One bit you might have missed in the leaders’ debate the other night: David Cameron’s justification for why he thinks the UK should retain the capacity to destroy life as we know it by replacing Trident:

Quite what scenario that brings China and the UK into a nuclear war is I’m not sure. Maybe Dave’s got another war to force them to take opium planned again. Or maybe the Tories are committed to a policy of “If we can’t have Hong Kong no one will!!!!”

At least when Labour take us to war the enemy doesn’t really have any WMD they can hit back at the UK with. If you think war with China would be a laugh, maybe you need to check this out Mr. Cameron. While China can easily match the UK when it comes to nukes, they are however the only country to have given a pledge not to use nukes against states that don’t have any (meaning we’d be SAFER if we scrapped Trident) and also have a “no first use” rule when it comes to using nuclear weapons.

We can’t be certain what the future holds for China, but I can be pretty certain there will be ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING, not even the kidnapping of Jack Bauer, that would ever justify nuking the most populous nation on Earth. Come on people, are we really going to let the end of the world be a vote winner?

You want a war with these guys? Really?

WHO IS THIS MAN? Answers on a postcard to Lembit Opik's 'hash n honeyz fund', Transylvania

TONIGHT! LIVE! The SSY newsdesk brings you a blow by blow account of all the fucking THRILLING developments in the first of three US-style televised UK party leaders’ debates. What we want to know is, where’s oor Colin? He’d jazz the place up wi his funky earrings and tartan troosers.

8.35 – Gordon Brown is wearing a fetching pink tie, David Cameron looks like a taut scrotum, and some other guy’s crashed the party.

8.45 – All of them are being racist chumps with their bullshit immigration and asylum policies. What a surprise.

8.51 – David Cameron “I went to a drugs rehabilitation centre recently”. OO ER! Joining oul Stevie Purcell were you? He’s also saying “hardened” a lot, which is satisfying our childish humour.

9.01 – Gordon Brown claims the Labour party now support an elected House of Lords. WHAT’S THE POINT IN THAT, IDIOT? Abolish the fuckers. And the Queen.

9.08 – They’re all saying that they back having ‘recall elections’ for MPs when the public think they’ve got out of hand – a populist policy in the wake of the expenses scandal. This is of course something we could support. Of course, under a Labour/Tory/Lib Dem government the outrageous levels of corruption would lead to a by-election every single week!

9.09 – Host Alistair Stewart: “The Scottish and Welsh leaders’ debate take place on Tuesday.” Doesn’t matter cause we’re not real countries anyway.

9.14 – Cameron wants MOAR DISCIPLINEZ in schools, to keep all those pesky youths in check. Like it was in back in Eton, what ho old boy!

9.22 – “I’d LIKE to give everyone 250 pounds, but I just can’t do it right now!” – Nick Clegg. See, the Lib Dems can say whatever they bloody want, they’re never going anywhere.

*SSY newsdesk is bored. SSY newsdesk hopes this guy interrupts soon*

9.33 – All of them have the absolute cheek to try to sound solemn while ‘paying tribute’ to all of the soldiers who have lost their lives in the illegal war supported and implemented by ALL of the establishment parties, causing utter misery to not just those serving soldiers and their grieving families, but also all of the innocent Afghani civilians being killed on a daily basis.

9.40 – Nick Clegg – “We don’t need nuclear weapons to flatten St Petersburg and Moscow” – It’s called Leningrad you fuck!

9.43 – Cameron is rimming the NHS, aww how sweet.

9.43 – Nick Clegg “The government’s wasted some amount of billions on a computer system”. Well get Linux then, loser. Get wi the program Nick, teh internets makes the world go round. FREE THE INTERNET.

9.47 – Gordon Brown has literally said nothing of note. Maybe he is literally in Burma.

9.50 – David Cameron reveals a SHOCKING TRUTH! Apparently it’s not cancer that kills cancer patients, it’s the Labour administration! Nick Clegg says “we should all work on this together” – of course, he’s only saying that because he knows he won’t win. If he was in with a shout he’d be screaming “these fuckers will give you cancer!”. Yunno, under socialism, cancer will be abolished. Just sayin’..

