Thankyou so much, Britain First

OK – we were mistaken. We admit it. Mea Culpa. We got it wrong.

All this time we’ve believed that Britain First was a racist, bigoted organisation run by leaders who were more interested in profit than politics. We thought Golding and Fransen were really just bumbling political lightweights with no clue how to influence anything beyond the few hundred genuine followers lurking among the bought likes and foreign (non-voting) fundamentalists who egged them on.

How wrong we were

It seems that Paul and Jayda were being far more subtle than that. Their task wasn’t to spearhead the rise of fascism in the UK after all. They had an altogether different agenda. Britain First was set up to stop fascism – yes, that’s right – it’s not a typo.

Britain First exists purely to discredit UKIP!

Think about it….

When Britain First began UKIP was just beginning to be noticed after around 20 years in the political wilderness. Nobody had really heard of Farage’s little bunch of nationalists until then. What’s worse – with the austerity programme already biting hard they were even starting to attract some support. Something had to be done.

That ‘something’ was Britain First!

What better way to expose the awful truth behind UKIP than to satirise it? The British people have always loved satire and Britain First really has been comedy gold. The Golding & Fransen show could have rivalled any comic double act and therein lay their success.

These comedic geniuses satirised racism and religious intolerance so thoroughly that the name ‘Britain First’ is now synonymous with bigotry and small-minded stupidity throughout the land. They made their brand toxic to voters and then…

A stroke of political genius

They associated themselves with UKIP.

Stage one

First they tested the waters with a mock campaign in Rochester & Strood. Nobody ever expected Britain First to keep their deposit but they needed to gauge just how hated they were. The result was spectacular. Never has a ‘political party’ (even a comedy one) been so hated since Mosley’s ‘British Union of Fascists’. Jayda “Dutchy” Fransen became the most despised woman in British politics whilst simultaneously remaining the biggest joke. That’s quite a combination and it took some really hard work to pull it off. But, with Golding’s publicity skills and Dowson’s money behind her she managed. Britain First had reached first base with spectacular success.

Stage two was easy….

After that all Dutchy had to do was get herself photographed with a few UKIP campaigners whilst Golding told everyone to vote UKIP (even whilst Fransen was standing in the same election). Once again BF combined comedy and apparent stupidity with the more serious political task of undermining UKIP through association.

Once the task of associating themselves with UKIP was done – once they established the link in the eyes of the public all they had to do was keep on reinforcing it.

• Acting as self-appointed bouncers who harassed people outside UKIP meetings was pure genius.
• Invading office blocks to have a go at anti UKIP performance artists was brilliance on stilts.
• But the real cracker was publishing the details of an anti UKIP activist whilst followers (or possibly their own sock-puppet accounts) issued threats and in one case even offered a reward to whoever ‘glassed’ her.

The result…

Association with all this thuggishness sounded UKIP’s death knell. Try as he might (and he did try) Farage just couldn’t get the electorate to believe that UKIP wasn’t really in bed with Britain First. That might have worked if Golding hadn’t repeatedly told people to ignore UKIP’s denials. The assertion that Farage had to say that but really didn’t mean it was just genius. After that the association between UKIP and Britain First was just reinforced with every denial.

So well done Britain First. You did it. If it wasn’t for you, UKIP might have gained more than a single parliamentary seat. In fact, before Rochester and Strood (when you first began smearing your own toxic brand all over their purple pamphlets) they looked likely to gain considerably more. The liberally-minded, non-racist, tolerant citizens of UK owe you a debt of gratitude for your sterling work in keeping UKIP out of Westminster.

Thankyou so much, Britain First!