Eurovision Triumph

Well, it's all over for another year.  "Gay Christmas" came and went last night with 125 million viewers across the continent.  Initial estimates suggest at least 126 million of these were gay men.  Families at home, bars, and drunken Eurovision parties tuned in for the annual smörgåsbord of camp fabulousness.  It's the yearly celebration of how deliciously bonkers we Europeans truly are. 

It was a delight, for many reasons.  One of these is that show has gone way past the stage of having only cult "irony" value for the sheer car-crash value of the horrendous acts and dreadful costumes.  The Terry Wogan piss-take era is now firmly behind us, with some arguably very good chunes indeed.  Heck, I wasted £4.74 on iTunes this morning frantically downloading some of them, so they must be good.  

Then we had the sets: Ukraine deserves a special mention inventing a whole new sexual fetish.  This involves putting a totally fit guy dressed in a shirt and tie in a giant hamster wheel and asking him to run round and round for you.  If you haven't yet tried it, I recommend you do.  When gay Twitter discovered Hamster Man's amazingly sexy name was <ROMAN> it frankly imploded for several hours.  Well, I had to lie down for a bit anyway.

TeamWurst

Eurovision 2014 will go down in history, though, for its result.  Unless you're in some distant village in Outer Mongolia with yak mail being the only connection with the rest of the world, you'll know that a bearded drag queen from Austria, Conchita Wurst, took first prize.  She didn't just win - she romped home with a massive 290 votes. 

Conchita is exquisitely beautiful.  She has a figure to die for.  In her own words, she's a "singer in a fabulous dress, with great hair, and a beard."  The new Queen of Europe is a bearded lady.  Let's pause for a moment to consider her name: yes, it actually means "Pussy Sausage" in a combination of Spanish and German if you were wondering.

The person behind Conchita isn't transgender, unlike Sharon Cohen (Dana International) who took the Eurovision prize for Israel in 1998.  Conchita is the stage persona of a 25 year old guy called Tom Neuwirth, who's from grew up in a provincial town of 3000 people in Styria.  He's a gay man in drag.  With a beard.  

Russian politician Vitaly Milonov, one of the architects of the country's "gay propaganda" law last month called Eurovision a hotbed of sodomy and called for a Russian boycott of the show.  He further called for the "pervert" Conchita to be excluded, and labelled her an "obvious transvestite".  Regarding the latter claim, Vitaly, in other news bear shit was this morning discovered in the woods outside St Petersburg. 

The Votes

Ten million people dialed in across the continent last night to vote in, to add their voice to the professional jury (since 2009 voting is 50/50 jury and popular vote).  What they did was to confirm that this, our continent, is a far more liberal and tolerant place that many ever thought it was.  Let's be honest: Conchita's song was fair to good.  It wasn't a stand out winner if simply heard on the radio.  It was the act that made this phenomenal: last night she looked a million Euro.  

I watched a fascinating voting pattern: one after the other the ten countries with same sex marriage joined #TeamWurst, giving her full or nearly full marks.  Belgium, Netherlands, UK, Spain, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Portugal: not one didn't do so.  Countries where same sex is very much on the cards (Ireland and Finland) also joined them, as did some other countries you might not have expected to hand over the douze points: Hungary, Greece and Israel.  

Moreover, if you strip out the jury votes and simply look at the popular votes, Conchita's popularity amongst the people of Europe was even more resounding.  Her score goes up from 290 votes (a margin of 52 over the runner up, Netherlands) to 306 votes (86 votes clear).  The juries are there for very good reason and the official score is all that matters - but what's clear from this is a reinforcement of the fact that people across Europe loved her.

 

It just really struck me: is there anywhere else that would fall over itself to vote for a bearded drag queen if they had such a contest?  I can't imagine this happening in a million years in the USA for example.  
 

No Politics

The Eurovision Song Contest is older than the EU.  It was created just 11 years after the Second World War.  The armies of Hitler (that other Austrian whose facial hair is really rather famous) and Stalin had decimated Europe.  It was set up to bring the people of Europe together: quite the tall order and amazingly idealistic given the time.  Political statements are expressly forbidden. 

