Things that are UKIP

Sometimes, it is easy to mock UKIP, not because of invention on anyone's part but because they shoot themselves in the foot.  Today, a hashtag went viral - #thingsthatarenotamosque.  It all started with a BBC puff piece in central London asking passers-by to place a ball either in one box representing the opinion that 'Nigel Farage would make a great prime minister' or another box that he wouldn't.  Unsurprisingly, the 'no' box won.
Nigel Farage's prospective constituency in South Thanet wasn't going to take this slight to the Great Leader lying down.  The line of attack could have been that London was not a fertile ground for the party so the 'poll' was flawed.  No, that would be common sense.  In the background of the BBC reporting was Westminster Cathedral and it was tweeted that holding the poll 'outside a mosque example of BBC not random but selective'.
This is a 'fail' on so many levels.  Firstly, it's the wrong religion.  Secondly, the building is not any Christian institution but the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.  Thirdly, what's wrong with holding a poll outside a mosque anyway?  Why would the poll be invalid? Fourthly and by extension, are Muslims not supposed to be UKIP members and vice versa?
The contortions UKIP pulls to explain its gaffes are wonders to behold and I wondered how they would react.  According to the head of the UKIP branch in South Thanet, it was an 'innocent mistake' and the person involved no longer had access to the Twitter account.  So, in UKIP's eyes, casual Islamophobia is just an 'innocent mistake'.  UKIP itself is not such an innocent mistake.
I'm unsure whether this surpasses for sheer idiocy the excuse for UKIP's poor performance in London at the 2014 European Parliament elections by UKIP's communications chief - that the party suffered because people in London are 'more educated and media-savvy'.  All the same, it's another one to add to the list.  President George W Bush is very much old hat.
If these are the quality of people seeking to elect Farage to Westminster, then all this should be reassuring.  The trouble is, those who believe falsehoods in earnest can be very persuasive to the uninitiated indeed.