Plan B Forum

Voter support for Britain's anti-European Union UK Independence Party (UKIP) is at a record high according to one opinion poll on Sunday (13 , reflecting growing approval of the party ahead of European elections next month.

The rising popularity of UKIP, which calls for an immediate withdrawal from the EU and tighter immigration laws, threatens to split the vote for Prime Minister David Cameron at European parliament elections in May and a national election in 2015.

UKIP's profile has been raised by the upcoming European elections on May 22, when polls suggest it could beat Cameron's party into third place.

A ComRes poll of voting intentions for next year's national election put UKIP on 20 percent - up four percentage points at their highest in the four-year history of the poll. Cameron's Conservatives fell three points to 29 percent.

The main opposition Labour party were steady at 35 percent, while the Liberal Democrats, junior partners in the coalition government, sank 2 percentage points to a new low of 7 percent.

A second poll by Opinium on Sunday showed UKIP three percentage points higher, at 18 percent, while another survey released last week gave the party 15 percent - matching its highest ever rating in polls conducted by Ipsos Mori.

The ComRes/ITV News poll put support for Ukip at 38% for the European elections – an increase of eight points since the beginning of the month. Labour is down three points on 27% while the Tories trail in third place on 18%, down four points. The Liberal Democrats remain unchanged on 8%.

Tom Mludzinski, the head of political polling at ComRes, said: "Ukip look set to pull off something spectacular at next month's European elections."

UKIP begins expulsion proceedings against two members

UKIP has today set in train expulsion procedures against two members after an internal investigation found that both had links to organisations incompatible with party membership.

The first was discovered to have been a member of the BNP from 2005-2010, the second to have been a donor to the EDL.

Both men still have the right of an appeal in writing to the NEC and for that reason their identities will not be disclosed at this time.

A UKIP spokesman said: "UKIP is a non-racist, non-sectarian party and we are determined to uphold those values. Part of that process is maintaining vigilance against the possibility of infiltration either on an organised or individual basis by those who do not subscribe to our values."

So basically, to summarize, what has happened here that explains the UKIPs soaring popularity, is a failure of the political establishment to meet the concerns of the people, coupled with a political organization that has crafted it's message in such a way that it can effectively capitalize on that failure.

dgs49 wrote:
The problem is immigrants who detest English culture, society and traditions, but want to take advantage of its freedoms (when compared to their native country), the English welfare state, and potential for prosperity, while living in closed-off enclaves, intentionally cut off from the rest of society.

Britain Expands Power to Strip Citizenship From Terrorism Suspects

LONDON — Britain has passed legislation that allows the government to strip terrorism suspects of their citizenship even if it renders them stateless, taking the country’s already sweeping powers to revoke nationality a step further.

After four months of wrangling, the House of Lords, the Parliament’s upper chamber, approved on Monday a clause in a new immigration bill that removes a previous restriction on leaving individuals without citizenship. The bill became law on Wednesday, after receiving royal assent.

Britain has been one of the few Western countries that can revoke citizenship and its associated rights from dual citizens, even native-born Britons, if they are suspected or convicted of acts of terrorism or disloyalty. The government has stepped up its use of this tactic in recent years. In two cases, suspects have subsequently been killed in American drone strikes.

The new rules will broaden these so-called deprivation powers to include Britons who have no second nationality, provided that they were naturalized as adults. If the home secretary deems that their citizenship is “seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom,” it can be taken away, effective immediately, without a public hearing. A suspect whose citizenship rights have been stripped has 28 days to appeal to a special immigration court.

Earlier this year, lawmakers in the upper house rejected a version of the provision, questioning its effectiveness in improving national security and voicing concerns about the moral implications of leaving people without the basic rights associated with citizenship. But after a number of concessions by the government, the clause was approved by 286 votes to 193.

Home Secretary Theresa May has agreed that the new power should be reviewed every three years by a government-appointed expert and said she would use the provision only if she had “reasonable grounds for believing” a suspect is able to obtain the citizenship of another country.

Some lawmakers questioned whether the provision would work in practice. “Would another country seriously consider giving nationality, even to someone who might have the ability to apply for nationality of that country, if it knew that British citizenship had been removed on the grounds that the person was believed to be in some way linked to, or to condone, international terrorism?” asked Helena Kennedy, a member of the House of Lords for the opposition Labour Party.

Under previous legislation, 42 people since 2006 have been stripped of their British citizenship, 20 of them last year, according to a freedom of information request filed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a research organization at City University London that first drew attention to the practice in December 2012.

The new legislation appears to be inspired in part by a specific case in which the government did not get its way. A spokesman for the Home Office, John Taylor, said this week that the case of Hilal al-Jedda, an Iraqi-born naturalized Briton who lost his British nationality in 2007 after being detained in Iraq on suspicion of smuggling explosives, had highlighted a “loophole” in the law.

Out of 15 appeals, the case of Mr. Jedda is the only one to have succeeded. Britain’s Supreme Court ruled in October that Mr. Jedda could not be deprived of his British nationality because it would make him stateless: Iraq bans dual citizenship and canceled Mr. Jedda’s passport in 2000 when he was naturalized in Britain. The British government was forced to reinstate his citizenship on Oct. 9, 2013.

But on Nov. 1, Mr. Jedda was stripped of his nationality a second time, and in January the Home Office rushed before Parliament the amendment allowing deprivation even if it results in statelessness.