2014 is the year of anniversaries.  It's 100 years since the heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated at Sarajevo, plunging Europe into the hell of WW1. It's 75 years since Reichskristallnacht, when synagogues were burnt across Germany (and Austria): the precursor to both WW2 and the holocaust.  It's 70 years since the D-Day landings and hope spread out over the continent like a slow-burning flame from the beaches of Normandy.  It's also 70 years since the failed assassination attempt on Hitler by aristocratic German officers who paid with their lives.  They had proposed a union of democratic European nations, with its capital in Vienna, the seat of the old Holy Roman Empire.  It's 25 years since the Berlin Wall, the physical symbol of division across the continent, came crashing down, and Austria resumed its natural place at the cross-roads of a Europe that has been healing ever since.

WHAT symbolism then, that Conchita won this year, and next year Eurovision will take place in Vienna.  Rainbow flags were flying everywhere in the audience last night.  Conchita could not say what she wanted to because of the no-politics rule, but everyone knew exactly what she meant when she said:

"This is dedicated to everyone who believes in a future of peace and freedom.  You know who you are.  We are unity and we are unstoppable."

Yes, Conchita, we are.  We are LGBT Europeans and the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of straight friends and supporters right across the continent. 

So Proud to be European 

What a different place this continent of ours has become.  It's so easy to forget when you hear constantly the repugnant views of xenophobic, homophobic politicians reported across Europe and on our own doorstep (yes, UKIP, I'm looking at you).  

The vote was a huge f*ck you of liberal values over the dying voice of social conservatism.  It was an affirmation of anyone who has been different and been stigmatised because of it.  It was the personal triumph of a schoolboy from Gmunden who grew up fancying other boys and wanting to wear frocks. 

It was a peaceful, democratic, liberal Europe slowly but surely taking the lead dragging the world into a new century, exactly 100 years after it had plunged it into militaristic chaos and destruction.  It's a new Europe that has voted for marriage equality in an increasing number of countries.  It's by no means without its problems, but in so many respects, it's just such a great place to be. 

I was so, so proud to be European last night.  What a great side of people this brought out, and what an amazing, symbolically significant thing a camp song contest can be, particularly when a bearded lady wins it.  Who'd ever have imagined it :-)

UKIP: Our Last Hope

What more can be said about the apparent phenomenal rise of UKIP in the polls?

2004: something new

10 years ago I was on holiday in Poland and remember the shocked German news reports stating that UKIP had obtained 16% of the vote.  They had returned 12 MEPs.  "These aren't just Eurosceptics" they informed the audience: "They've decided they're not sceptical: they want to leave the EU."  The rest of the EU were well used to decades of Tory Eurosceptics attempting to scupper anything that came out of Europe, but this was something new.

The thought of leaving the EU seemed ridiculous, just at the point where most of the continent was celebrating the accession of 10 new countries.  Yet here we are in 2014 with poll predictions of upwards of 30% of the vote for UKIP, and our PM pledging an in/out referendum on the EU if the Tories win the general election in 2015.

Since 2004 UKIP has gone from a single issue anti-EU protest party to a catch-all repository for the disaffected right wing vote.  The droning on about EU issues seem to have been replaced to a large extent by a much broader anti-immigration platform.  Anti-islam feeling runs high and a dislike of anything not "English" (its appeal is specifically strong in England, not in the rest of the UK). 

The language of UKIP supporters

I'm very interested by the language that UKIP supporters use on social media, and the psyche of fear that appears to motivate them.  Much of it is incredibly dramatic, particularly when discussing immigration.  The country is "overrun".  Schools and hospitals are "full".  The "indigenous people" are being "pushed out".  England is "smouldering beneath ready to explode".  Wow, is it really?

When you fly over this green and pleasant land of ours, it's hard to tally the rhetoric with the reality.  Most of the country isn't built on.  No, actually that's wrong.  Almost ALL the country is not built on.  Any guesses as to the exact figure? 60%? 30%? 15%? Actually only 2.27% of England's land is built on.  "Britain's mental picture of its landscape is far removed from reality".  It's actually a remarkably peaceful, green, spacious, still comparably well-off country.

It doesn't matter though: you can reason about how immigration is a necessary thing for an economy, and an incredibly positive thing for a society.  You can talk about the financial contribution that immigrants make in fiscal terms.  You can point out that we have huge amounts of space and we're not about to sink into the North Sea under the weight of millions of newly arrived Romanians.

You simply hit a brick wall of willful, entrenched ignorance, fear and always an underlying belief that the English are somehow superior.  It's as if decades of scare-mongering in the right wing tabloid press has finally soaked in and nothing will dissipate it.  It's pure emotional reaction and the language reflects it.  Let's not doubt it, though: there's real anger, and there's real fear amongst many of these people.  A peril has been identified that goes way beyond the original target of the EU.

