The UK Independence Party is calling for David Cameron to apologise after he claimed its members were “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly”.The Conservative leader made the remarks during a phone-in on the London radio station LBC.
He said he believed UKIP was “racist” because of some of the things he had heard its members say.
But UKIP Euro MP Nigel Farage said that unless he could prove his claims, Mr Cameron should apologise.
…etc; I think Cameron’s being quite clever:
- It’s early-on in the race for the next election, so there is time for any collateral damage to be fixed.
- UKIP are a marginal group whom he can afford to piss-off by branding them as ridiculous, thereby implicitly setting a clear gap between the Tories and the notion of breaking-away from Europe.
- Those inside the Conservative party who harbour Euroskeptic tendencies will get the message and either clam-up or leave, and if they leave bound for UKIP then they know what they’ll be branded as.
Hence when the UKIP representative Nigel Farage says [Cameron’s] “inexperience as a politician that may account for why he stepped way over the line” – then Mr Farage is demonstrating both tunnel-vision and a certain lack of understanding of how things work.
It’s not quite a masterstroke – it’s risky and is the sort of attack that could backfire by (say) someone embarrassingly senior in the Tories fessing up proudly to being a “Eurosceptic Loonie” – but if his infantry are under control Cameron’s done something useful: established a gap (rather than a fence) between Tories and UKIP, thereby forcing those Eurosceptics who sat on the fence to decide what they really want.
Plus, by refusing to back down/apologise, he gets “ballsy points”.
Clever.
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