Ucreeps

Like a clown car, the wheels come off the UKIP campaign yet still the show goes on.  As another bona-fide fruitcake emerges from the woodwork, declaring not just all politicians from Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives as traitors who should be hung from the neck until dead, but also all those who vote for them as committing 'treason by association', Nigel Farage is dealing with a far more serious threat to the party - namely himself.  Hauled out of a radio interview midway by a spin doctor, the damage had been done when he suggested Western Europeans, specifically Germans, were of a higher quality of human beings than Romanians.  His retort to a terrier-like radio anchor's insistence on why he wouldn't like Romanians moving in next to them but would be happy with Germans was "You know what the difference is," could serve as his epitaph.
Is Farage a Luis Suarez-type, a 'non-racist' who uses racist branding.  Or is he just a racist?  Given the tenor of UKIP's campaigning on immigration and the seemingly inexhaustible number of nasty humbugs that emerge, it really is impossible to say.  The standard bleat is "it's not racist to talk about immigration" is a meaningless platitude, like the bully's refrain "it's just a bit of fun."  The way UKIP talks about immigration is racist and if the hundreds of thousands of people who will vote for them on Thursday don't like being called racist, then they should look in the mirror.  Ironically, it's not politically correct to call people racists these days, even when they are blatant in their practice of it.  Rather, they use 'racial slurs' but are not 'racist' themselves.
Not only did Farage make ludicrous points in an interview, his idea of damage-limitation is to pay for a full page in the Telegraph (handy when you are bankrolled by a high street destroying out-of-town megastore billionaire and a spread-betting multi-millionaire) repeating the exact same points, characterising the entire population of Romania as criminals and generally evil.  In the ad, he says his policy is common sense, even though on Sunday, he said he was tired and regretted using the wrong words (the price of being a one-man band political party).  So what is his position: common sense or regret?  Many of his apologists (as well as some of his fiercest critics) inhabit The Telegraph, both as columnists and on the message boards.  But this cosiness has infuriated News International, with both The Times and The Sun savaging UKIP and Farage.  When the Murdoch red-top, one of the toughest holders of a line on immigration, calls your interview racist, you know you're in trouble.
Apart from a slight typographical error regarding Ceaușescu, The Telegraph ad could not be more unintentionally parodic.  Expressing his sorrow for the put-upon Roma, "It is difficult to believe that such discrimination still exists in Europe today."  He then reels off the nefariousness of Romanians as continuously shifty people against who we must be on our guard continuously.  It is indeed difficult to believe that such discrimination still exists in Europe today.  You couldn't make it up.  Irrespective that some of his beloved Roma have a part in the crime figures he magics up (one source is from a drama-documentary, wow, solid) - it is well documented that were plenty of Balkan Roma who made a killing sanction-busting in the break-up of Yugoslavia - by withdrawing from the EU, British police will be less able to cooperate with their Romanian counterparts to nip criminality at source and also lose access to the Europol services.
Long may the scrutiny of UKIP continue to expose them as the closet racists they are.  Spoil your ballot rather than vote UKIP - it's the same difference.  If you want to rattle the establishment (as so many across Europe will be doing), vote Green.