Farage: Our Last Hope

Having identified an apparent terrible peril the country faces, the next step is to suggest a solution.  The country has been let down by the traditional parties, but there is an alternative.  Much of the rhetoric I've observed demonstrates an almost Messianic like belief in UKIP to solve matters.

UKIP's policies seem quite ill-defined and apparently to mean many things to many different people.  Is it an anti-establishment party, a libertarian party, or a pro-City, authoritarian right wing party?  In some respects it doesn't matter.  It's just important to note that for some of those 30%+ voters it's not simply a protest party: it's the solution to all their woes.

The party is of course inexorably linked with the personality of its leader, Nigel Farage.  It's he who's on the TV endlessly.  I doubt few general members of the public could name anyone else in the party (except perhaps Roger Helmer MEP).  There's a cult like worship of the affable chap in his tweed jackets, enjoying a warm pint of English beer.  He's a man of the people.  He will lead us to a better place.  He is the "Leader" - note the capitalised L - who is the only politician who truly believes in Britain and the British people.

A Historical Comparison

I'm actually both fascinated and terrified by the mindset that chants that UKIP is "needed urgently" and that UKIP "will prevail".  For someone who's historically aware (and in my case, half-German) it's genuinely highly reminiscent of the posters the National Socialists used in the 1920s.  The country apparently faced catastrophic danger and only one party, and one man, could save it.

I'm not even going to make any Godwin's law type apologies when I post this image (which actually doesn't apply: it says that as an online argument between two or more parties grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.  I'm talking to myself here, not arguing with anyone :p).  If you don't know what it means, it's simply: "Our last hope: Hitler".  It encapsulates so much in one sentence.

Just to be clear, I do not for a moment think that UKIP heralds an overthrow of democracy and the advent of the 4th Reich.  It would be silly to suggest it does.  Thankfully, the parameters of European politics in 2014 are far more narrowly defined than those of Europe in the 1920s.  Almost every country is a fully functioning democracy.  Parties are generally grouped far closer to the centre than they were almost 100 years ago: the extreme far right and far left generally do not have the appeal they did back then. 

Yet there are valid comparisons to be made here in simple terms of the rhetoric.  When 47% of people ticked the "NSDAP" box in Weimar Germany they didn't know what was coming next: we only appreciate with horror the significance in retrospect.  They weren't voting for the holocaust.  They were voting amongst other things for "national revival" and German jobs.  Remember, the very mainstream Daily Mail in this country was praising the Nazis right up until 1938.  Their posters, their speeches and their policies attracted millions and seemed eminently reasonable to many.

According to some within UKIP,  the country is "smouldering beneath ready to explode".  Many feel that the traditional parties have failed us.  One party is the answer, one party can save us, one party is needed.  There's a dramatic desperation, an urgency, and there's a feeling that it's now or never.  There are clear and unfortunate parallels.  The Messianic belief that Nigel is our saviour, the only "Leader" who cares about his people, and can deliver his country, almost literally screams  "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" (One People, one Nation, one Leader).   I do wonder whether the people tweeting and re-tweeting the above are so historically unaware that this doesn't even occur to them,  if is it subliminal, or if for some it is quite deliberate.  Personally, it sends shudders down my back to see a "Leader" referred to in these terms.  No wonder people are starting to refer online to the man jokingly as Nigel Führage.

It doesn't matter that the threat to Germany in the 1920s/30s from World Jewry was as imagined as the threat is to England in 2014from Islam, "Labour fascists", gays or immigrants.  As much as I hate this government, I really don't think the country is on the precipice of economic collapse and disaster caused by immigrants, the EU, Islam or anything else.  It's rather a nice place to be in general, actually.  It could be far better still, and I hope it will become so: that won't be achieved by shutting out outsiders and becoming a nation of xenophobes. What UKIP has done is in some ways not identified a fear, so much as to create one.  There was no "Jewish problem" in Germany in 1933.  There is no "immigration crisis" in the UK in 2014.

What UKIP has achieved

By way of further historical comparison, UKIP has come from nowhere in a very short time and promises a political earthquake.  UKIP's  aim in the European elections is to send political representatives to a forum it despises and aims to destroy.  Other far right, yet more overtly racist parties in Europe promise similar.  In May 1928 the Nazis were polling just 2.8%.  By March 1933 they had used the democratic process to take power in the Reichstag, an institution that they hated, which they then destroyed from within, by passing the Enabling Act.  A 4th Reich isn't staring us in the eyes, but this should give pause for thought.

