The Platform of No Policy

Possibly the funniest single moment of my entire student career was at a hustings for the election of members of the National Union of Students executive, when one of the SDP members of the NUS exec, Mark Hatton, made an unfortunate slip of the tongue.

Those who were around at the time will remember that the SDP was often accused of having no policies.

It was Mark Hatton's turn to respond to a question about a problem which had arisen because NUS had a policy of "No Platform for racists and fascists" enabling various people to get themselves and NUS into trouble by banning other people who they accused of being racists and fascists. At about this time one member college, - Sunderland poly as it then was - bought into the slogan that "Zionism = Racism" and took the offensive and ridiculous decision that that meant they could and should ban the college Jewish society in the name of anti-racism !!!" Needless to say this caused outrage and candidates for the NUS executive were asked about this at the hustings.

As everyone present instantly realised, what Mark Hatton had meant to say began with the words

"The problem is the policy of no platform."

Unfortunately for the SDP what he actually said was "The problem is the platform of no policy ..."

and that was as far as he got because everyone in the room, including his fellow SDP members, spent the next two or three minutes rolling around helpless with laughter.

Nearly thirty years later, another political party is going into a national British election, in which some people speculate that they might top the poll, which really does have a "platform of no policy."

I make no apology for repeating the following clip, an extract from the Daily Politics Show interview in which UKIP leader Nigel Farage disavowed all previous UKIP manifestoesand policies, including those which were still up on their website, and announced that UKIP would publish a new manifesto after this year's European Elections.

Which means they have no manifesto or policy in place now, and won't have at the time of this May's elections unless they change their minds.

So anyone trying to decide whether to vote UKIP this May has to do so on the basis of the broadest of outlines about what the party stands for.

UKIP - the party with a platform of no policy.



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