UKIP leader and former disgraced Tory MP Neil Hamilton explains why UKIP is still lurking around…Prepare for lies, right-wing waffle and to get very, very angry.
UKIP…yes they are still lurking in the shadows surprisingly. You may be thinking the same as everyone else, why are they still here, after all we Got Brexit Done right?
Well according to UKIP leader and former disgraced Tory MP Neil Hamilton, they do still have a point, so why not listen to what he’s got to say (you know this will be entertaining).
Brexit
Rishi Sunak recently completed a deal with the EU which aims to give the Northern Ireland Assembly more say in EU laws post-Brexit as some of these rules could affect them. Neil Hamilton was clearly not a fan, he said: “I dispute that Brexit has happened, Northern Ireland is still firmly shackled to Brussels.
“The British government, being feeble and weak like this one, will simply sit down and not diverge from any rules that the EU imposes across the Irish border and won’t fight for the principles of UK sovereignty that we voted for.” It has to be said that this is no endorsement of Sunak’s government, however…”feeble and weak”, coming from someone who leads a party with less than 4,000 members and a 100% record of never winning a seat in Parliament. That’s about as strong as a poppadom resisting a bowling ball.
Hamilton has always been a Eurosceptic, he was a Tory MP from 1983 to 1997 when he lost his seat and was subsequently kicked out of the party for his involvement in the Cash For Questions Scandal. He took payments from outside sources to ask specific questions in the House of Commons of their behalf.
As a part of speaking to Punching Up, Hamilton said: “I have always stood up for what I believe in as a politician.” Except when he stood up in parliament for what the people stuffing his wallet believed in…(LIE COUNTER: 1)
Back to where we were, UKIP are still here because they “dispute that Brexit has happened” (LIE COUNTER: 2), but what else does the party stand for?
Immigration
Immigration (Oh boy…) is clearly one of UKIP’s biggest policy focusses. Much of the Vote Leave campaign was centred around cracking down on immigration. According to the Office for National Statistics, between June 2021 and June 2022, the UK have had a net migration figure of 504,000. Brexit’s going well then.
Hamilton said: “UKIP has strongly opposed mass migration, the Tories have added 4-5 million people to our population since Cameron was elected in 2010.” Specifically, according to Statista net migration to the UK since 2010 is 3.9 million, so if we’re being pedantic: (LIE COUNTER: 3). Hamilton added: “Britain is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, most of these people are settling in the south of England which is already overcrowded.”
Placing the blame on the Tories is absolutely fine, I mean they have been in power since 2010. Mentioning overcrowding, Hamilton said: “We see it everywhere, schools, hospitals and even affecting crime numbers, something has to be done.”
Let’s just consider overcrowded hospitals, according to the UK Government, 16.5% of NHS staff are not British nationals, take them out of the NHS and think about how long waiting lists would be then. Considering we already have a shortage of healthcare staff, maybe immigration isn’t all bad Mr Hamilton?
Climate Change
It’s simple to work out what the UKIP stance is on any issues mentioned because you have to think of the worst possible response and then run with it, it would be like asking your parents what a condom is when you were younger…its going to be an awkward conversation.
On that note, we move onto climate change, this is what Mr Hamilton had to say: “We stand out on the all-party consensus on global warming, a deliberate policy of impoverishing our country and condemning millions of people to cold and misery in the winter.
“We could be energy independent with our stocks of coal, oil and gas, but we are massively dependent upon imports and expensive renewables such as wind, solar and tidal power.
“It’s a deliberate policy of the UK government to make fuel and the cost of heating more expensive than they need to be.” (LIE COUNTER: 4)
So let’s get this straight, according to UKIP, global warming is just a hoax and a way of the government forcing people to turn down their heating and use less coal, oil and gas. Please! For a start, this crop of Tories are not clever enough to think up a whole scientific backstory of how climate change works just to force people to spend more money or suffer in the winter. Secondly, I wonder what Neil thinks that scientists are paid for? Maybe he just thinks of them as nutters who sit in their basements like the Grinch plotting up ways to ruin people’s lives.
The current Tory government has a policy under the Climate Change Act to become net zero by 2050 (which we’re nowhere near by the way), to reduce greenhouse gases releasing into the atmosphere thus contributing to global warming.
UKIP’s party policy on their website responds to this plan with this: “UK Pursuit of NET ZERO will destroy our way of life and our economy and the World CO₂ emissions will continue to rise anyway.” What they are basically saying is, we think that it’s unlikely that we can do this so we won’t bother trying at all. If the whole world adopted the UKIP strategy in the fight against global warming it would be like watching a small child without armbands learn to swim. I suppose for UKIP at least it would be warmer here so they wouldn’t have to go to any foreign country for a holiday…
The Pandemic
Neil Hamilton is very critical of this Tory government (grudge’s clearly exist in politics too) no more so than on it’s Covid 19 policy. Rightly so, the government has been criticised for its approach to the pandemic, not getting PPE fast enough, coming out of lockdown too early, breaking the rules, but Hamilton’s criticism is probably what you’d expect:
“UKIP completely opposed lockdown, it was a massive fraud the whole exercise. There was no scientific evidence for having a lockdown.” (LIE COUNTER: 5)
“I was a member of the Welsh Parliament at the time, I voted against everything. I did my academic research from people like Carl Henegan among others, they were all writing about the risk factors and are all world class epidemiologists and they all opposed what the government did.”
“We were ahead of the game there and have been proven right yet again.” (LIE COUNTER: 6)
If you search for Carl Henegan online you get appearances on certain websites: The Daily Mail and of course GB News; all the most credible news sources. Sorry, I mean all the most credible news sources for right-wing covid-sceptics.
At the time of writing, Covid-19 related deaths in the UK are at over 220,000 people, and Hamilton says there was no scientific evidence for having a lockdown! It’s not that complicated, when people are ill, make them stay away from other people and then the virus won’t spread, even that small child learning to swim without armbands that I mentioned earlier could work that out!
UKIP is very clearly an anti-establishment party, but Mr Hamilton’s explanation for why the Government put us all into lockdown is ridiculous and it has nothing to do with people dying from the virus…
“It was all just a massive power grab by the state, what was so disappointing in this is that the British public just let themselves get herded into these pens.”
So whose fault is it? According to UKIP, the British public should’ve just ignored lockdown rules that the government put in place. Apart from the fact that the virus would’ve spread faster than acne on a teenager’s face, how many fines would have been issued? The police would’ve been busier than Rishi Sunak’s accountant.
Speaking of ignoring lockdown rules:
“As we know now Hancock wanted to frighten the pants off the public, he should know about pants going off because he was spending a lot of lockdown pleasuring himself with his mate quite contrary to the rules.” (TRUTH COUNTER: 1) Finally!
I make that a 6-1 victory for lies at full time: Player of the match goes to Mr Neil Hamilton.
read more:
https://punchingup.jusmedia.shef.ac.uk/2023/05/28/parliament-in-recess-just-a-little-holiday/
https://punchingup.jusmedia.shef.ac.uk/2023/05/26/the-five-stages-of-a-tory-scandal/
https://punchingup.jusmedia.shef.ac.uk/2023/05/27/bbc-protest-ban/