JUMPING BEFORE he was pushed, former Labour MP (and second-rate chat show
host) Robert Kilroy-Silk has quit the UK Independence Party (UKIP) after
months of bitter feuding.
Jim Horton
Kilroy-Silk’s brief affair with UKIP began amicably enough as he profiled
their success in the European elections last June. However, celebration turned
to acrimony as Kilroy-Silk, seeking reward for rescuing UKIP from obscurity,
challenged Roger Knapman, a former Tory Party member, for leader.
Frustrated by his failure to convince UKIP’s membership of his credentials
he has now rubbished UKIP as a "joke" and declared he was ashamed to have
joined the party. Kilroy-Silk has mooted the possibility of establishing a new
party, incredibly named ‘Veritas’, Latin for truth.
In October, depicting himself as a moderate, he resigned from UKIP’s
European parliamentary group accusing them of being engaged in "barmy
politics" after they joined the same political grouping in the European
parliament as the League of Polish Families, which has been condemned as
racist and anti-semitic.
UKIP has been described as "the BNP in blazers". UKIP’s more genteel image
cannot obscure their racist policies that seek to blame immigrants for social
problems that arise from the capitalist profit system.
But Kilroy-Silk, who chauvinistically branded Arabs as "limb amputators"
and reportedly made xenophobic comments about asylum seekers and Irish people,
has no political differences with UKIP. A leaked copy of Kilroy-Silk’s
proposed manifesto and statement of aims apparently bears a striking
resemblance to UKIP’s own policies.
Kilroy-Silk’s motives are deeply rooted in vanity and personal ambition.
But underlying the UKIP spat were real differences over whether UKIP should
maintain its character as a pressure group appealing to Eurosceptic Tories or,
as Kilroy-Silk wanted, replace the Tory Party with a wide-ranging programme
that panders to nationalism and racism.
UKIP’s difficulties have given a temporary respite to the desperate Tories
who are now seeking to capture the ground lost to UKIP on the issues of
immigration and Europe.
