UKIP poster boy is a racist immigrant, film at 11

[Sheilbh]

Because you've signed a deal with Europe that gives Brits the right to go to all of those Euro countries, but you have not made those deals with Aussies and Indians.

Yeah. What I mean is I'm not sure that deal's worth it. The cost of a free immigration from Europe which politicians can't control is clamping down on immigration that they can from the rest of the world such as students and skilled workers. I think immigration from Europe has been great, but I'm not sure the benefits outweigh the costs of less immigration from the rest of the world.

I've said before but I'm genuinely unsure how I'd vote in a referendum, especially given that it wouldn't just be a vote on the Europe we're in or the Europe we joined but the direction Europe's going in. I think the Tory jibe that it's like shackling yourself to a corpse has some truth to it.

It's not that someone thought Euros were better per se, it's that you've signed on to the common market and the free movement of labour within Europe.

But isn't there an element of protectionism of labour in that?

[Sheilbh]

IIRC the British conclusion over here was that nobody would vote for the  UKIP in a serious election. Well, here they are winning one out of 3 and getting prettttty close to winning the other two as well.

I've been saying for a while I think they'll matter a lot in the next general election, even if they only double their vote (to 6%). But as Gups says everyone expected Carswell to win. He's an unusual politician who really works his constituency, I remember reading a stat about how his local party has grown by a huge amount since he's been MP while the Tories as a whole have around 100 000 members. But the scale makes me think UKIP'll easily win Rochester too, which the Tories were confident of winning in the next byelection.

The real surprise is that UKIP came within around 620 votes of taking a safe Labour seat in the North. I thought if they hit 30% they'd be doing well, I think they reached over 40%. But that sums up what I've said before. My worry with UKIP isn't 2015, but 2020 after five years of a lacklustre Miliband government with UKIP doing to the North what the SNP have done to Scotland. As an aside the Labour candidate gave a dreadful shouty triumphant speech that sounded like it had been written when they thought it was a cakewalk. The crowd were openly laughing and jeering which is never a great sign

The Labour spin this morning - they may have changed it through the day - was also awful. Last night was a bloody nose for Cameron and Labour did well by increasing their share of the vote - by 0.8%, in a safe seat, during an unpopular, austerity, coalition government, from the dreadful result of 2010

Also the best articles I've read, on Heywood:

For fox sake
John McTernan  |  10 October 2014   |  Comments: 64
The Last WordLiz McInnes
Last night I received an email from the Labour party. It was about foxhunting. The issue of the day yesterday. My only regret was that the email hadn't gone out earlier – it would surely have been an issue that would have boosted our vote in Heywood and Middleton massively.

I honestly didn't know what to say when I opened that email. And I still can't decide whether it would be worse if it had been part of an explicit strategy or if it had simply been sent out irrespective of the overall gameplan. One thing is for sure – the results in Clacton and Heywood have put paid, once and for all, to any of those policies aimed at the latte-sipping, chino-wearing, light Green, inner-city left. Surely?

We failed in three ways in Heywoood and Middleton and succeeded in one. The success first: We kept our share of the vote. That was no mean achievement. The 2010 general election vote was a warning to us – the combined rightwing vote (Tories, United Kingdom Independence party and British National party) was nearly equal to the Labour vote. It just required voters to coalesce around Ukip to give us a scare. And it did. Boosted by a collapse in the Liberal Democrat vote too. That latter point is really scary – Ukip became ABL (Anyone But Labour). We have been here before – and it does not have a happy ending. This is exactly what happened in the 2011 elections to the Scottish parliament, which set us on the road to the referendum. There is no comfort in the fact this happened to the Tories in Clacton too. And first past the post is no protection. When the voters decide to punish you they will break the electoral system to do so.

So that was the good news. What's the bad news? Apparently we have lost the power of hearing.

For Labour, this was a by-election about the NHS. That was what voters 'brought up on the doorstep'. For voters, visitors and the casual observer it was a by-election about immigration. Even in politics a conversation isn't simply waiting for your turn to speak – it has to be about engagement. There is a perfectly defensible line to take on Labour's record on immigration and its plans. It just doesn't involve not mentioning it. And there is a blindingly obvious link to the NHS – a service that would stop tomorrow without immigrant workers.

That was a lack of courage.

So too was our response to Ukip raising the grooming and rape of young women in Rochdale. You could see we were outraged. But not by the rapes, instead by the fact the issue was raised. I'd have loved a Labour candidate who could say – 'That's right, it was disgusting. Those young women were betrayed. I want to be your MP to work with Simon Danczuk and Tom Watson to tackle historic abuse – and to make sure it never happens again'. The voice that David Blunkett would bring if he stood for South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner. The voice of working-class morality – and outrage – channelled politically to achieve change.

