
In the last year, UKIP has tightened its ranks and become an organisation with a more palatable front. While the BNP wears its heart on its sleeve, UKIP's prejudices lie behind a facade of respectability, masquerading as concern for the country's wellbeing. While its members and representatives are not the most politically correct of figures, more extreme policies and ideals are being glossed over to make themselves more appealing. But as yet, the whitewash is not yet complete. Visit the Welsh UKIP website and it still says there that UKIP publicly opposes equal marriage, citing the definition that marriage is a union between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation. The official line now from the party is that UKIP opposed equal marriage because they believed it wasn't a priority issue for the government at the time, but obviously this pleasantry invented for pacifying sceptics hasn't quite yet filtered down to areas further afield from the spin-doctors of Westminster.


Whether or not the UK should be a part of the EU, or whether or not immigration is a drain on this country's resources, the answer cannot be the alienation of the minorities who have spent the last 100 years fighting for equality. The UK is better than bigotry; it's better than intolerance. Britain has historically remained doggedly immune to political extremism, to fascism, communism and religious fundamentalism, but that doesn't mean that radical politics could never take control here. And while many people see UKIP as smoke and mirrors, single-minded on a single issue and innocuous in the bigger picture, the possibility of what could result from UKIP is bleak to say the very least.