The effects of the UK leaving the EU would be enormous not just for us, but for the whole of the continent.  It would be one of the great events of early 21st century history, with no certainty whatsoever of the outcome.  UKIP has already succeeded where a generation of Tory Eurosceptics have failed, in getting the Prime Minister to put this on the political agenda.  They have done this by driving home fears about immigration and the danger it is doing, without even a single MP.  Dismiss them as "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists", Mr Cameron, but they've managed this quite impressive and worrying achievement.

What's more, instead of the Tories and Labour standing up to counter UKIP's rhetoric, they're leaving it virtually unchallenged.  Instead, they're falling over themselves trying to find ways of accommodating concerns about immigration out of fear of losing votes.  Again, quite impressive achievement there, UKIP.

What's the Solution?

It clearly isn't enough to mock Farage, UKIP and its supporters and hope they will go away*.  They won't.  It seems impossible to get through a positive message on immigration and the EU (yet we must keep trying).  Highlighting yet another story about a virulently anti-gay, anti-Islam or overtly racist UKIP supporter isn't working.  They appear daily now, Farage dismisses them as "I don't even know who this person is", they're suspended, and we move on.  It seems that it would require a UKIP supporter to suggest genocide to grab some genuine attention.  We all know the party is full of freaks, extremists, racists and idiots.  That doesn't make them go away.

Both the press and we have created this situation.  The Green Party actually has an MP, yet it never seems to secure any airtime.  Switch on the TV and Farage's grinning mug is everywhere to be seen.  He is given a disproportionate amount of airtime.  UKIP is given a disproportionate amount of attention on Twitter, by me and by plenty of others.

Our "last hope" is to get out and vote in the EU elections.  If you hate everything that UKIP stands for, and think that it reflects the basest and ugliest side of this country, these are very important elections to show that.  Analysts predict that many UKIP votes will revert to the main parties in the general elections.  However, UKIP will have a huge added claim to airtime and attention if it achieves the largest share of the vote on 22 May.  Whether you're a Tory, LibDem, Green or Labour supporter please get out there - one thing we know is that the UKIP voters will be out in force.  They're the ones who have more interest than anyone in voting in these elections.



Finally....

Look at this exchange. 

If you're not aware of the details, 40,000 political prisoners were held in the Santiago national stadium during the far-right Pinochet military coup of 1973.  Prisoners were given yellow, black or red discs.  Those with red had no chance of survival.  A total of 3000 "leftists" were murdered under the General's rule and a further 1000 disappeared without trace.

As my friend Matt Leys pointed out, it's really rather a leap to go from remarking that UKIP is homophobic, sexist and xenophobic, to thinking that Dave Jones is considering gunning them all down.

I mentioned the dramatic, emotional language of many UKIP supporters earlier.  The woman is not some random UKIP supporter.  She's a UKIP's London region MEP candidate and Southwark UKIP chair.  Do you really want her to be elected as an MEP on a package of around £115,000?  I don't.




* As fun as it clearly is



POSTSCRIPT

It's always very difficult to write a post that makes any comparison to the Third Reich, no matter how defined and limited the comparison (i.e here, to the rhetoric of some of his supporters).  The magnitude of the horrors that regime represented leave you thinking "no I'm just being a bit silly and I'm imagining all this" ...  Then you catch up on a story from Channel 4 News that reveal a letter showing concerns about Farage's fascism and racism at school and his marching through a quiet Sussex village late at night shouting Hitler Youth songs.  And you just shake your head.

The Union Jack

I was at home visiting my mother in Hampshire this weekend and noticed several people in her area had put up 15 foot flag poles with Union Jacks* on them.  To put it in geographic/social context: it's an affluent, middle class area: a massive suburban sprawl of massively overpriced late 60s bungalows that always returns a Tory MP with a huge majority.  It was Thatcher heartland, though since the "glory days" of the 80s I've noticed the area looking a lot more down at heel than it once did.

The sight of the flags (there were several in short distance of each other) evoked a feeling of mild repulsion in me.  "Mild repulsion" is quite a strong reaction.  Why?  Well, I'm afraid I just don't believe someone goes to the length and expense of putting up a 15 foot permanent flagpole in their garden unless they want to send out a very deliberate message.  It's not, in my opinion, and in this context, a neutral message.  It makes me think, rightly or wrongly that a xenophobe or racist lives in the house.

Union Jack Flying Outside Bungalow

What's Wrong with Our Flag?