With no engagement and no passion, what we were left with was a campaign with no vision. I fully appreciate how difficult by-elections are, and the extent to which their dynamic is revealed on the ground and not imposed, but we chose to be bloodless. I often quote New Zealand Labour leader and prime minister Norman Kirk who said: 'New Zealanders don't ask for much: someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to hope for.' Those wise words should be the starting point for everyone in thinking about the Heywood and Middleton by-election. They capture precisely what is missing from today's depressing, desiccated politics. Lift, hope, ambition and above all life.

We talk about housing policies when people want a home. We talk about jobs as an end in themselves when people see them as the start of something – the ability to make a downpayment on a dream. We see life as a set of problems to be solved by policies when people see life as something to be lived and enjoyed.

We are in deep, deep trouble. We are lost and our voters want us back. They keep sending us messages. When will we listen?

———————————

John McTernan is former political secretary at 10 Downing Street and was director of communications for former prime minister of Australia Julia Gillard. He writes The Last Word column on Progress and tweets @johnmcternan

And on Douglas Carswell's modernisation project/the fight in UKIP:

Douglas Carswell, UKIP's optimistic moderniser

Posted on 9 October 2014
Douglas Carswell's "Bright Purple" venture, to create a future-facing UKIP, may be the most audacious modernisation project in British politics, writes Sunder Katwala

Douglas Carswell will tonight become the first MP elected to the House of Commons under the UKIP banner. Observers across the political spectrum agree that he is a sure-fire certainty to win the Clacton by-election, overturning the 12,000 majority that he himself delivered for the Conservatives at the General Election, having changed party colours and resigned his seat.

Immigration is the Number One issue that matters to UKIP voters, nationally, so has undoubtedly played a significant role in Clacton's choice of an insurgent party. And yet the voters of Clacton will be electing a strikingly pro-immigration UKIP MP, as he made clear in his speech joining the party.
"On the subject of immigration, let me make it absolutely clear; I'm not against immigration. The one thing more ugly that nativism is angry nativism.

Just like Australia or Switzerland, we should welcome those that want to come here to contribute. We need those with skills and drive. There's hardly a hospital, GP surgery or supermarket in the country that could run without that skill and drive. Real leadership would make this clear."

So a recurring feature of reports from the Clacton campaign trail has been candidate Carswell challenging voters who say they will back him because they are anti-immigrant. As the Telegraph's James Kirkup noted at the weekend:
"I can report that Mr Carswell is pretty open about his views on immigration. When voters tell him there are too many foreigners in the country, he tells them that they are wrong to blame immigrants for the problems they associate with immigration. It is perfectly rational for people to take up the opportunity to come to Britain, he says. The fault lies not with immigrants but with the immigration system that admits them: blame politicians, not immigrants. He also points out that immigrants make positive contributions to the UK economy and public services, especially the NHS. And on the whole, voters who complain to him about immigration seem to accept his arguments."

The other defining thread in the Carswell creed is optimism. He could probably claim to be, with the possible exception of Boris Johnson, the most optimistic man or woman in British politics. He believes that Britain is "a much better country" than when he was born four decades ago.

Yet UKIP has not been the party of optimism. As the authoritative academic work by Rob Ford and Matthew Goodwin sets out, it is not a 'catch all' party but has a sociologically distinct appeal to the voters who feel most 'left behind' by the economic, cultural and social changes of the last thirty years.

So, what's going on? It seems a curious conundrum: the case of a pro-immigration optimist joining the immigration-sceptic party whose 'left behind' core voters feel considerably more pessimistic than their fellow citizens.

Carswell has a different view of the party he has joined. In his insistence that 'UKIP is not an angry, populist rejection of the modern world', he would appear to be embarking on the most audacious modernisation project in British politics. Move over, Tony Blair and New Labour. Never mind the debate about David Cameron's Progressive Conservatism. What we could dub Carswell's 'Bright Purple' project, to create a new future-facing UKIP, may well have ambitions to outstrip them all.

One simple explanation for Carswell's pro-immigration stance is principle – and personality too.

It is clear that Carswell feels it is important for politicians to oppose racism, and to challenge xenophobia, which he calls 'angry nativism'. And since he is in favour of the benefits of immigration for Britain, when it is managed well, Carswell thinks the democratic thing to do is to let the voters know that. He believes that politicians should say what they think – and that even voters who disagree may well respect them more for doing so.

