Ukip rise 'may be good for Tories', says Boris Johnson

 
Schools criticism: Mayor Boris Johnson
Staff|Agency29 April 2013
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Boris Johnson has urged Tories not to panic over Ukip's rise in the polls - insisting it could be a good thing.

The London Mayor said the popularity of Nigel Farage's party suggested the Conservative approach was "broadly popular", while Labour was "going nowhere".

He also delivered an apparent rebuke to big beast Ken Clarke - who yesterday branded Ukip "clowns" - cautioning against "ill-advised insults".

Writing in The Daily Telegraph as campaigning intensifies ahead of local elections, Mr Johnson said Mr Farage had always struck him as a "rather engaging geezer".

"He's anti-pomposity, he's anti-political correctness, he's anti-loony Brussels regulation. He's in favour of low tax, and sticking up for small business, and sticking up for Britain," Mr Johnson wrote.

"We Tories look at him - with his pint and cigar and sense of humour - and we instinctively recognise someone who is fundamentally indistinguishable from us."

Mr Johnson - widely tipped as a successor to David Cameron - said Tories should resist the temptation to "overreact, to freak out, to denounce them all as frauds or worse".

"I think there may have been a few ill-advised insults flying around in the past couple of days," he wrote.

"Well, I would humbly submit that there are better ways of tackling the Ukip problem, if indeed it is really a problem at all.

"The rise of Farage and Ukip tells us some interesting and important things about what the electorate wants - and it is by no means bad news for the Conservatives.

"It tells us that the voters are fed up with over-regulation of all kinds, and especially from Brussels.

"Well, who is going to offer a referendum on the EU? Only the Conservatives - and the trouble with voting Ukip is that it is likely to produce the exact opposite: another Labour government and another five years of spineless and unexamined servitude to the EU."

The Mayor said it was natural that voters were tempted to vote for Ukip and give the political class a "kick in the pants".

"Rather than bashing Ukip, I reckon Tories should be comforted by their rise - because the real story is surely that these voters are not turning to the one party that is meant to be providing the official opposition," he said.

"The rise of Ukip confirms a) that a Tory approach is broadly popular and b) that in the middle of a parliament, after long years of recession, and with growth more or less flat, the Labour Party is going precisely nowhere."

Cabinet minister Mr Clarke delivered a savage attack on Ukip for being "against" foreigners and immigrants, saying some of its supporters were racist.

Labour and Liberal Democrats have also turned their fire on the party amid speculation that it could scoop votes from all sides in Thursday's elections.

Ukip - which is investigating a handful of its record 1,700 candidates over links to groups such as the BNP and alleged racist and homophobic comments - has said it does not condone "unpalatable views".

But a spokesman complained that the Tories were running a "morally reprehensible" smear campaign by trawling through would-be councillors' Twitter and Facebook comments.

Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom has been forced to defend leaked emails in which he moaned that trying to forge its policy platform was like "herding cats".

Interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics, Mr Bloom was also pressed on whether he stood by his own previous suggestion that no "self-respecting small businessman" would employ a "woman of child-bearing age".

"Yes of course I do and that has generally been vindicated as well," he replied.

"The point I was making with draconian employment legislation, we have a problem that employers are frightened to employ women of child-bearing age."

Mr Bloom was asked whether it was "better", until employment legislation changed, for businesses to avoid appointing women unless they had grown-up children.

"That is certainly the feedback I get from small businessmen all over the country. And businesswomen," he said.

Challenged over another remark when he said he was keen to deal with women's issues because they did not "clean behind the fridge enough", Mr Bloom said: "Anybody who can't see that was a joke I feel rather sorry for. Rather sad individual who can't see that was a joke."

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