9.53 – Dey talkin bout dis ‘free personal care for the elderly’ ting Gordy B has pledged. Scotland already has that! DEVOLUTION 1 – UNIONISM 0!

9.57 – “I admit that none of us have the perfect solution”. Yeah, we know. The perfect solution is socialism, obvs.

9.58 – Gordon Brown keeps sucking right up Nick Clegg’s hole. Oh Nick, you fine handsome lovely man, won’t you please form a coalition government with me?

9.59 – In the last few minutes, David Cameron has managed to use the words “lever-arch file”. What a thoroughly exciting man.

10.01 – Nick Clegg’s closing statement: “I have remembered all of your names, question askers! Because they are written on my notes! That’s how much I care, unlike those cancerous motherfuckers!”

10.02 – Gordon Brown’s closing statement: “I referenced Britain’s Got Talent, please love me? CANCER CANCER CANCER”

10.04 – David Canceron: “Choose hope over fear. If you are scared of us, don’t be! If you work hard, I’ll be behind you (watching your every move). I am never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you. Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie or hurt you.”

That was it then. Yeah, I prefer Tina Fey.

Primark’s secret plot to make little girls more appealing to paedophiles has been revealed, thanks to fearless journalism by The Sun.

They reported that “Primark bosses invite parents to send out girls of seven dressed as sex objects to be leered at by paedophiles,” after it was revealed that Primark have a range of swimwear for children which includes a slightly padded bikini top. Horror of horrors!

Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are all tripping over themselves to condemn Primark, and the Sun has extended its crusade to a whole host of other shops, announcing that it’s “Paedo heaven on our High Street“.

Let’s have a look at the bikini in question. It’s hardly a Wonderbra, is it?

There are two reasons girls start wearing bras or crop tops long before we might actually need them for support:

- to be mature and grown up, and avoid being made fun of by girls

- to hide the shape of our developing breasts, and avoid being made fun of by boys

Remember school swimming lessons, and having to stand in front of everyone you knew in a skintight costume that left nothing to the imagination whilst the PE teacher droned on for what seemed like an eternity… but none of the other kids paid attention because they were too busy making fun of you for either being a flatchested baby or a bigtitted slutty bitch? And to top it off, all of the popular girls are wearing bikinis and you’re stuck in a totally lame onepiece. Being a kid is really fucking hard.

As well as being ridiculous and not helping anyone, The Sun’s PAEDO BIKINI panic has an extremely sinister undertone. If paedophiles are only preying on children because of their “sexy” clothes, then who should take the blame when children are abused? The shops that sold the sexy clothes? The parents for buying them? The kids for wearing them? Anyone but the actual abuser and the sexually fucked up society obsessed with little girls’ and their virginity and purity, whilst promoting an pornographic ideal of hairless and childlike womanhood.

Laurie Penny at the Guardian’s Comment is Free has had the only remotely sensible take on this so far, saying:

Rather than encouraging healthy sexual exploration or promoting education, campaigns to protect girls from “sexualisation” assume that sexuality itself is a corrupting influence on young women.

The notion of “sexualisation” deserves serious critical unpacking. The term envisions girl children as blank erotic slates upon which sexuality can only ever be violently imposed. This narrow vision of sexuality leaves no room for young girls to explore authentic desire at their own pace, insisting instead that girls need to be protected from erotic influence, while boys, presumably, are free to fiddle with themselves to their hearts’ content.

Far from protecting young girls, the “anti-sexualisation” agenda actually serves a culture that shames girls if they have sexual feelings of their own while fetishising them as objects of erotic capital. The pornographic and advertising industries routinely infantilise adult women in an erotic context: in 2008, catwalk model Lily Cole infamously posed nude for French Playboy cuddling a teddy bear and licking a lollipop. Corporate visions of pubescent sexuality are marketed to children and adults alike as ritualised acts of erotic drag, and from an early age, young girls have a profound understanding that such sexual performance must be undertaken if we are not to be socially punished…

This ugly world of performative erotic control is made more confusing by a vociferous moral lobby in which adults talk to other adults about what young girls should be permitted to wear, say and do. The online mumocracy’s call for retailers to “show parents that their company believes that children should be allowed to be children” is irrelevant to the real experiences of girls growing up in a world where our sexual impulses are stolen and sold back to us.