So why choose UKIP? There is method rather than madness here. Indeed, there is a deeper, steely strategic logic behind Carswell's choice to change party.

Douglas Carswell wants to get the United Kingdom out of the European Union.

That cause matters rather more to him than which major party leader gets to be Prime Minister next Spring. ("Different clique, same sofa", as he has put it).

And so he has joined the party for whom leaving the EU is its founding mission and cause. His core aim is to make it fit for that purpose.

For its core cause could become a victim of the party's political success.

In short, the Carswell defection is a response to the 'Farage paradox'.

As UKIP won the European Elections – a low turnout contest – it became clear that the rise and rise of UKIP has done nothing to significantly boost support for Britain leaving the European Union. If anything, the opposite is true. As UKIP's profile and poll rating has risen, it has been associated with rising support for staying in the EU. (In fact, the latest Transatlantic Trends tracking poll suggests that this paradox may well be true of populist Eurosceptic parties across the continent).

UKIP's intense appeal to the 'left behind' minority is pushing fence-sitters into the opposing camp.

Douglas Carswell's most intriguing insight is that immigration might explain the Farage paradox. Even though campaigning on immigration looks like it has been the making of UKIP, being too tough on immigration could prove the breaking of it too.

Several months before his defection, Carswell responded to the Farage-Clegg debates over the EU, setting out a clear warning to his fellow 'Outers'  that being against immigration could ultimately harm their cause rather than help it:
"Immigration, many Outers seem to believe, is our strongest card. It links one of the public's number one concerns with the questions of our EU membership. Perhaps. But the Out campaign must not descend into any kind of angry nativism. First and second generation Britons must feel as comfortable voting to quit the EU as those whose ancestors came over before William the Conqueror. An independent Britain is not going to have no immigration. It will have democratic control over immigration – like Switzerland, where one in five workers is non-Swiss. Or Australia, where thousands of new arrivals become new Australians each year."

So while Carswell's case against "angry nativism" is rooted in a principled distaste for prejudice, it is also one of enlightened political self-interest too. His argument is not just that nativism is wrong in principle; it is also that it would irreparably damage his core Eurosceptic cause.

Carswell's message was that the campaign's embryonic title is 'Better Off Out' for a reason: because it has to offer a viable vision of modern Britain's economic, social and cultural future after leaving the EU, not merely a lament for a lost past. Campaigning for a 'no' vote in a referendum would not be the job of UKIP alone, but the potency and profile of the UKIP brand means that it would be difficult for an 'out' campaign to compete.

Perhaps the only way to shape the Eurosceptic brand was to join the party that looks set to define it, and to seek to change it from within.

The Carswell challenge raises the question of what UKIP is for – and what it wants its high profile political insurgency to achieve.

UKIP doesn't need to change. It should stay just as it is if it wants to fish mostly among the 25% of the electorate who feel most left behind by economic, social and cultural change. Its "party of no" arguments are already pitch perfect for this sizeable minority, who hear UKIP offering them something they don't get from other parties.

That would be enough to win the low turnout European elections, and to put up a significant fight in at least half a dozen Parliamentary constituencies, in Essex and Kent, Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire, and to establish a Commons bridgehead. That could give Nigel Farage a significant 'wildcard' role during the General Election – and probably a prominent post-political career in the media too.

What it could never do is get Britain out of the European Union.

That requires an appeal not to 25% of the voters, but to half of the country.

As Alex Salmond could tell Nigel Farage, that is a very high bar to reach. The Scottish Yes campaign peaked at 45% of the vote, and fell short of victory, despite all of the democratic energy and mobilisation of the Yes campaign.

There are three groups of voters whom UKIP has probably been doing more to put off than to attract over the last couple of years: women, young people and ethnic minority Britons.

UKIP has the most male electorate of any British party. Women are considerably more likely to be 'don't knows' on the EU – but may default to voting 'in' if they feel that UKIP is seeking to turn the clock back several decades in general.

Both UKIP and 'out' are much more popular with those born before 1954, who have an adult memory of Britain being outside the European Union. UKIP has so far had a limited appeal to younger voters, who are considerably less likely to find the pace of change culturally unsettling, having grown up in a more diverse Britain. UKIP will need to show it can take its argument to first-time voters as well as to pensioners.

Ethnic minorities will make up an ever-growing share of the electorate, particularly given the younger age profile of non-white groups.

