Comment: UKIP and America
Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP
Sunday, 07, Sep 2008 12:01
The Euro-sceptic party have some fairly stringent views on the EU, but their opinion on America is provocative too. We see if it stands up.
As the UKIP party conference gets into full swing, a speech was made which many commentators allowed to pass them by. It was on the party's plans to 'restore Britishness'. In it, you'll find all the usual rhetoric about Europe. But one section made people do a double take.
"Britain and Britishness are in trouble. They are being attacked and undermined, both externally and internally. They are threatened by the European Union (EU) and corporatist Americanised pressures from without, and betrayed by misguided political correctness and errant nationalism from within."
'Corporatist American pressures'? What does that mean and, for that matter, what exactly is UKIP's view of our cousins from across the Atlantic? I asked Michael McManus, the party's number two on their north-west list.
"We don't want to be a province of Europe, but we don't want to be 51st state of the US either," he says. "We want good terms with Europe and the US but we don't want to be enmeshed in either."
So equal partners with the Americans rather than our current status, as many around the world see it, as their poodle?
"There's an element of poodle. But a bigger element is that of the American strip mall – the one-size-fits-all approach. We've no problem with investment from overseas, but there should be more character to this country.
"I was in Oxford recently and they had these thatched houses with Burger Kings in them. You have anti-globalisation protests all over the world, particularly in France. We don't support that kind of action. But one of the reasons for that is this one-size-fits-all attitude going on all around the world. There's nothing wrong with Starbucks and McDonalds, but people fear they represent this homogeneous mass and those are valid concerns."
It's one of those issues you can feel really has weight to it. People don't like the fact their towns are increasingly resembling each other, to the point where protected historical landmarks like cathedrals are the only way of telling some of them apart. And yet it's also an issue none of the three major parties want to touch with a barge pole – for fear of appearing anti-business. But the thing is, what do you do about it? Ban Burger King? McManus almost shudders.
"Absolutely not. We'd tell these companies - 'It's good for your business if you cater for the concerns of your customers. They don't want strip malls, even if they do want to eat Big Macs and fries'." All of which sounds good, but it doesn't really add up to much of a policy. And if Burger King thought it would have made a profit by erecting more traditional shops, it probably would have done so already. Beyond which, Starbucks and co seem to be doing pretty well as it is.
"They are," McManus agrees. "But they might do even better if they changed."
How about foreign policy? Would UKIP provide a renewed autonomy to British foreign policy? The party struck a resilient and principled tone when they opposed the Iraq war, but they failed to gain much credit from it, with the Lib Dems the obvious winners from national anti-war sentiment.
UKIP policy here seems borrowed from their primary agenda. "Our relationship with the EU overrides that with the US," McManus says. "We can't have an independent relationship with the US, because we're so attached to Europe."
It didn't feel that way during the run up to the Iraq war, of course, when an emergency meeting of the EU failed to stop Britain from joining the Americans in their military adventure. But UKIP point to that event as the starting point of European attempts to create a universal EU foreign policy.
"It was one of the few areas the EU didn't control, but after Iraq they suddenly said they needed a common foreign policy," McManus continues. It's an interesting point; an anti-war party objecting to the way in which other anti-war groups tried to stop the war. But it doesn't necessarily add up to a coherent view of the UK's relationship with America. Nevertheless, when we ask the party what other steps they would take to ensure Britain retained more autonomy in its international affairs, beyond breaking from the EU, the answer is less than satisfactory.
"That's for a future government to decide," McManus says. And so it is, but one feels a proper American policy shouldn't just start and end with the EU. UKIP is on to something when it cites American influence on Britain in the same sentence as that of the EU, and there is almost certainly a market for that sort of thinking in the electorate. They are also successful in formulating a critique of America that doesn't rely on the anti-American tendencies on the continent which they so detest. But as to whether they have sufficiently detached themselves from their all-encompassing hatred of the EU to use views like this as proof of no longer being a single issue party is another matter entirely.
Ian Dunt