Padded bras for preteens are not the problem. The problem is a culture of prosthetic, commodified female sexual performance, a culture which morally posturing politicians appear to deem perfectly acceptable as long as it is not ‘premature’. By assuming that sexuality can only ever be imposed upon girl children, campaigns to ‘let girls be girls’  ignore the fact that late capitalism refuses to let women be women – at any age.

But leaving all of that aside… surely paedophiles want children to look as childlike as possible, and would therefore be resolutely opposed to padded bras for kids? LOGIC FAIL.

Who’d have thunk it eh, not only is Gordon Brown a closet Marxist but it turns out the ideas of Socialism have now penetrated the Tory opposition as well. As soon as Maggie took her eye off the ball, we managed to plant our people in the Conservative party and convince them that they had got it all wrong.

At least that’s the only way I can interpret David Cameron’s theft of Socialist policies, as he calls for a maximum wage in the public sector,

A Tory government would establish a fair pay review to ensure that no senior manager in the public sector can earn more than 20 times more than the lowest- paid person in their organisation.

The scheme could mean that up to 200 senior public sector executives would face pay cuts. Public sector chiefs whose salaries would be cut include Ed Richards, the chief executive of Ofcom, whose £392,056 salary is 22 times higher than the estimated lowest full-time salary in his quango, £18,000.

Well done Dave, the SSP has always thought it was ridiculous quango chiefs and council bosses could earn so much more than many of their low paid employees do as civil servants, cleaners, nurses, clerical staff etc – particularly when they try to sack them.

With any luck we should have an announcement from Tory party central office within the hour that, in the spirit of fairness and being in it all together what goes for the public sector must also go for the private sector – which means no private sector CEO should earn more than 20 times any of their workers.

We know it might be hard for the Tory party considering one of their biggest donors, Lord Ashscroft is so wealthy his own personal fortune is considered equal to that of the entire GDP of Belize, but we have faith David Cameron will do the right thing. I mean anything less would be total hypocrisy and make him look quite full of shit, wouldn’t it?

SSY has already reported on the astronomical levels of youth unemployment that Britain is suffering from during the recession. The Government is currently trying to curb it by introducing funding into the “Future Jobs Fund” – a fund which ostensibly exists to provide funding for jobs specifically for those unemployed for 6 months and 18-24 years old.

These jobs are almost always minimum wage however, will only create 150,000 jobs (out of youth unemployment of 2 million) and are only guaranteed to last for 6 months. This will be good for Labour’s election prospects in the short term as youth unemployment falls slightly, but not for stopping another generation from being lost.

The Tories think they have the right idea, and they’ve got backing from none other than Michael Caine. Cameron’s launched a “National Citizen’s Service”, the aim of which is to get young people into voluntary community work – helping old ladies, painting fences, etc. The plan has proved popular in recent opinion polls, and with youth unemployment so high what could be wrong with giving young people work – particularly when it appears to be socially useful work?

Well for a start the work is unpaid. If your under 18 (and Cameron’s plan is directed to 16 year old school leavers) you cannot apply for benefits. With the economy in such dire straits, school leavers today are going to have as much trouble finding jobs as their counterparts did in the 80’s. These lack of options mean that many young people may go into a National Service plan not out of choice but because there is nothing else for them to do.

Not only is there no proper wage in these National Service plans but there is no guarantee of a permanent job, apprenticeship, training or education. It would serve as a good way of getting young people off the unemployment figures but not provide them with much of a future after their National Service is over (and the service will only last for 2 months).