Now, it shouldn't be hard to persuade non-white Britons to consider the case for leaving the EU. For most, Brussels is a faraway bureaucracy of which they know little. The EU institutions are strikingly white, lagging a generation or two behind the changing demography of our continent. And there is the practical issue that EU free movement means having to give preferential treatment to EU citizens, while tightening restrictions on those from Commonwealth countries with historic links to the UK.

But relatively few non-white Britons have seriously considered UKIP so far. Academics Matthew Goodwin and Rob Ford have calculated that the UKIP vote is 99.4% white. Non-white voters can take a similar view to the economic and social pressures of migration, but respond very differently to arguments about its negative cultural impacts. Nigel Farage's claim that parts of Britain have become 'unrecognisable' because of immigration can appeal to the core UKIP vote – though, overall, levels of both local and national belonging have risen  considerably over the last decade – but they risk sending a signal to second and third generation Britons that their own presence as equal citizens remains in question.

There has been a deliberate softening of UKIP's language since the European Elections. New immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe's first public comments on taking up the role clearly signalled that he regarded Nigel Farage's comments about Romanians as a regrettable mistake, saying that "It is important for me that we don't stigmatise or give the impression that we are attacking individual nationalities."

So Douglas Carswell is not the only UKIP moderniser, but changing UKIP certainly won't be easy.

If there are future defections from the Conservatives to UKIP after the Rochester by-election, Carswell may find himself joined by Bones or Hollobones, both of whom take a considerably tougher view of immigration than he does.

And taking the referendum challenge seriously risks trading in one of UKIP's great advantages of assymetric political warfare. An insurgent party doesn't need to worry about policy, or keeping the promises it makes in government. When trying to jump the 50% referendum hurdle, however, the insurgents will have to construct broad electoral coalitions.

There has always been a brand of libertarian Euroscepticism which is pro-openness, wanting to leave the European club to be more globally engaged. But it is much outnumbered, among the population, by those whose motives for leaving are considerably more protectionist.

A coalition between pro-globalisation libertarians of the City of London and the left behind voters of Great Grimsby requires a rather broad tent – but the'out' campaign will have to answer the questions of what 'out' would look like if they want voters to seriously consider their pitch.

Perhaps it would take an incurable optimist to take on the task of changing UKIP and recasting the Eurosceptic argument too. It seems clear that Douglas Carswell will be giving it his best shot.

As someone who's pro-immigration I've always thought a big problem is that very, very few politicians are willing to make that argument, despite most of them being pro-immigration. So with the exception of Boris Johnson and Ken Livingston, you've a lot of politicians saying immigration's out of control and a problem and they'll reduce it, despite knowing they can't. Then when they fail they're not only breaking promises but coming across as insincere to begin with, which is just permanently eroding trust.

[Razgovory]

His economics may be libertarian, but you cannot be a libertarian if you want to kick immigrants around.

And that goes for the rest of their party: their economics can be as close to me as it gets (I honestly haven't checked it out), but they make me into a scapegoat for the UK's troubles, so fuck them.

Course you can.  Kicking around minorities is like a central pillar to libertarianism.  The freedom to hate.

[Sheilbh]

And one other article on the Tamasian Douglas Carswell:

Can Douglas Carswell ride the Ukip tiger?
By Matthew Holehouse Politics Last updated: October 10th, 2014
43 Comments Comment on this article

Douglas Carswell is a history buff, dropping references to his hero Gladstone, the abolition of slavery, the lessons of Empire and the bloodshed of Anglo-Irish history into conversation at rapid-fire pace.

And so he surely knows the story that crops up through European history, in France in 1789, and Russia in 1905 as well as in Britain, of the radical liberal MPs and lawyers who have yearned for years to smash the corrupt, venal governing classes.

Then a popular uprising mounts – often over bread prices – and they perceive that their cause, and that of the angry public, are aligned. The lawyers and the sans-culottes take to the barricades.

Mr Carswell is self-described libertarian, and one of Parliament's most radical thinkers about who has power in Britain, what a Parliament is for, and how the country must change if is to be rich again.

He says new political parties should be like Uber and Spotify, tearing through markets and disrupting vested interests. He quit the Tories not because he missed the fifties, but because it refused to modernise enough and junked its 2010 manifesto on power of recall. He likes 'iDemocracy' so much he wrote a book on it.

He loves free markets. He hates corporate cartels. He hates the Old Boys in Westminster who killed off open primaries. He welcomes the free movement of people, but worries about how to create a common British identity with which people can feel British in an age of transient labour and Skype relationships. He hails feminism, and says political correctness is just "good manners".

