Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
Every political party has its fringe, but not many have members whose policy priorities include death to all squirrels, the end of the NHS and a return to the gold standard.
The United Kingdom Independence party is a different case. As Nigel Farage, the party leader, enjoyed his popularity bounce following Ukip’s second place at the Eastleigh byelection – flying to Canada to meet global rightwing heavyweights including the former Australian prime minister John Howard and the US Tea Party guru Ron Paul – officials were scrambling to contain the party’s most extreme elements, including xenophobia and racism.
On one members’ message board about migrants from Romania and Bulgaria, Ukip member Raymond Adams said this week: “Nothing less than ethnic cleansing is taking place. The Lib-Lab-Con EU puppets are dutifully diluting the English in particular to eradicate any nasty Nationalism. Then the next generation can be loyal and dutiful EU clones. EUtopia will have arrived!”
John Patrick added: “If there really are some 4 million Romanians and Bulgarians arriving within the year, I just hope our police are ready. We will have to build more prisons and increase the benefit payments.”
The remarks have been defended by the party chairman, Steve Crowther, but others have been removed. On threads where two members had reportedly linked homosexuality to paedophilia, Jonathan Arnott, the party’s general secretary, complained: “I’ve locked a number of gay marriage/adoption/etc threads which seem to have turned to both sides using it as an excuse to have a go at each other. Some of the personal abuse – on both sides – is some of the worst we’ve had on this forum.”
On Tuesday, Farage was the star turn at a “raucous” meeting of 100 party backers at the Ukip Patrons Club for donors giving more than £1,000. The gathering, the first since the byelection success, took place at the East India Club in St James’s Square where party loyalists dined on “the roast beef of old England” washed down with claret. But beyond London clubland, senior officials have warned “wackier” elements to rein in their excesses or leave, and with party sources saying Farage has flown to Monaco, Zurich and the Channel Islands recently to meet potential backers, message control is firmly on the agenda.
“Its time to start falling in line,” said one party official. “We have to be ready for more scrutiny and responsibility.”
Activist John Patrick said on a members’ forum: “We must now ensure, even more, that we are squeaky clean, and remain that way, if we don’t want the shell-shocked Tories to catch us out. No stings, and watch out for the secret recorders [and] cameras.”
The party machine is to move into more professional accommodation from its cramped floor of the Conservative party’s old HQ in Smith Square, Westminster, and will take space behind Claridges hotel in the same Mayfair building as Max Clifford’s PR offices. Rents in the building are among the most expensive in London at more than £65 per square foot.
The party declined to say who was paying for the space.
There are plenty of awkward associations in his party for Farage to negotiate from his new base. In January, the Dewsbury, West Yorkshire branch of the far-right English Defence League declared its support for Ukip and one member, John Emms, complained on Ukip’s official web forum that the British National party was “subject to persecution by the Political Correction Liberal Left thugs”.
Some of Ukip’s leading lights are feted by the hard right abroad. In February, in the wake of the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut in which 20 children and six adults were shot dead, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, the party’s former deputy leader, appeared on a rightwing US chatshow describing post-Dunblane gun control in Britain as “kneejerk”.
He also maintained that the European Union was a dictatorship and described Australia’s prime minister, Julia Gillard, as a communist.
Speaking about environmentalism, Monckton decried ICLEI, the international network of local government bodies dedicated to sustainable development, as “the new dictators” and “straightforward, outright in-your-face communism dressed up to appear like it is to do with the environment”.
Ukip-vs-EUkip 
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