UKIP must love all of this free publicity they get.
They don’t, not the sort of “free publicity” they’ve been getting, according to Nigel Farage.
He claims that there is a smear campaign against UKIP and that all their candidates and policies are being intensely scrutinised, I don’t think he’s very happy about it at all.
UKIP thrives on people being ignorant about their policies and what they really stand for. Putting their policies and candidates/members into the spotlight can do enormous damage to them.
In fact Nigel Farage is so embarrassed by UKIP policies that he recently disowned them all.
The Ukip policies disowned by Nigel Farage
Likewise UKIP candidates and members put into the spotlight have embarrassed Nigel Farage so much that he has been forced to distance himself from them, or suspend them, or even expel them.
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Ignore them and they’ll go away.
There is no evidence to suggest that strategy works and in fact there is plenty of evidence that it has the opposite effect.
UKIP has been around for over 20 years. For most of the 20 years UKIP has been largely ignored and left to create their own publicity. Today their standing in opinion polls is the highest it has ever been.
And if Nigel Farage can’t make up his mind what UKIP policies are then as sure as hell UKIP supporters can’t be sure either – their support base is based on ignorance.
The good news, if you don’t like the Tories, is that UKIP has particular appeal to working class Tories. Many people who would otherwise vote Tory will be voting UKIP instead. Which is obviously very bad news for the Tories.
It would be wrong btw to assume that UKIP supporters are necessarily all right-wing intolerant bigots, for example most UKIP supporters support same sex marriage while UKIP itself opposed it. Working class Tories tend by definition to be confused people.