He really does abhor hate racists, and – as he puts it – "ugly nativism".

So much so, that in his acceptance speech last night he told his new party that future victories were contingent on being a party for "all Britons" including first generation migrants.

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive," wrote Wordsworth of the French revolution.

Carswell was similarly euphoric to see the people of blowy Clacton reject the three main parties, and swing behind him.

"I feel like I've come home," he told us on polling day morning. "It's wonderful. It feels incredibly invigorating. All the time I've been in politics, I've suddenly realised this past six weeks what I've been missing," he said, hailing the low-budget, high-energy Ukip operation. He later described meeting a 73-year-old woman vote for the first time, for him.

At Clacton golf club on Monday, we asked how many more defectors would come over. He objected to the term. What would he prefer, we asked. He paused.
"A tribune. A people's tribune. In Roman times, someone who held power to account."

Now consider his new, rude, raucous party. Best known for posters warning of an influx of Bulgarians, a former MEP who called women sluts – not a word you would ever hear from Mr Carswell's mouth – and a leader who, in carefully calculated titbits, calls for foreigners with HIV to be kept out the country, says he feels uncomfortable at hearing foreign voices on trains, warns against Romanian neighbours and admits much of his support is the ex-BNP vote.

At Ukip conference, the single loudest cheers came in response to a call to deport Afghan migrants who had entered Britain illegally. Mr Carswell's speech, on his vision of Britain as a free trading liberal nation, was met with warm but more restrained applause.

Mr Carswell insists you could not fit a cigarette paper between him and Mr Farage on policy, saying their biggest difference is a preference for McFlurrys versus beer. (Friends say Mr Carswell is not a regular drinker, celebrating last night with a cup of tea at home.) And they do agree on migration reform, leaving Europe and cutting taxes.

But for many voters, as Mr Carswell knows, Ukip is not about policy but identity.

Asked to defend Mr Farage on the foreigners-on-a-train and HIV remarks, he insisted tersely and repeatedly today that the comments had been "mischaracterised". Mr Carswell's father was a pioneering doctor who first diagnosed the disease in Africa, and he surely understands the need to remove stigma in order to prevent its spread.

But Mr Carswell revealed this afternoon he had sought extensive and specific assurances from Mr Farage that Ukip bans former members of hate groups (it insists it does).

Having grown up overseas, he added that he finds the notion of blind patriotism – 'my country, right or wrong' – as "bizarre".

He said he wished his daughter had been old enough to appreciate the modern, patriotic opening ceremony of the Olympic Games at which Tory MPs sneered, and wanted to grow up in a country free from anxieties over ethnicity because it has democratic control over migration.

Then I asked what he would do if he encountered racism in Ukip, and he said we'd spent a lot of time on the campaign trail together.

"You must have heard me dozens of times challenge people whose votes I wanted who expressed views that I thought were illiberal," he said.

"I do so respectfully, I did so determinedly, and I do so using arguments that I thought had traction. Every single time I tackled I those issues, I think I left behind voters who I think a) agreed with me, b) were reassured to hear that their pessimism was unjustified. I remember saying to someone who said something I disagreed with, hang on a second, we've got a shortage of GPs, and I know your GP was born in Egypt. And we could do more GPs in this area.

"So let's not blame outsiders for failures caused by our political insiders. I make that argument, I make it fiercely, and I make it where it counts, to voters. I have demonstrated that you can make those arguments. If you don't say what's populist, don't say what people automatically agree with, people will come with you if you make those arguments."

Perhaps Mr Carswell, despite explicitly ruling out a leadership bid, thinks through force of argument he can shave off the rough edges of his party. The more unsavoury outbursts, he has suggested, are an expression of frustration with a broken political system.

Sometimes, history shows, the radicals and the liberals do ride the populist tiger, and do bring down the system. But then, sometimes, the tiger eats them.

[Admiral Yi]

Course you can.  Kicking around minorities is like a central pillar to libertarianism.  The freedom to hate.

[Jacob]

Yeah. What I mean is I'm not sure that deal's worth it. The cost of a free immigration from Europe which politicians can't control is clamping down on immigration that they can from the rest of the world such as students and skilled workers. I think immigration from Europe has been great, but I'm not sure the benefits outweigh the costs of less immigration from the rest of the world.

And you genuinely think that if the free movement of labour from Europe is stopped, they'll open up again to the rest of the world?