Absolutely nothing, per se.  It's an attractive, eye-catching design.  Subjectively it's much more pleasant than say Albania's, which is quite rubbish.  The colours clash on that one.  The Union Jack looks great on British Airways tail-fins.  It looks lovely emblazoned on the Team GB Olympic uniform.  It looks even better on Tom Daley's trunks.  Yes, there's a mixed colonial past associated with it, which I understand evokes reactions, but not having experienced this time myself that aspect is pretty much absent for me.  It's more recent general associations for me are connected to "Cool Britannia".

But what matters is the context.  A Union Jack displayed on top of a building in Whitehall is what you expect and I've absolutely no issue with it.  During the Diamond Jubilee, I put up Union Jack bunting outside my home: I remember thinking that the village decked out like this was a fun, joyful display of celebration.   Likewise, a St George's flag flying on the church in the village is part of our landscape and tradition.  When you see a car bedecked in them with aggressive, chanting football fans inside the flag carries a different meaning.  It's not a simple case of I hate the flag: it's about the context and the intent of the display.

Jubilee Bunting. Yes, I was one of THOSE people

We are not a country, like say Switzerland, Denmark or Sweden, where national flags are to be seen routinely all over the country on private properties.   Because there are so many of them there you don't tend to make any sort of judgement about the people flying them.  It's part of the national culture.  Here they are a rarity.  I just cannot imagine any middle of the road person who realises the benefits that immigration brings with it hoisting a bloody great Union Jack up in their front garden.   That covers Labour supporters, Tory supporters and people of all social backgrounds.

I was born in this country, I am British, I am white, I am blond haired and blue eyed.  My father served 23 years in the army and fought in 3 armed conflicts.  My brother was in the army.  My grandfather served in the Boer War, First World War, and in the home guard during the Second World War.   Yet I found these flags outside people's houses mildly threatening and mildly aggressive.  They say to me "we don't want anyone who's not like us around here".   It makes me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.

That's my view.  I might be right about the flag fliers' motives or I might be wrong, but I know I'm not alone in it.  The National Front and the BNP have permanently sullied the flag of this country and it's a rare occasion (such as the Diamond Jubilee or on top of a government building) when it carries neutral associations.  Anyone growing up in the 70s remembers the chant "There ain't no black in the Union Jack".  It's the far right that has created this situation, not me.

UKIP Pile On

I therefore tweeted something this weekend along the lines of "when I see a Union Jack outside a house, I wonder if it's UKIP or BNP who lives there". 

Any regular user of Twitter knows that there's a body of UKIP fanatics who have a permanent search out against their beloved party, as well as any mention of Nigel Führage's name.   Within moments a conversation I was having with a friend was interrupted and I was hit with this charming invitation to his 1200 followers to send me abuse:

True to form, and confirming to me in large part everything I'd assumed about the type of people who do put these flag poles up in their gardens, I was called "scum", told that I was "everything that's wrong with this country", "obv. NOT British", that if I object to flying my own flag I should "go home"; and if I don't like it it, I knew "where the exit is" etc.

One guy said he flew the Union Jack to show his support for a "relative" serving his country.   Funny enough, my Father, (a Tory) who actually fought for this country and risked his life, didn't feel the need to shove a bloody great flag pole up in our front garden.  I'm actually sure would have found it unbearably crass.  Likewise, he was the last person to become a fascist about people wearing or not wearing poppies around Remembrance Sunday. 

Nevertheless, despite my army background, I was now a traitor who should leave the country for making a judgement about a Union Jack outside a bungalow.

Snobbish Judgements

Am I a snob for tweeting what I did?  I don't think there's any inherent link between someone's social background, and whether they want to display the British or English flag outside their house.  There are stacks of both working and middle-class people who would agree that nationalism has been a negative force in recent history.  This is about the negative connotations around national symbols that has been created by the far right.  It has absolutely nothing to do with class.  It has nothing to do with being part of a "metropolitan elite" or anything else.  It's about seeing a symbol and realising that context colours our reaction to it and makes us reach judgements. 

These people have a perfect right to display the Union Jack in their front garden: I also have a perfect right to feel uncomfortable and to reach negative judgements about them.  I'll continue to do so.





* I know that technically it's a Union Flag, not a Union Jack. But whatevs, it's what everyone calls it and knows it as.  It sounds tediously pretentious to call it anything other than the Union Jack in normal speech.  So there.

