UKIP – moderates in disguise?

Jonathan Lindsell, 23 September 2013

UKIP supporters have probably had a week to forget, after Godfrey Bloom MEP referred to a room full of women looking to engage in politics as ‘sluts’, then refused to discuss the all-white cover of a UKIP brochure, and finally struck C4’s Michael Crick with said brochure. Bloom, who was UKIP’s defence spokesman, has attracted media attention in the past for his ‘bongo bongo land’ comments and inebriation in the European Parliament, has had the whip removed.

The question the public should be asking is, whether Bloom is an anomaly or ‘just the tip of the UKIP iceberg’, as claimed by Mary Honeyball MEP (Labour, London). Nigel Farage quickly withdrew the whip, which helped to cover up a gaffe of his own: the claim that there were more immigrants in 2010 than the last 1,000 years. Such hyperbole hardly needs debunking, but got some in the Guardian anyway.

For UKIP to be a truly Titanic-breaking iceberg, it is important for the majority of members under sea level to be less Bloom and more Tim Aker.

Tim Aker, UKIP’s new policy czar, is actually working within the laws and rules of the European Union. His new NHS policy, announced last week, seeks to prevent ‘welfare tourism’ – the fear that migrants come to Britain to use the NHS without paying for it through tax or national insurance. The stand-out message in his announcement is its moderation.

Aker’s suggestion is that non-EU migrants have to provide health insurance details before registering with a GP for regular check-ups, i.e. proving their ability to pay as the law demands. This isn’t especially centrist, but more measured than former UKIP policies such as forcing incoming migrants to undergo tests for communicable diseases. Emergency treatment would remain universally free at the point of delivery. The present government was considering a similar scheme.

There is considerable debate over the reality and extent of health tourism. EU rules don’t allow member states to limit access to EU nationals, but do not prohibit new policy for non-EU citizens. It is already law that non-EU migrants must pay for their healthcare (until they become naturalised Britons after five years) but this is seldom enforced, since the overburdened health service doesn’t have the resources or motivation to chase up and invoice patients. Doctors don’t want to act as immigration officials.

Aker’s other announcements mirror a blend of coalition goals: to raise the personal allowance above a year’s minimum wage salary, and to lower corporation tax just below Irish levels. The latter proposal may raise eyebrows, but these polices taken together are in line with libertarian ideology, would be at home in many Conservative or US Republican pamphlets, and follow the logic of a 2010 Civitas research paper.