How can he associate his party with the US Tea Party movement when all their big election candidates failed to obtain office? (I.E. O'Donnell and Angle) - It seems like political suicide to want to emulate the extremist American organisation. The Tea Party is to the Republicans as Militant was to Labour, BIG TROUBLE!

Luddite

"... remember the 1930s?"

Indeed we do. Caused by a speculative financial crisis, worsened by a lack of stimulus measures and a growth in narrow nationalist populism with disastrous results...

...UKIP and Tea Party in a nutshell in fact.

What? He is admitting four years before the next election that his party is full of moose hunters, white witches and crackpots? That's a sure fire vote winner

because there are schools in this country they'd see right through you Nigel

The New Stateman, a peddler of socialist crap,the flag
ship for the worst Labour
Party this country has ever
had the misfortune to know.
The party full of M.P's who have never had a real job in
their lives unless you count
Postman Pat.The party,thats
given our rights away
to a bunch of un- elected Bureacrats in brussles.Left
this country bankcrupt and
allowed Banks to lend unlimited loans to customers.
Experimented with a failed
multi cultural sociaty which
has created a ban on free speech.This situation has caused resentment and hidden
racism in most of the segregated parts of this country.Encouraged unlimited
immigration of unskilled workers, and allowed the work shy to be paid benefits.
You socialist lefty Labour
voters deserve all these hard
times ahead,because the shower of a political party
you support are responsible
for the mess this country is
in.
The Labour party can now sit
in opposition, and criticize
every policy that the coalition party makes to get
this country back on track.
VOTE UKIP
No offence Ment

lee, dream on.

Smaller government and lower taxes, my arse - fantasy land.

Grow up and smell the coffee. : )

@james 07 November 2010 at 20:07

Yes, thank you james, that's exactly the kind of crap a UK tea party would produce. But you're still missing something to make the full tea party effect complete... Milliband is Jewish, perhaps you could mention that regularly with heavy innuendo.

But please promise to keep the 'hidden racism' line. It's a classic. I can see the placards now: "Don't Hide Your Racism Any More, Vote UKIP"

Hilarious.

Is it not the case that this article contains several more John Rentoul questions than are necessary or desirable?

Would it be insulting of me to aver that it is become a tiresome trope in left-leaning political commentary that anything containing a sniff of the Tea Party about it is deemed worthy of coverage?

Socialists love their social programs they like social engineering but that costs money, lots of money, the money comes from taxes, that are paid for by the taxpayers. However, they fail to realize where the money is coming from, and believe there is a magical endless supply usually found in the vaults of number 11 . As economists have shown time and time again, there is no endless supply of money, and if you treat money that way very bad things happen and by simply printing money well!! that's a no no... remember the 1930s?

The Tea Party movement originated during the Ron Paul presidential campaign - it related to a Ron Paul money bomb for the 16 Dec 2007. Since then, the Tea Party has grown exponentially and got to be smeared by the left and hijacked by elements within the GOP, such as Sarah Palin, who is not quite on the same political wavelength as Ron Paul. Paul is anti-war and has taken on the Federal Reserve Bank with his Audit the Fed bill and End the Fed campaign.

Ron Paul, by the way, is the man the BBC hardly ever mentions - one wonders why.

"Given Britain's electoral system"

Ah, but will we still have this electoral system in 2015?

And will the British people really be wanting less government and taxes after 5 years of Osborne?

Surely the Tea Party's No 1 priority is to dismantle "Obambacare" (A pejorative name but one I hope sticks so that in years to come it will remind Americans who it was that brought affordable healthcare to the poor). Does that mean UKIP's priority will be to dismantle the NHS?

Unlike America (or at least what I imagine America's like from reading right-wing American bloggers and watching clips of their insane TV personalities on YouTube, not necessarily the same thing!) most Brits realise that there is a centre ground between capitalism and socialism, and that allowing a bit of government intervention in order to improve social mobility doesn't make us an evil Stalinist nation where any attempts at self-improvement or starting up a new business are punished by being sent to Gulag.