That would not be my assumption, but I have little in the way of specific knowledge of the UK so perhaps I'm wrong. Still, I'm curious if anyone is campaigning for closing off the inflow from Europe so they can open up more to Asia, Africa, and the Anglosphere?

I've said before but I'm genuinely unsure how I'd vote in a referendum, especially given that it wouldn't just be a vote on the Europe we're in or the Europe we joined but the direction Europe's going in. I think the Tory jibe that it's like shackling yourself to a corpse has some truth to it.

It'd be interesting to see whether you'd have to shoot your own hand off to get our of the shackles.

But isn't there an element of protectionism of labour in that?

Uh... maybe? What does that have to do with anything?

[Jacob]

Course you can.  Kicking around minorities is like a central pillar to libertarianism.  The freedom to hate.

In theory libertarians should be all for immigration etc, but in practice it does seem that a lot of people who proclaim themselves libertarians are pretty unkeen on foreign types.

[Martinus]

So let me get this straight - the UK now wants to be out of the European Convention of Human Rights? One even Russia and Turkey are a party to? One only Belarus and Kazakhstan do not want? What the fuck is wrong with your country?

[Razgovory]

Course you can.  Kicking around minorities is like a central pillar to libertarianism.  The freedom to hate.

In theory libertarians should be all for immigration etc, but in practice it does seem that a lot of people who proclaim themselves libertarians are pretty unkeen on foreign types.

Not so keen on blacks either, judging from the Ron Paul news letters.  Contempt for minorities and distaste for federal government that protects minority rights.  What a coincidence!

[Tamas]

And one other article on the Tamasian Douglas Carswell:

Can Douglas Carswell ride the Ukip tiger?
By Matthew Holehouse Politics Last updated: October 10th, 2014
43 Comments Comment on this article

Douglas Carswell is a history buff, dropping references to his hero Gladstone, the abolition of slavery, the lessons of Empire and the bloodshed of Anglo-Irish history into conversation at rapid-fire pace.

And so he surely knows the story that crops up through European history, in France in 1789, and Russia in 1905 as well as in Britain, of the radical liberal MPs and lawyers who have yearned for years to smash the corrupt, venal governing classes.

Then a popular uprising mounts – often over bread prices – and they perceive that their cause, and that of the angry public, are aligned. The lawyers and the sans-culottes take to the barricades.

Mr Carswell is self-described libertarian, and one of Parliament's most radical thinkers about who has power in Britain, what a Parliament is for, and how the country must change if is to be rich again.

He says new political parties should be like Uber and Spotify, tearing through markets and disrupting vested interests. He quit the Tories not because he missed the fifties, but because it refused to modernise enough and junked its 2010 manifesto on power of recall. He likes 'iDemocracy' so much he wrote a book on it.

He loves free markets. He hates corporate cartels. He hates the Old Boys in Westminster who killed off open primaries. He welcomes the free movement of people, but worries about how to create a common British identity with which people can feel British in an age of transient labour and Skype relationships. He hails feminism, and says political correctness is just "good manners".

He really does abhor hate racists, and – as he puts it – "ugly nativism".

So much so, that in his acceptance speech last night he told his new party that future victories were contingent on being a party for "all Britons" including first generation migrants.

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive," wrote Wordsworth of the French revolution.

Carswell was similarly euphoric to see the people of blowy Clacton reject the three main parties, and swing behind him.

"I feel like I've come home," he told us on polling day morning. "It's wonderful. It feels incredibly invigorating. All the time I've been in politics, I've suddenly realised this past six weeks what I've been missing," he said, hailing the low-budget, high-energy Ukip operation. He later described meeting a 73-year-old woman vote for the first time, for him.

At Clacton golf club on Monday, we asked how many more defectors would come over. He objected to the term. What would he prefer, we asked. He paused.
"A tribune. A people's tribune. In Roman times, someone who held power to account."

Now consider his new, rude, raucous party. Best known for posters warning of an influx of Bulgarians, a former MEP who called women sluts – not a word you would ever hear from Mr Carswell's mouth – and a leader who, in carefully calculated titbits, calls for foreigners with HIV to be kept out the country, says he feels uncomfortable at hearing foreign voices on trains, warns against Romanian neighbours and admits much of his support is the ex-BNP vote.

At Ukip conference, the single loudest cheers came in response to a call to deport Afghan migrants who had entered Britain illegally. Mr Carswell's speech, on his vision of Britain as a free trading liberal nation, was met with warm but more restrained applause.

