As has been reported in Romania-Insider.com, a political party in the United Kingdom is raising popular fear of mass immigration from Eastern Europe, especially from Romania and Bulgaria, to scare British people into supporting them in forthcoming elections. This is very naughty of them, but let’s put the situation into perspective before too much nervous energy is wasted.
The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) does not particularly dislike Romanian or Bulgarian people; there are many other things that they dislike considerably more.
Fundamentally they dislike the European Union as a whole and are focused on ensuring that the United Kingdom holds a referendum which they hope will result in a decision to leave the organization. They dislike the European Parliament, the European Commission and its President, the Council of Ministers, the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, Schengen in its entirety, German control of EU economic and fiscal policy and French control of agricultural policy. UKIP regards the European Union as a giant conspiracy designed solely to dismantle Britain’s dominance of the European financial services industry and believes that the EU is quickly becoming the vehicle through which Germany finally achieves most of its World War II objectives.
In political terms, UKIP will do everything it can to persuade the British people that it is the only party that can save them from the evil of the European Union and with enough representation at Westminster, it can force the British government to hold the long-promised referendum on continued EU membership. The way things stand at the moment, the referendum would probably result in British withdrawal.
If it can help them to achieve their initial aims of winning British parliamentary seats, UKIP are quite happy to scare the population with stories of hordes of rampaging Romanians and Bulgarians despoiling the countryside and eating up all the now scarce resources that the country has to offer. For many British people, Romania and Bulgaria are far off places about which they know little and we all know how dangerous ignorance can be.
However, British people are quite used to having their political parties try to scare them with supposed common enemies; with coal miners, steel workers, train drivers, car workers, disabled people, unemployed people, single mothers, Germans, the French, the Irish, people from Yorkshire, bankers, Turks, Sudanese, Lenin, the Pope and many others being drafted into the position of threat to the realm throughout history. Most British people do not take this kind of thing seriously any more.
UKIP have a very strong case where British peoples’ mistrust of the EU as a very undemocratic organisation is concerned, but most people in 21st century Britain are not very interested in the ramblings of yet another bunch of racists.
By Ronnie Smith, Guest Writer
(photo source; UKIP)