Dear Nigel Farage (again…ten years later)

Dear Mr Farage

It’s ten years since I last had cause to write openly to you.  You might remember it.  If you don’t then you can find it here: https://www.nickkingsworld.com/blog/2014/5/17/dear-nigel-farage

At the time, I wasn’t involved in politics.  I was spending my time bringing up my young family.  But then one of your election candidates suggested that by shooting one homosexual in 100 then that would likely persuade the other 99 that their preference was a matter of choice rather than genetics.

I was so incensed I chose to write you an open letter.

You’d think, after the last ten years, that things might have changed. 

But no.  Here I am again. 

Some of your supporters, campaigning for you in Clacton, were caught using racist, discriminatory, derogatory language.  They described our Prime Minister as a ‘p*ki’ and suggested immigrants should be used as target practice. 

These comments were, rightly, described by you as ‘appalling’.

They also described the pride emblem as a ‘degenerate flag’ and suggested members of the LGBT community are paedophiles.  However, you chose to excuse this by saying your campaigner ‘was drunk’ as ‘he’d watched England playing football’.

And thereby lies the problem.

Back in 2014 I pointed out how you had acted against those of your candidates and members who had at that time made misogynistic comments (expelled), or racist comments (forced to resign or suspended). 

Then, you failed to apply the same sanction to a homophobe.  Now you choose to excuse your supporters’ homophobic comments.

My history of engagement with the parties you have led goes back twenty years.  From attending, out of curiosity, a UKIP meeting in Bournemouth in 2004.  There you spoke eloquently and passionately about the threat of mass immigration from Turkey,  a country you presumed would be joining the EU in the very near future.  There were 100 million Turks you said.  They would be bringing their different culture, their different religion to our shores.  They had to be stopped.

The room, largely comprising white men of my father's age, lapped it up.  The fear writ large.  The desire to return to a halcyon past 50 years distant etched on their faces.

Leading UKIP in 2014 you talked in the same way about eastern Europeans.  Bulgarians.  Romanians.   Similar fear mongering.  Same rhetoric of discrimination.

Now, leading Reform UK, it’s any immigrant.  You’ll be sending them back to France or to their country of origin.  Regardless of danger.  Regardless of international law.  Regardless of humanity.

Similar fears.  Same rhetoric.

Your dog whistle continues to sound.

A few weeks ago, when I assumed the Leadership of Hampshire County Council, I told my assembled colleagues that no one enters politics to do harm.  We just disagree about the ways by which we can do good.

I hold to that principle for politicians of every view, Mr Farage.    

Most of us measure others by their behaviour.  Do they exhibit warmth?  Do they show empathy? Are they kind?

Often being kind in politics is the harder course.  It’s not a sign of weakness.  It needs moral fibre.  Determination.  It sometimes means taking the unpopular and difficult decisions.

I know there are very many who disagree with my politics.  Some of them no doubt quite reasonably consider me an idiot. 

But I hope, indeed am fairly sure, no one thinks me unkind.   

But I very much fear you are unkind Mr Farage.

You don’t care. 

You don’t care that your words hurt.  That your innuendos excuse intolerance.  That your excuses cover up prejudice. 

That your failure to call out discrimination just makes everything that little bit worse.

It’s worse for people of colour.

It’s worse for those who have joined our community from elsewhere, strengthening us through diversity as incomers have for hundreds of years.

It’s worse for my husband and my children. 

It’s worse for us all.