Ukip members are more Rotary Club malcontents than fascists; more pin-stripe shirt rebels than blackshirt bullies
The irony police were quickly on the scene this morning after Ukip's leader, Nigel Farage, went on BBC Radio Scotland to denounce the demonstrators who disrupted Thursday's impromptu press conference in Edinburgh's Old Town as "fascist scum".
It's the kind of mindless labelling which will probably fill both sides with righteous indignation. "Fascist" has been a label of abuse between, and within, political parties since 1945 when Hitler's toxic brand followed Mussolini's into the graveyard of history. It is a form of radical and authoritarian nationalism that suppresses rival ideology and individualism, seeking to harness the nation behind the power of the state.
Its most successful exponent in Europe was General Francisco Franco, who led an abortive coup against Spain's hapless republican government in 1936 and, after a savage three-year civil war in which clerical reaction and half-baked mystical fascist ideology were harnessed to the cause, died in his bed only in 1975. Ukip is not exactly in the old monster's league and Farage's less than austere lifestyle will not endear him to austere and high-minded reactionaries.
In reality, there was unlikely to have been a single fascist in sight on the Royal Mile when the police had to rescue the Ukip leader from 50 or so noisy young people. Farage certainly isn't remotely a fascist by any reasonable test. Proper fascists, more likely to be found in the old National Front, the fractious BNP or the English Defence League (EDL), would soon take care of him. "All mouth and no trouser," the self-styled hard men must mutter as they watch him on Question Time.
But not fascist either were the kids accusing him of the usual clutch of thought crimes, racism, homophobia, anti-semitism and being scum himself as well as being a "bawbag". It's a left-leaning charge sheet and comes as a package. Anti-semitism is a new one on me, but a Ukip councillor ("I'm not racist') was caught posting anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim sentiments the other day, so that must be it.
Bawbag is broad Scots for being an annoying and useless person as well as slang for scrotum. Nowadays, it is also a brand of colourful boxer shorts of the kind Farage probably does not wear, being sartorially conservative – blazer or pin-stripe suit and regimental tie – in ways more consistent than his politics and policy prescriptions usually are.
Some of the protesters were clearly nationalist, a point confirmed by the invitation to "shove the union jack up your arse". But others probably just don't like his brand of Thatcherite free market populism any more than they liked it when a puzzled Margaret Thatcher failed to persuade most Scots that their greatest economist – Adam Smith – had the answer to their problems.
But there was no violence on Thursday, another indication that wholesome student protesters, not "fascist scum", were the driving force in Edinburgh.
Farage was careful not to blame the SNP for the stunt when he called on Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, to condemn the anti-English sentiments of his tormentors. Ukip has Scottish members – I have met some – but Farage is determined to show that his brand of British nationalism can attract votes in Scotland as it has modestly proved it can in Wales and Northern Ireland, the latter potentially more fertile ground because it has much in common with the aggrieved tone of lower middle-class Unionism.
In another sense, too, Nigel Farage started this ruck himself. At a Westminster press gallery lunch last month, he went out of his way to denigrate Salmond as a political fantasist who campaigns for an independent Scotland while wanting to stay inside the EU, which – says he – denies the nation states of Europe their sovereign independence. "Dreamland," he called it. The remarks earned him some media attention in Scotland.
To some rival politicians the similarities between the pair are more striking, with both engaged in "stop the world I want to get off" politics and dreaming of unfettered national self-determination as the remedy for their people's woes, but usually duck the hard choices and risks that accompany these legitimate aspirations. Alistair Darling, leader of Scotland's Better Together campaign, made the comparison at the gallery lunch.
Farage himself says his party would not exist, nor need to exist, if the Tory party had remained true to Thatcher – it was launched in 1993 as her rejection of John Major was becoming evident and sterling's ejection from the EU's exchange rate mechanism prompted a surge of anti-Europeanism in the Tory ranks that split the party and helped Tony Blair to win three terms. David Cameron's failure to win a majority or govern with authority has unleashed the genie again.
So Ukip is partly a protest vote – the current repository of "sod them all" disaffection – and partly a revolt of the Tory grassroots against the perception that it is led by a metropolitan elite that does not understand or care about them. In varying forms it is visible in all parties and – five years into a major economic downturn – in most advanced industrial states.
Will it become a permanent fourth party in British politics or fade when one or other of the big parties acquires another transformative leader? Impossible to say in this time of flux. Will it perform a reverse takeover on the Tories, as the populist Reform party did in Canada? Ditto.
But compared with the Golden Dawn party in Greece – who do have fascist credentials – and other fringe parties evident in hard-hit areas of the EU, Ukip is pretty mild. It contains some nasty people, but plenty who are just fed up or cross, often with good reason: the recession has hit them and their neighbours hard. They rightly resent being snootily dismissed by Cameron as "fruitcakes".
The mood is more Rotary Club than Mussolini's blackshirts or the brownshirt bullies who terrorised the streets before Hitler came to power. Farage is a free market man, not a statist. He believes in abolishing all sorts of intrusive state action – health and anti-speeding measures, as well as propping up venal banks. He wants to cut taxes, though he also wants to spend a lot on better public services, too. Nostalgia for a lost or never-was past is his currency.
Ukip – which some liken to the French shopkeeper revolt of the 1950s led by Pierre Poujade – insists it struggles to identify and expel nasties who get through its rudimentary selection net, which is (a point of honour) locally devolved. Given that its candidates did better than expected in the 2 May county elections we can expect more.
But it won't be like Hitler's Night of the Long Knives in 1934 when the brownshirt SA's leftwing faction was butchered. Britain has no right to assume it will never be spared those sort of politics – no one has. But we are not there yet.
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