The biggest danger is that the national citizen service plan is a stepping stone to “workfare” – where unemployed young people will be made to work for their beneifts (and not a wage). This was what happened during the last period of mass youth unemployment in the 80’s, where the Tories introduced Youth Training Schemes. This forced school leavers to work for pittance wages for employers.

There’s still a similar scheme like it today, called Skillseekers where some jobs for 16-17 year olds are not minimum wage and young people can work a 40 hour week and take home only £50.

These kind of schemes do not reduce youth unemployment – they are only used as a short term pool of extremely cheap labour for employers. This pool of cheap labour means that companies who need to take on extra staff won’t take them as school leavers on the minimum wage – they’ll wait till they’re on the dole and employ them for £1 – 2 an hour. Both the Tories and New Labour clearly believe that having an army of low paid young workers are necessaries to allow companies to become profitable again after the recession.

What’s the alternative then? Well there’s nothing in principle wrong from community work for unemployed young people – far from it, done properly it can be a socially useful job far more rewarding than working in a bar or a call centre. There are plenty of communities in Scotland suffering the worst levels of poverty in Western Europe who desperately need assistance in making the streets cleaner, safer, providing childcare, running youth centres, assisting the elderly etc. But the SSY and SSP wants jobs like these to be available for unemployed young people on a decent wage, on permanent contracts and with full trade union rights. That can be easily funded if we enacted a greed tax on the hyper-rich in the UK. It may not have many celebrity supporters, but it is an idea which we believe will have a lot of support among young people in Scotland today.

I really, really hope the cameraman did this on purpose.

As Britain is gearing up for the most important election in decades, it’s also the most closely fought. Successive opinion polls have shown that it is unlikely any party will have an overall majority to govern – that either means working as a minority Government, or one in coalition. This has an obvious disadvantage, that at the time when the ruling class in the UK needs a strong Government to enforce public sector cuts, take on the trade unions and face down community campaigns against cuts to their services they may in fact have the weakest Government in decades; a Government that can be undermined by appealing to the opposition or coalition partners with cold feet.

This scenario has caused considerable and obvious disquiet to Britain’s bankers and potential investors. In order to quash this concern, the British state is, according to at least one press report prepared to rely on undemocratic and ancient rules to enforce stability at the price of democracy; that is, the use of Crown Powers.

The Daily Mail reports that none other than The Queen has been approached by leading civil servants to discuss using her powers as a Monarch in relation to a hung Parliament. It outlines a scenario in which no party has a majority, and the Parliament is a hung one. The minority Government could approach the Queen to request another general election to secure a stable majority Government. Leading civil servants are worried this would cause instability in the UK, and are discussing with the Queen the possibility of her using her Crown Powers to deny a request for a second General Election.

This would be designed to force the political parties to form a stable coalition Government, able to make the cuts necessary to make the UK profitable for capitalism again. Such use of Crown Power in the UK would be shocking and controversial, and it may not be necessary but it is far from impossible. Crown Powers have already been used in people’s lifetime – the Governor General in Australia dismissed a left-leaning Government in Australia using Crown Powers. These powers have also been used to overrule a High Court ruling which said the expulsion of Diego Garcia’s indigenous population to make way for a US military base was illegal.

The reality is the Crown still has plenty of power in the UK, if not to be used on the whim of the monarch itself but in the interests of Britain’s ruling establishment of MP’s, civil servants, bankers etc. It is still used in the Privy Council, whose prerogative powers were used to deny justice to the islanders of Diego Garcia and to ban GCHQ workers from being allowed to join a union. And there is of course the undemocratic House of Lords, whose peers are allowed to block laws voted on democratically in Westminster.

All these hang ons from the medieval ages are kept as an insurance policy in case any Government – in the past a feared “ultra-left” Labour one – would go too far, and for any Government to use as an extension of it’s powers beyond the relative transparency of Parliament. Remember that the next time the Monarchy comes up in a debate – tourists they may attract, but Mickey Mouse does not have the power to deny elections to the Senate in the United States!

