segunda-feira, 19 de maio de 2014

Miliband: Ukip is capitalising on Britons' discontent . / A vote for Ukip is a vote against Europe, nothing more







 Miliband: Ukip is capitalising on Britons' discontent
Labour leader says Nigel Farage's party is benefiting from disillusion with political system but 'they don't have the solutions'
Patrick Wintour, political editor

Ed Miliband has admitted Ukip is capitalising on deep discontent in Britain and has said the Labour election campaign is trying to answer that discontent with practical solutions to the issue of broken family finances and the need for more middle-class jobs.

He said Ukip's support was a sign of scepticism about whether politics could answer the questions the country was facing.

Miliband said: "I think there's a deep sense, a deep question in people's minds which is: 'Can politics, can any political party provide the answers? Should we protest by voting Ukip? Can any political party answer the questions the country faces?' Now, I believe deeply that there is discontent and I understand the reasons for that and we can solve these problems. But that's part of the battle ahead and it's a battle I relish."

Asked to explain the strength of Ukip support he said: "I can understand why people feel deep discontent with the political system and would look for other alternatives. Ukip might be siding with the discontent people feel but they don't have the solutions."

The interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme was marked by a soft-spoken, calm and relatively slow speaking style that some said was the influence of the American political strategist David Axelrod, but Labour aides said he was not involved in advising Miliband on his appearance or style.

The Labour leader again refused to label Nigel Farage as a racist, saying instead that the Ukip leader was right to apologise for his remarks claiming Romanians were different from Germans and more prone to criminality.

He said: "Our politics is disagreeable enough without political leaders saying about other political leaders that they are a racist. I disagree profoundly with what Nigel Farage says. I disagree with his vision for the country, whether it is about pulling out of the EU or saying he wants to keep the flame of Thatcherism alive … He made one remark, that was completely wrong, completely out of order, and was a slur. Apparently he says he got it wrong. He should certainly say he has got it wrong."

He insisted Labour was addressing the underlying issues that Ukip was trying to capitalise on. He said: "Where the wealth of our nation and the family finances are broken there is a deep discontent about the way in which this country is run and I am determined to change it.

"I make no apology for saying markets need rules. That is part of the big question for Britain in the next year. We have a government that says the best thing a government can do is to stand out of the way and we can carry on as we are as a country that simply serves a few people at the top.

"We have a government that says everything is fixed. I don't believe that. When I go around this country there is deep discontent about the way this country is run and I am determined to change it and that is about markets needing rules, taking action on zero hours and on the minimum wage."

He also rejected suggestions that he was sending a message overseas that Britain was no longer an open trading nation. He said it was the Conservatives who wanted to turn inwards and spend two years discussing whether Britain should remain a member of its biggest single export market. He said: "What is the biggest threat to prosperity in this country? It is the potential of a Conservative party that turns inwards for two years [while it] decides whether to exit the European Union."






A vote for Ukip is a vote against Europe, nothing more
Nigel Farage has made the European elections about a point of view: do you want to be part of the EU or not?
 Simon Jenkins 

The truest thing Nigel Farage has said in the countdown to Thursday's European election is, "I was tired", when apologising for unfortunate remarks on Romanian immigration. Farage's tiredness tells us much about his rise to fame, not least his lonely status as leader, spokesman, policy chief, disciplinarian, candidate selector and celebrity all-in-one. It is a wonder the whole Ukip enterprise has not already evaporated in a whirl of heat.

But Farage's Ukip is not a political party, nor is it just a one-man band, though its leader's relaxed style and affability speak volumes for modern political craftsmanship. Ukip is simply a point of view; one that has always existed in countries with fluid societies and open economies. It is a view widely held by people whose jobs are insecure and whose communities seem under siege that was articulated with more racism, though less panache, by Enoch Powell at the end of the 1960s.

What has given this view sudden electoral potency is a quite separate disillusionment with the ever greater European union. Even decades of immigration from the non-white Commonwealth never had the dynamism that Farage has been able to generate over Europe's open borders. He's given latent xenophobia the elixir of respectability in opposing the EU – exploiting the uncritical complacency of the pro-Europe lobby.

Tarnishing Ukip as a racist party or castigating it as extreme has proved woefully counter-productive. People who oppose European integration do not like being branded racist. Ukip may be absurdly ramshackle; its policies may be as chaotic as its organisation. This is not at issue. As the vehicle for a point of view, Ukip is specific: it wants Britain "out of Europe". A vote for Ukip on Thursday is not a vote for an MEP or a party, let alone a government. It is the closest to a referendum on Europe that Britain has been allowed this century, and it will be seen as such.

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