Immigration

We've seen a wave of people across the country voting for UKIP recently.  Political commentators are reading all sorts into this and the potential impact on government policy.  Some Tories are calling for action both on an EU referendum before the next general election, and further tightening up of immigration.  Labour has repeatedly said it will "listen to voters' concerns" in this area, fearing that if seeks to argue against this, rather than pander to these prejudices it will lose out at the ballot box.

My response to this that I like immigration.  I think immigration is absolutely essential to the health of a society.  I love seeing people who are of different skin colours and races and hearing those who speak different languages.  They bring variety, they bring different ideas, perspectives and they enrich our country.  Fear of the "other" is to me the most primitive emotion.  In essence it goes back to cave people: "you're not in my tribe, keep out".  I don't believe babies are born with hatred of others in them.  I believe they are taught it, and the more varied and cosmopolitan the range of influences they are exposed to, the less likely xenophobia and prejudice will be.

A nation of immigrants: more so than most in the world

I can argue about history, and how Britain is a nation of immigrants.  We all know full well that wave after wave of new people has settled here since well before Roman times to create over centuries the identity we have today.  Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Normans, Hugenots, Jews... Each group came in turn and was eventually accepted into British society.  My father's family came from Holland in the late seventeenth century.  I'm sure they were shunned as "weird foreigners" with a funny name and religion who didn't fit in when they settled in Sussex.  My mother is from Germany.  She certainly had a massive helping of prejudice, both from strangers and from my English family, when she moved here in 1961.  Now by virtue of some magical privilege of time, people don't see our family as foreigners and my family has the right to vote, if we wanted, for the likes of UKIP, in order to demand that others are shut out.  It's worth remembering the simple fact that the family heritage of virtually every UKIP supporter will be the same: we are all immigrants to this country.

I can argue about economics, and how both skilled and unskilled labour are a huge benefit to us.  So many successful economies have realised this, from the Netherlands and Prussia inviting in the religiously persecuted in the 17th and 18th centuries to huge benefit, through to more recent "immigration nations" such as the United States and Australia.  Skilled workers are always focused on, but unskilled ones, who are prepared to work hard doing jobs that others feel are below them, are important too.  They do vital service jobs, often for low wages, pay taxes and spend money just like everyone else.  Blaming them for our economic situation is simplistic, stupid and spiteful.  If our unemployment is too high or our growth is too low, let's look at the way we as a society, and successive governments have run our own economy, rather than the knee-jerk reaction of blaming immigrants for our woes.

I can argue about the enrichment of our culture.  People of different backgrounds bring different cuisine, music, art and other hugely broad-ranging influences.  How many anti-immigration supporters' favourite food is a curry, kebab or Chinese takeaway; and how many love downing an East European beer?  I spent my first 12 years abroad and it's not tricky for me to remember just how limited the choice of anything non-British was in the average supermarket in 1983.  It was absolutely striking.  There has been a sea-change in this time, unnoticed, I suspect, by most people.  Modern day Britain is an absolute cultural melting-pot and I adore the very real variety this brings in my day to day life.

Hitler loathed Vienna.  It was too Slavic, too Jewish, too multicultural and too cosmopolitan for his tastes.  When he moved to Munich he declared "Finally, a German city".  After the War, (by now ethnically cleansed) Vienna was by all accounts a stiflingly dull place.  It's how I remember the city in the early 80s on my first visits.  Then, after 1989, it again became the cultural crossroads it always was, and it's a far, far more pleasant and interesting place for it.  For a regular visitor such as me, the change in 20 years is absolutely striking.  It is a brilliant embodiment of how immigration can enrich and change a place in a very short space of time.

I can argue on the grounds of basic humanity.  I don't see what gives me the right to regard all the good fortune I have, by accident of birth, as being my right to the exclusion of all others.  There are people who suffer terrible misfortune and persecution in their own countries: it was the Russian pogroms that brought the wave of Jewish immigration here in the early 19th century despite the spite and hatred spewed out at the time by the right-wing press.  It is the right thing to do for us to take in people who face hardship elsewhere, I am proud to be part of a society that agrees, and I think we will also benefit in the long run.

Ultimately though, UKIP seems to have tapped into a simple emotional, basic response.  Their supporters just don't like immigration.  If they have the right to argue on this simple, basic level, so shall I.  I like immigration.  We have always had it, and long may it continue.  The more of us who agree and who state this clearly, the better.  It is our society, and our country, and we deserve to be heard too. 

70s German slogan: All people are foreigners. Almost everywhere.