The Queens Diamond Jubillee will be held in 2012, with public holidays on the 4th and 5th of June to celebrate her glorious reign. The SSP won’t be attending however – and will organise a demonstration for an Independent Republic, like we did at Calton Hill in 2004. We’ll be protesting so that the Queen and all the undemocratic hangovers of the middle ages have no role in politics, and Scotland is a modern, 21st century democratic Republic without inherited privilege or power.

This time last year it looked almost certain that Labour would not only lose the election, but be absolutely humiliated by the Tories. They had not only dropped in the polls, but actually came third in the European Elections. Within the past month however, Labour’s electoral fortunes have resurged, Lazarus like. It is not an overwhelming resurgence – they are still behind the Tories in %’s in all polls, but thanks to the UK’s electoral boundaries they could get less votes than the Tories but win more seats. This has happened before in UK voting history. Even if they do win more seats than the Tories however, they would at best have a minority Government.

This is increasingly the best Labour can hope for – though it is not an impossibility. A Labour Government could either run the country as a minority Government, like the SNP do in Scotland – or they could form a coalition with the Libdems. This electoral scenario should give hope to Socialists, as it means at a time when the bankers need a strong Government to push through ruthless and brutal cuts the UK will actually have the weakest Government in decades.

Labour have already tried to steal the Tories thunder by claiming that their cuts will be “deeper than Thatcher’s”. That should send a chill down the spine of millions of working people in the UK, especially as it is being said BEFORE a general election. At the same time Labour are saying they will defend frontline services – it’s bizarre that both Cameron and Brown believe they can both make savage cuts but not attack peoples communities, education, and NHS. It’s a con trick that will be exposed when they start to try and make those cuts, and the left has to be able to organise and fight back like we did in the SOS campaign.

Despite New Labour trying to retake Tory ground quite clumsily, they are still managing to stay in the polls with a fighting chance – why? The most sensible explanation is that the real threat of a Tory Government has mobilised Labour’s old working class support to vote for them. Despite hatred of Labour, millions of people can remember Thatcherism and will vote for a lesser evil to stop it. Also, again in a crude and disingenuous way Labour are using class as a tactic. From Gordon Brown attacking Cameron’s Eton background, to their “Fairer for All” sloganeering Labour are trying desperately to carve out some difference between them and the Tories.

For the past 13 years Labour have dropped ideology from their politics – they got elected on the basis they were the best “administrators” of the UK. They could rely on most of their working class base and large sections of the middle class to vote for them on this basis. Now that the economy has collapsed so badly, Labour can’t pretend to be competent apolotical admins. They have to create some kind of false divide between them and the Tories, and they are having some success in exploiting widespread anger at privilege to pose as the defenders of the working class majority.

This crude posturing was supposed to be the reason Labour could not win elections – mentioning class was meant to lead to electoral disaster. Yet right now, it is probably the only tactic that could keep Gordon Brown in Number 10. If nothing else it is heartening for Socialists and the Left in general, that basic parts of our politics are not irrelevant or outdated, even when they aren’t fleshed out.

Where Labour’s use of “class war” may fail is obvious though – while millions of working class people hate the Tories, and will vote for New Labour if they pose as the defenders of working people just as many know the reality; that Labour are trundling out this rhetoric to win an election, and have applied none of these ideas when they had the opportunity to.

This blog can be serious sometimes, as displayed through our use of graphs.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation outlines how the poorest tenth of the population in the UK have actually seen their wealth decline – at the same time as the richest tenth have seen their wealth increase dramatically. 40% of the increase in wealth in the UK has gone to that top 10% of earners, this top 10% also has a combined wealth equal to the bottom half of earners. The top 10% are more than 100 times as wealthy as the bottom 10%.

Class politics are by no means dead in the UK, and never will be for as long as class divisions exist. But if New Labour wants to use class rhetoric to win an election, they need to have the actions to back up the propaganda.

The Sun newspaper pledged its support to David Cameron and the Conservative party in Autumn 2009, and have since been dedicated to promoting Conservative ideas, and revealing shocking anti-Tory bias.