Mr Carswell insists you could not fit a cigarette paper between him and Mr Farage on policy, saying their biggest difference is a preference for McFlurrys versus beer. (Friends say Mr Carswell is not a regular drinker, celebrating last night with a cup of tea at home.) And they do agree on migration reform, leaving Europe and cutting taxes.

But for many voters, as Mr Carswell knows, Ukip is not about policy but identity.

Asked to defend Mr Farage on the foreigners-on-a-train and HIV remarks, he insisted tersely and repeatedly today that the comments had been "mischaracterised". Mr Carswell's father was a pioneering doctor who first diagnosed the disease in Africa, and he surely understands the need to remove stigma in order to prevent its spread.

But Mr Carswell revealed this afternoon he had sought extensive and specific assurances from Mr Farage that Ukip bans former members of hate groups (it insists it does).

Having grown up overseas, he added that he finds the notion of blind patriotism – 'my country, right or wrong' – as "bizarre".

He said he wished his daughter had been old enough to appreciate the modern, patriotic opening ceremony of the Olympic Games at which Tory MPs sneered, and wanted to grow up in a country free from anxieties over ethnicity because it has democratic control over migration.

Then I asked what he would do if he encountered racism in Ukip, and he said we'd spent a lot of time on the campaign trail together.

"You must have heard me dozens of times challenge people whose votes I wanted who expressed views that I thought were illiberal," he said.

"I do so respectfully, I did so determinedly, and I do so using arguments that I thought had traction. Every single time I tackled I those issues, I think I left behind voters who I think a) agreed with me, b) were reassured to hear that their pessimism was unjustified. I remember saying to someone who said something I disagreed with, hang on a second, we've got a shortage of GPs, and I know your GP was born in Egypt. And we could do more GPs in this area.

"So let's not blame outsiders for failures caused by our political insiders. I make that argument, I make it fiercely, and I make it where it counts, to voters. I have demonstrated that you can make those arguments. If you don't say what's populist, don't say what people automatically agree with, people will come with you if you make those arguments."

Perhaps Mr Carswell, despite explicitly ruling out a leadership bid, thinks through force of argument he can shave off the rough edges of his party. The more unsavoury outbursts, he has suggested, are an expression of frustration with a broken political system.

Sometimes, history shows, the radicals and the liberals do ride the populist tiger, and do bring down the system. But then, sometimes, the tiger eats them.

I could probably like the guy but  he is making the most classic mistake of the moderate right: laying down for the populist vile masses, thinking he can ride into power on their back and control them. That always fails. The mob always takes over. For most recent example, look at the Tea Party and what it has done to the Republicans.

[Sheilbh]

The Tea Party's the best thing about the GOP right now.

[The Larch]

The Tea Party's the best thing about the GOP right now.

Have you ever been told that your politics are fucking weird? 

Btw, check your private messages!

[garbon]

The Tea Party's the best thing about the GOP right now.

Have you ever been told that your politics are fucking weird? 

Btw, check your private messages!

He likes political spectacle.

[Razgovory]

They've sorta run out of gas.

[Sheilbh]

And you genuinely think that if the free movement of labour from Europe is stopped, they'll open up again to the rest of the world?

Yeah. We've cut visas to the rest of the world as EU immigration has increased. I think the opposite is also true, if people believed that there was control over European migration then we'd be easier for the rest of the world.

Also I think some of the anxiety about immigration is cultural - and, frankly, about Muslims - but I think the other bit is political. I don't think it's necessarily solely about volume, though that's probably caused a lot of it, I think it's about the idea that we don't have control over who is allowed to move here. I think that is causing a lot of distrust on the whole subject of immigration.

That would not be my assumption, but I have little in the way of specific knowledge of the UK so perhaps I'm wrong. Still, I'm curious if anyone is campaigning for closing off the inflow from Europe so they can open up more to Asia, Africa, and the Anglosphere?

The Eurosceptic free marketeering think tanks and libertarians like Carswell.

As I say I think a big issue is that politicians lie. Cameron promised to bring immigration into 'the tens of thousands not the hundreds of thousands' knowing that over a hundred thousand EU citizens move here every year. It was a nonsense promise that could never be kept, except by withdrawing from the EU, but it erodes people's trust in politicians and creates a sense of a system that's out of control. The same goes for Labour's previous history of tough talk while being one of only three countries to allow the 10 new member states in 2004 full access to our labour market (with Sweden and Ireland). They talked that down by saying that they only expected 50 000 people would come anyway, as it turned out about 500 000 did.

The other side of that is that there are very few politicians willing to be openly pro-immigration - usually the Mayor of London and oddballs like Carswell - but the policies they can or want to deliver are very open - as long as you're European.

