The twitter rumour-mill was working at full capacity last night talking about the fact Olly Neville was being removed as Chairman of the Young Independence council (the Youth movement of UKIP) because his personal opinion on equal marriage was that it was a good thing. It was his personal opinion but having an opinion that doesn’t marry up with party policy was enough for UKIP to swing into action and remove him from that position. The reason seems to be pretty simple – they are a party only have one opinion – like the Borg – and if you don’t agree with them then you cannot speak about your views.
This is one of the reasons why I’m so happy and comfortable within the Liberal Democrats. You are pretty much free to have an opinion and air it freely. The Lib Dems are a party full of opinionated people who will argue tooth and nail over policy and if they air differences on a personal level then so be it. They won’t be disciplined as it were.
Going back to the case in point Olly has written over at the Independent about what happened from his point of view. He seems a bit disillusioned with the party as he believed they were a Libertarian Party who promote freedom and minimalist state intervention whereas it seems as though freedom is not exactly at the top of their agenda.
We all have opinions of UKIP and this – for me – backs up what I always saw UKIP as – a party that was basically BNP-lite for those who didn’t want to be associated with a racist party but deep down thought that if Great Britain only had British people then it wouldn’t be a bad thing.
UKIP say he was removed from his position because he was ‘misrepresenting UKIP policy’ and not for airing his personal opinion but even if he did seemingly do that then why is any Libertarian Party having a hard line policy on equal marriage? Surely that is an oxymoron in itself? A Libertarian Party would surely not have too much of a strong opinion on this and would in fact promote as little state intervention on this as possible. If it isn’t directly harming anyone then surely it isn’t a problem for any Libertarian?
All this has done is hardened my opinion on UKIP as a party. The people that vote for them are people who are unhappy with the status quo and want to see something different but when you actually examine what UKIP have to offer people will be surprised – and not in a good way. It is a party for people who would like to turn back the clock 100 years and be isolationist and put freedom back to the stone age. As a race we have evolved and freedom is developing as is equality. We aren’t there yet but UKIP don’t seem to want to evolve. They want good old fashioned values which on paper looks good but in reality that isn’t the way.
Removing one of the very few names that people knew within the party because he had a personal opinion on a subject that disagreed with party policy says everything. In UKIP it is their way or the highway. Olly has been cut off from the collective and will now be free to express his opinions without the pressure of being watched like a hawk. As he said himself in the constitution it was written that he was allowed to express a personal opinion. That though seems to have been a lie.
UKIP as the Borg. I see that. Just like Monty Burns as the Goa’uld…