The response to the Nicholas Fromage game is yet another reminder that Ukip can dish it out, but they can't take it
It is sad, watching Britain's professional offence-takers take over more and more of our public life. You can't say anything these days without someone clutching their pearls or dropping their monocle and telling you how terribly inappropriate your harmless banter was.
Yes, it is absolutely extraordinary how thin-skinned Ukip supporters are.
Which is funny, really, since they're the ones who are always telling us that the latest hilarious outburst by a Ukip councillor or MEP or parliamentary candidate or whatever is just a bit of fun and that the people who raise an eyebrow at it are out of touch with how real people speak outside the Westminster bubble. A man called Kerry Smith calls gay people poofters and Chinese people "Chinkies" and suggests going on "peasant hunts" in Essex, and Nigel Farage thinks that's earthy working-class man-of-the-people stuff. A chairman of a local Ukip branch claimed that some gay people "prefer sex with animals", so in apparent agreement the local candidate told a story about how a "homosexual donkey" tried to rape his horse. A potential candidate called Chris Scotton "liked" a Facebook site which claimed that racism was "just ethnic banter". Another blamed Jewish people for the Holocaust. All this stuff, according to a Ukip spokesperson, was "ordinary people many of whom are young and have made the odd excessive comment on new media". It's just top bantz, a bit of silly horseplay, nothing to get too excited about, and the Offended of Islington like yours truly just can't take a joke.
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In fairness, maybe that's true. These aren't, generally, the Ukip standard bearers, although Roger Helmer and Godfrey Bloom were pretty senior and said/did some pretty spectacular things (****s and bongo-bongo land were the best, probably). And Farage himself has dropped some clangers. But in general, it's local councillors or even candidates for council elections; the fact that in the serried ranks of party nobodies it is possible to hunt out some boorish and/or stupid people saying boorish and/or stupid things should not, perhaps, surprise us. Maybe we should be able to rise above it a bit.
What's funny, though, is how incapable of rising above it Ukip is when something faintly rude is said about them. Yesterday, it broke that a mobile game had been made in which you could play Nicholas Fromage, the leader of a party called Ukik. The game was you kick immigrants off the White Cliffs of Dover, winning racism-points and damaging the British economy as you did so.
The real-life Mr Fromage, fierce defender of banter-squadrons everywhere, of course, took it with the sang-froid and buffalo-like hide for which he is rightly famous. Oh no wait, sorry, he blew his lid in spectacular style. "Those elements are risible and in many ways pathetic. I think I'm quite well known for having a sense of humour… but elements of this game appear to cross the line." Which is particularly funny since the Ukik game was made entirely by a bunch of Kent schoolchildren.
But this is just par for the course when it comes to Ukip. They can dish it out - "it" being a series of ugly comments about gay people, immigrants, ethnic minorities, bi-curious donkeys, women, Muslims and, of course, LibLabCon - but as soon as anyone issues the faintest criticism of Ukip itself, out come the smelling salts. A Green party member in Cambridge had a visit from the police after tweeting a jokey piece called "10 reasons to vote Ukip". The Ukip-supporting James Delingpole, formerly of this parish, has complained that Farage was "stitched up" in an interview with Steph and Dom, the posh ones off of Gogglebox. You really aren't in the right job if you're a politician who's been outfoxed by two tipsy B&B owners.
The place you'll see this the most, of course, is online. Under every piece criticising Ukip - even gently; even in the context of a generally positive piece - there will be 5,000 comments, most of them from people with names like Aethelred or Defender_Of_The_Realm44, roaring about anti-Ukip conspiracies and the mainstream media's efforts to keep the party down. (By, for instance, getting Farage on Question Time every three days.) Tweet anything remotely rude about Ukip and you'll see a similar response (the trick is to mute them, and leave them shouting ineffectually into the void, guys. You can have that one for free). And this is unique to Ukip. If you say comparably critical things about Labour, or the Tories, or the Greens, or the Lib Dems, you won't have to spend two days fighting angry spam.
And yet no one in Ukip has the self-awareness to see that they can't have it both ways. Either you're a proud warrior for free speech - I may not agree with what you say about ****s who won't clean behind the fridge, but I will defend to the death your right to say it! - or you're not. You can't be a Voltaire for the things you agree with and a weeping crybaby when someone's a bit mean to you. For all their posing as brave sayers of the unsayable and champions of the forgotten British values of calling a spade a spade or whatever, Farage and his weeping bunch of milquetoasts have skins of dry parchment. Toughen up, guys. Nicholas Soames once put it brilliantly, in reference to Mr Fromage: "In politics, there is no point being a shrinking f-----g violet is there?"
Nigel Farage and Ukip's crybabies need to learn to take criticism - Telegraph
