3749 days ago
UKIP Councillor David Silvester has written to his local paper in Henley, arguing that the recent storms to hit Britain were God’s punishment on David Cameron for legalising gay marriage. Hmmmm.
UKIP says that this is not official party policy but that every party member has his or her right to express their beliefs. Well how jolly tolerant. For that I applaud UKIP but it could have gone one step further and added that on this matter Councillor Silvester has views which can only be described as completely bonkers bordering on offensive in a bigoted way.
UKIP claims to be a libertarian party. One would have thought that to describe Councillor Silvester’s views as libertarian would be pushing it a little. As libertarians we should support the rights of this bigoted old fruitcake to say whatever he wants. But we should also be allowed to and instinctively feel the need to express the view that such views are pretty repellent and clearly do mark Silvester out as a bigoted old fruitcake.
UKIP keeps on having these episodes where party activists are exposed as bigoted nutters. The UKIP line – as expressed to me by a national organiser – is that “we have one or two backwoodsman who will embarrass us now and again.”
The trouble is that it is not one or two but rather too many UKIP members who clear hold some rather unpleasant views about homosexuals, immigrants, Jews and other minorities.
You can bet your bottom Euro that Silvester will not be the only UKIP nutter to emerge in 2014. I suspect that will not deter many of us from holding our nose and voting UKIP in the Euros just because the established political parties are so awful and because we hate the EU. But when it comes to a REAL election will quite so many folks really want to send some of the loons who fly the flag for Fuhrer Farage to Westminster? Somehow I doubt it.