A few days ago, they published an article unearthing “alarming smears against Tories by state-owned BBC” including appalling behaviour by Basil Brush.

What mischief has that lovable fox been up to now?

THE Basil Brush Show featured a school election with a cheat called Dave wearing a blue rosette.

The BBC’s Head of Corporate Affairs Tina Stowell worked for William Hague; former senior political correspondent Guito Hari has become Boris Johnson’s Director of Communications; Political Editor Nick Robinson was national chairman of the Young Conservatives; and the BBC’s Westminster editor Steve Mawhinney is son of a former Conservative cabinet minister.

UKIP are the most successful minor party in British electoral history. Despite having no MP’s, no official backing from any major newspaper, and only 70 councillors UKIP were able to beat the Lib Dems and come third in 2004’s European Elections. Last year they went further, coming second and beating the governing Labour Party. Today UKIP send as many MEP’s to Brussels as Labour do. This is a formiddable achievement for a party that was only founded in 1993.

Despite this fantastic growth, there has been very little discussion or criticism of UKIP on the Left. This is despite UKIP representing a “radical” right-wing constituency, with MEP’s further to the right than most Tory MP’s and who would attack the standard of living of working people quite dramatically if elected.

Most concern on the Left to radical right wing parties has been directed to the growth of the BNP, who picked up 2 MEP’s at the last European Election. UKIP is very obviously and clearly not the same kind of party as the BNP but there is definitely competition between both parties for the same anti-EU, anti-Immigration, nationalist vote. This vote isn’t homogeneous however and there are important differences. UKIP attract a wealthier, home counties right-wing vote, compared to the BNP who attract support from much poorer areas in English cities.

UKIP and the BNP also have differences in how they view society should be organised; UKIP are made up of Thatcherites who are too Eurosceptic for the Tory Party but still uphold the free market and libertarian values. The BNP in contrast support protectionism for British companies – this has led to some on the Tory nutter right to attack the BNP as “Left-wing”. Farage, UKIP’s former leader and best known public figure says the difference between them and the BNP is that they are the “do what you like party” and the BNP are the “hang em and flog em party”.

Parliament for the jocks you say? What ho, no, let them use the one behind me!

Of course the biggest and most fundamental difference between the two parties is that the BNP is still a neo-Nazi organisation pretending to be a populist right wing one, while UKIP is just a populist right-wing party. UKIP doesn’t believe in the racial supremacy fantasies of the BNP and has no problems with ethnic minorities as candidates or members. It’s for this reason that it would be unimaginable (and wrong) for UKIP to be no platformed the way the BNP is.

Despite these important differences however, UKIP deserves a lot more attention and criticism from the Left than it has got. It’s generally been ignored by the Left as it is not in any position to control the Government or Local councils and because its not a fascist organisation like the BNP. However UKIP may not always be the eccentric party of ex-Tory Daily Mail readers, able to attract a bit of a laugh now and again with some Bernard Manning style comments about women or attacking the EU President as a damp rag.

UKIP’s potential danger can be seen in the man they invited last week to the House of Lords – Geert Wilders. UKIP’s leader, Lord Pearson invited Wilders to broadcast his anti-Muslim film “Fitna”. Wilders was also welcomed to London by the English Defence Leage, producing an unholy trinity of football casuals, ex-Tory lords and Wilders. This display was another example of the EDL are acting as violent thugs for ideas which are circulated and promoted by well heeled members of the establishment who are far more “respectable” than they are.

I likesh a shmoke and a pancake, but I don't likesh the Mushlimsh

UKIP have tried to justify their love in with Wilders on the basis that we need to have a discussion about “radical Islam”. Time and time again however Wilders has made clear that his problem is with Islam, and sees no difference between moderate and radical Muslims. Wilders today is the most successful far-Right politician in Europe, and has a real chance of becoming the next Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

Wilders has made it a demand for any coalition Government in which his Party for Freedom (PVV) takes part, that the hijab is banned from all public institutions; meaning any Muslim who wears the hijab will be banned from working in or using a library, swimming pool, school etc. Wilders does not even attempt to cover his attack on Muslims by saying its about secularism – he openly says Jewish skull caps and crucifixes will not be affected by this law, as they are a part of western culture.

