP, which scored only 2.2% at last May's General Election, may offer libertarian voters a flat tax and voucherised public services.

UKIP will probably struggle to win any council or Westminster parliamentary seats in Britain's first-past-the-post system but they may attract more activists and their money through these tactics.