It'd be interesting to see whether you'd have to shoot your own hand off to get our of the shackles.

It would hurt. But I worry that Europe right now seems to be getting less liberal, more inward looking, less interested in trade and choosing to endure at least one lost decade.

That's not the same proposition as when Britain joined in the early 70s, or even before the crisis.

Also shooting off your hand can sometimes be necessary. I think one of the Eurozone countries need to do it.

Uh... maybe? What does that have to do with anything?

It's just my feeling that Europe wants less and less to do with the world. I always remember this advert by the EU Commission from 2012 which, in the UK and US was perceived as a bit racist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SYwV9034kM
Aside from the racism I just found the idea that China, India and Brazil are threats kind of depressing. If that's what the EU's about then I'm not keen. Also, notable by their absence in that BRIC advert, Russia, an actual threat

So let me get this straight - the UK now wants to be out of the European Convention of Human Rights? One even Russia and Turkey are a party to? One only Belarus and Kazakhstan do not want? What the fuck is wrong with your country?

The Tories hate the ECHR and want to abolish the Human Rights Act for a British Bill of Rights too. It's incoherent and ignorant sadly.

I could probably like the guy but  he is making the most classic mistake of the moderate right: laying down for the populist vile masses, thinking he can ride into power on their back and control them. That always fails. The mob always takes over. For most recent example, look at the Tea Party and what it has done to the Republicans.

As I say the major difference between his views and yours - that I can see - is that he believes absolutely in democracy and that he's an optimist. See this review of his book iDemocracy:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9624860/Douglas-Carswell-How-technology-will-create-true-democracy.html

A non-physical business, for instance, can often decide pretty freely where, for the purposes of taxation, it wants to live. Naturally, it will choose benign jurisdictions. Governments can try to ban it from doing so, but they will either fail, or find that they are cutting off their nose to spite their face. The very idea of a "tax base", on which treasuries depend, wobbles when so much value lies in intellectual property and intellectual property is mobile. So taxes need to be flatter to keep their revenues up. If they are flatter, they will be paid by more people.

Therefore it becomes much harder for government to grow, since most people do not want to pay more.

Increasingly, money itself is subject to the same personal choice. There is now little physical difficulty in paying for things in currencies other than one's own. This allows people to decide which currency they wish to trust and use. So "fiat" money – the money created at the orders of a national treasury or the European Central Bank – may find that it has no means of commanding the confidence of the public. The trick of governments, from which we are all suffering acutely just now, is to debase the currency in order to postpone the bill. How much longer, asks the author, can that trick be played?

Lest anyone think that this is just personal greed cloaking itself in the language of freedom, Mr Carswell gives many examples of social rather than financial benefit. When he first became an MP in 2005, he writes, he dealt with many inquiries from the parents of children with special needs. They desperately needed his help to fight their way through the system. Then, in a matter of months, the flow dried up. This was because, once most families had the internet, they learnt how to share the know-how required to fight their cases. Mr Carswell was the middle man they simply didn't need any more: he was delighted to be made redundant.
...
In this new world, our political parties ("a two-and-half-horse race") scarcely begin to reflect the variety of people's wishes and views. The bigger the state, the less able it is to respond to this new environment, and therefore the less likely to survive. The biggest such state in this part of the world is the European Union. In the face of the digital revolution, its gigantism is its doom.

Also I don't know where you get the sense that cutting welfare is bad politics in Britain. Welfare is one of the Tories strongest issues, because they want to cut it and go on about scroungers abusing the system. Also see any of the best selling papers. It's also a big part of UKIP's vision. I'd argue far bigger scapegoats than anyone else are those on benefits.

Have you ever been told that your politics are fucking weird? 

I don't agree with them (generally)

But I think anyone supporting the Republican establishment's weird. They've lost the popular vote in five of the six last Presidential elections. They've got a 1986 policy platform preserved in red, white and blue aspic. This ain't the establishment of Ike, Rockefeller and Nixon. It's Romney, Rove and Cantor. They're intimately compromised by lobbyists, don't so much have policy suggestions as oral history and, worst of all, they're not very good at winning things. Who wouldn't want to see them smashed?

He likes political spectacle.

That's why I love your wonderful Barnumish Presidential elections.

There's no spectacle in internal GOP politics. But I think the most interesting thinking going on right now and all the intellectual vigour is happening on the right and among the Tea Partiers.

I think the sad/worrying thing is that there's nothing similar on the left.

Btw, check your private messages!

Done.