Tag: ukip

UKIP hoping to get first seat with resignation/defection of MP Douglas Carswell..

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: I don’t follow British politics all that much.  But this sounds pretty significant:

Tory Douglas Carswell has defected to UKIP and quit as MP for Clacton, saying he will contest the subsequent by-election for Nigel Farage’s party.

If he wins the support of voters he will be the first elected UK Independence Party MP in the Commons.

More here and here. Typically, when British MPs switch parties they apparently do it without having by-elections, which apparently drives British voters nuts. As it should. Douglas Carswell is either very confident that he can win, or he’s acting on principle. Or, I suppose, both.

Looks like UKIP is having a good election cycle…

…over in the UK. Gaining 76 seats so far in British council elections, and I’m not going to even remotely pretend that I know more than the Wikipedia article on the subject.  I do know that local government in England is as complex as all get-out; that the Conservatives got their butts kicked last night; that Labour clawed back some ground yesterday, while the Liberal Democrats did not; and that this will all have an effect on the next set of British Parliamentary elections.  I also know that, if you want to play in a national legislature, you absolutely have to start winning elections on the local and state/provincial level, first: that’s where you draw from to get your national candidates.  So UKIP is definitely now on the board.

I think.

Passage of the Day: Animal Rights Zealot edition.

I’ve only ever had one proper screaming argument with an animal rights activist. That was a great night. It was at a student party. She told me she believed animal lives to be worth just as much as human lives. I told her she was the most apathetically selfish person I’d ever met.

“Because if that place down the road was selling Kentucky Fried Person,” I explained, “I’d probably firebomb it. Not just sit here whingeing, with a spliff and a can of Skol.”

– Hugo Rifkind, via Tim Worstall*, who is an old-school British blogger who is currently running for the EU Parliament for the UKIP, which is a party dedicated to getting the UK out of the EU Parliament, and indeed the EU, entirely.

This is not actually ironic, although others might find it slightly rude.
Moe Lane

*Via The Corner.

Crossposted to RedState.