People should remember that the hijab is not the burqa. Unlike the burqa, which is an extreme form of Islamic dress worn by a very small number of Muslims in Europe the Hijab is a far more modest headscarf little different from a nuns habit. The hijab is worn by a massive proportion of Muslim women – banning them from wearing it is a clear attack on their civil rights. There is no practical difference between someone who wears a hijab, a turban or skullcap in how they do their job or use public services. They have been singled out because they are Muslims.

Wilders has also called for the banning of the Koran, and for Guantanamo bay style facilities for Muslims in the Netherlands. He is also a staunch defender of Israel – Wilders PVV is in fact interested with fighting a war against the freedoms of the Netherlands’s Muslim minority.

How far UKIP will go down the PVV road remains to be seen, but it is clear that they are attempting to win support not just from attacking the EU but now from attacking Muslims. UKIP have become the first party in the UK to call for the banning of the Burka in all public places. This is further than even the BNP wants to go – they only want the burka banned in govt buildings. Whatever criticism can be made of the burka for it’s attacks on women’s rights it’s clear that if UKIP are cosying up with Wilders it is unlikely they are banning it to emancipate Muslim women.

UKIP also need to be dug up by the Left for their hypocrisy on the issues of democracy and accountability they claim to uphold. UKIP have won virtually all their support on their largely correct attacks on the European President and European Commission for being totally unaccountable and unelected – but they see no contradiction between these institutions and having an unelected Lord as leader! There is no attack on the House of Lords from UKIP on what it is, an undemocratic chamber which has the power to stop laws being made by a parliament with elected MP’s.

UKIP’s policy on Scotland also betrays their Tory roots – they call for the abolition of the Scottish Parliament, an act that would return Scotland to the bad old days of the 80’s where our votes were irrelevant, and the votes of middle England would decide who rules Scotland.

After all as bad as the EU parliament is, its done nothing like force the poll tax on Scotland using MP’s elected in England – but then again, that wouldn’t bother UKIP much seeing as they argue for a “flat tax”. A flat tax means that everyone pays the same amount of tax for their services regardless of their income, which was of course the exact same principle the poll tax used. They also call for a reduction in the rate of corporation tax, referring to Thatcher and Reagan’s UK and USA as a justification. This flat tax would also mean less funding for public services, cutting jobs and services in order to transfer even more wealth to the rich. This “freedom” for companies to do whatever they want is part of UKIP’s attack on the alleged “social democratic consensus” at Westminster.

Both this flat tax and reduction in corporation tax would be another salvo in a war which has been going on for 30 years, a war between the richest 1% of the population who have seen their wealth skyrocket whilst the working majority have seen their wealth stagnate or barely increase. Alongside their cosying up to someone who is determined to deny public services and jobs to Muslims in the Netherlands, it shows up UKIP as being a bit more dangerous than their charismatic and dotty English Toff MEP’s suggest.

Right now UKIP are unlikely to put into practice any of these policies. Both parties of the radical right in the UK, the BNP and UKIP have major barriers to growth. In the case of the BNP it’s their racism and neo-Nazi baggage. For UKIP its being identified as solely interested in Europe.

The PVV in the Netherlands shows that these barriers can be overcome however. If UKIP and the BNP dealt with these barriers by dumping Griffin and other neo-Nazis, paid more attention to domestic affairs and founded a new radical right party along the lines of the PVV there is little to stop them from emulating Wilders success. There is clearly a very large vote for opposing the EU, immigration, political correctness and for old school Tory values that Cameron has had to cede somewhat to take the centre ground.

Such a party of the radical right would pose a threat to Scotland’s democratic rights, working peoples status in the tax system, funding to public services and civil rights of Muslims in the UK. Remember that the next time you see Nigel Farage guffaw on Question Time and ask if anyone wants to go for a punt and a Pimms.