How to stop Farage

For the avoidance of doubt, this is what Nigel Farage said in the Guardian on Saturday when asked if there was “a culture of criminality” among Romanians:

“Bound to be.”

And should British people be wary of Romanian families moving into their street?

“Well, of course, yeah.”

There has been quite an agitated debate on social media and elsewhere as to whether a) Farage is a racist and b) whether Ukip is a racist party. The racial slur contained in the quotes above is pretty unarguable. But shouting “racists!” at Ukip and its potential supporters is proving counter-productive. Yesterday’s YouGov poll for the European elections put Ukip out in front, on 31%, three points ahead of Labour and a gigantic 12 points ahead of the Tories. You could keep shouting “racists!” from here until May 22^nd and you would not wipe the smile off Farage’s face, nor halt his party’s momentum in the polls.

Those words in the Guardian are significant for another reason: they reveal how flaky the Ukip world view is. Farage’s argument is irrational, based on an innumerate assumption. You might as well say that people should be worried if men move into their street, since most crime is committed by men. If I were to say: welcome your new Romanian neighbours and follow them to rec to watch them play tennis, because Ilie Nastase’s backhand was one of the most beautiful things you will ever see on a tennis court, I would be being about as rational and sensible as Farage.

This May will be a high water mark for Ukip. It is all coming together nicely for them. They represent the protest vote, the “sod off” vote, the none of the above vote. The European elections offer an easy, apparently cost-free way of registering a complaint.

Nick Cohen was right to say yesterday that Farage and his gang seem to be getting too easy a ride from many sections of the media. But Farage has been getting too easy a ride from his political opponents, too. Again – that poster with the giant hand on it (“26 million people are after your job”): it is not merely innumerate. It is ridiculous. We should have the courage and the (rhetorical) skill to say so convincingly.

This is not about rubbishing Ukip’s potential supporters, labeling them all racist or ignoring their concerns. It is more a question of saying: Ukip are not capable of meeting your concerns. They are not competent. They are not serious. Send Ukip MEPs to Brussels and you are wasting your vote. They will not be working for you. They will simply be noisy and ignorable irritants.

But what about the racism charge? How best to deal with that?

The worrying thing about this cult of Farage is how blasé many have become about statements like the ones he made in the Guardian on Saturday. But there is a lot of it about. Look at the Top Gear gang and their “hilarious” “jokes” about Mexicans or “slopes”. Read – if you must – Rod Liddle. Look at Boris Johnson and his thoughtless references to “piccaninnies” and Africans with “watermelon smiles”. To shout “racist!” at this point is to risk, at the very least, accusations of being dreary and humourless, an example of “political correctness gone mad”. But when you laugh at and are relaxed about Clarksonism, Farageism is what you get next.

And have no sympathy for the Conservatives, torn as they are between wanting to cling on to the centre ground while desperately hoping to lure back support that has fled to Ukip. Bluntly, they started this. When William Hague spoke of Britain becoming a “foreign land”, when he suggested that a vote for him would allow him to “give you back your country”, he set the Farageiste ball rolling. He made prejudice semi-respectable, as did the Lynton Crosby-inspired Tory election posters of 2005.

David Cameron’s January 2013 speech committing to an in/out EU referendum, described by some as a master-stroke at the time, has only fuelled Ukip’s rise. Appeased, the Europhobes now demand more. Farage demands more. And if you find some of the Ukip posters disturbing, imagine what the tone and content of that in/out referendum campaign could be like, if it ever came to pass. The wisdom of Labour holding the line against an unnecessary referendum looks greater all the time. No way should Labour be wasting energy and precious political capital in its first two years in government fighting a horrible referendum campaign in that sort of climate.

How do you stop Farage? Not by calling him a racist. Not by offering a complacent and patronising account of our EU membership, which sadly is what Nick Clegg seems to have done in those recent debates. But by exposing the flimsiness of Ukip’s arguments. And by offering a better alternative.

Which brings me on to the need for a clear, positive (“bold”) Labour programme at the next general election, rather than a narrow, nervous (“shrunken”) one. But that is a matter for another day.