Eurosceptic and far-right parties have seized ground in elections to the European parliament, in what France's PM called a "political earthquake".

While the French National Front and UK Independence Party both appear headed for first place, the three big centrist blocs in parliament all lost seats.

The outcome means a greater say for those who want to cut back the EU's powers, or abolish it completely.

But EU supporters will be pleased that election turnout was slightly higher.

It was 43.1%, according to provisional European Parliament figures. That would be the first time turnout had not fallen since the previous election - but would only be an improvement of 0.1%

Highlights
(based on exit polls/provisional results)

France National Front storm to victory - 26%, 25 seats; Centre-right UMP 21%; President Hollande's Socialists a poor third with 14% - lowest ever EP score

Britain Eurosceptic UKIP heading for first place, with 29%. Conservatives and Labour about 23% each. Greens beating Lib Dems.

Italy Centre-left PM Matteo Renzi scores strong 40%, fending off ex-comic Beppe Grillo's anti-establishment Five Star with 22%, and ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia with 16%

Germany Angela Merkel wins another election - 36% for her Christian Union, 27% for the centre-left SPD. Eurosceptic AfD score strong 7%.

Greece Early results show far-left Syriza on 26%, PM Antonis Samaras' New Democracy on 23%. Far-right Golden Dawn set to get three MEPs, with 9%

Lord Jim wrote:I expect there will be more of this sort of legislation, as next year's elections draw nearer and the Conservatives (and the Liberals) try to win back supporters they have lost to the UKIP...

Ministers are drawing up plans for a new crackdown on migrants’ access to benefits to try to win back disaffected voters from Ukip. The new push, which could see unemployed EU nationals kicked out of the country after just six months, was announced yesterday amid continued fallout from the Ukip surge in last week’s elections. Currently, new arrivals cannot claim benefits for the first three months in the country followed by six months in which they can

David Cameron warns Britain risks walking out of EU if Jean-Claude Juncker takes top job

David Cameron has suggested that appointing Jean-Claude Juncker to lead the European Commission will leave Britain “drifting” towards leaving the European Union.

The Prime Minister made the warning about Mr Juncker, an arch-federalist, as Barack Obama made an impassioned plea for Britain to remain in the EU.

On the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the US president invoked the shared history of Britain and the US during the Second World War to encourage the UK to remain engaged with its European neighbours.

Mr Cameron has used a meeting of the G7 in Brussels to attempt to block Mr Juncker’s candidacy.

In a bitter, private meeting yesterday, Mr Juncker complained that only two EU leaders had called him in the past week to express allegiance, leaving him scrabbling to find support in the European Parliament. “I have heard nothing,” he said, according to leaked minutes. “I will not be forced to get on my knees before the British.”

IN THE end, there was no big upset. Despite a surge of support for their nemesis, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the Conservatives won the Newark by-election on June 5th with ease. This was in a sense historic—the prosperous south Nottinghamshire constituency has now given the Tories their first by-election victory while in office since 1989. But it will have done little, for all that, to quell Tory nerves set jangling by UKIP’s rise.

The Tory candidate in Newark, Robert Jenrick, won with a robust majority of 7,000 votes, despite the hostile circumstances in which the election was held. It was occasioned by the resignation of his Tory predecessor, Philip Mercer, after he was accused of corruption. It also came hard after UKIP’s triumphs in local and European elections this month, on a platform of bashing mainstream politicians, chiefly at the Tories’ expense. No wonder the Tories had flooded Newark with MPs and ministers during the campaign. Each was required by their party whips to visit the constituency three times—ensuring, local wags quipped, the biggest presence of parliamentarians in Newark since the mid-17th century, when the market town at the centre of the constituency was an important battlefield in the English Civil War.

Losing Newark to UKIP would have been a disaster for the Tories. Avoiding that outcome is therefore a relief. It will add to an existing, albeit rather modest, upbeat mood in the party ranks, fuelled by more clement recent opinion polls and a sense that, despite its electoral kicking from UKIP, the Tory local and European results were less bad than many had expected. Yet Mr Jenrick’s majority is still much less than than 16,000-vote margin Mr Mercer enjoyed, and that is again chiefly UKIP’s doing.

Despite running a ramshackle campaign, in which the party’s charismatic leader Nigel Farage barely featured, the populist party came a strong second, winning over a quarter of the vote. That is not grounds to suggest, as some commentators have, that UKIP’s march is over. On the contrary, it leaves the party on course to spoil the Conservative vote in less secure Tory-held seats at next year’s general election—and perhaps pick up one or two of its own. Not least because there is no chance of the Tories replicating their mass convergence on Newark anywhere next year. Indeed, the fact that they were forced to rely on the campaigning skills of so many Tory MPs was an admission of how hollowed out the party machine has become.

Labour, the surprise under-performer in the European polls, extended its disappointing form, coming a distant third in Newark with a reduced vote-share. But the Liberal Democrats were the chief victims of this by-election. Battered and bruised in the European and local elections, the junior partner in Britain’s government suffered another conspicuous humiliation. It came sixth, behind the Greens and a local hospital campaigner, and lost its deposit.

In a bitter, private meeting yesterday, Mr Juncker complained that only two EU leaders had called him in the past week to express allegiance, leaving him scrabbling to find support in the European Parliament. “I have heard nothing,” he said, according to leaked minutes. “I will not be forced to get on my knees before the British.”