[Andy McDandy]

UKIP version 1 - the Alan Sked-led lobbying group - were quite narrow in their approach. They argued that the UK would be better off economically outside the EU. Which is a point of view.

The leave vote in 1997 was split between them and Jammy Fishpaste's referendum Party, which was the libertarian, small state don't tell me what to do outfit.

UKIP as we know it came from both of them, but more so from the BNP and other assorted far right parties. And I'd say that the major driving force behind it was 9/11, and the legitimisation (as many saw it) of Islamophobia, and subsequent xenophobia.

During my childhood in the 80s and 90s, the main target of the NF, BNP etc tended to be African-Caribbeans, characterised as stupid, lazy, criminal and savage. British Asians tended to be overlooked, or dismissed as wimps - passive, meek, almost frustratingly law-abiding, almost invisible. That changed, first with the Salman Rushdie affair, and then with the Bradford riots. Suddenly we were seeing angry Asians on the news. The first Gulf War didn't help either - if your local school was anything like mine, any kid with the quite common surname Hussein would have been mercilessly bullied.

And then, 9/11 and 7/7. Suddenly, talk of the enemy within and a presumption of guilt that had to be disproven, came to dominate. In that time, the Tories flirted with racism, but frankly it was more about Travellers than Jihadists. The BNP had too much baggage - bad memories of the past. Attempts to smarten up the party by Nick Griffin led to nothing. The suits didn't matter because they couldn't hide the bovver boots.

So the members (but not the recognisable faces) go to UKIP. Fargle rises in the public eye. He's one of those "Hey, I treat everyone equally, there's no such thing as [thing]ism, everyone's along for the ride (but never forget whose car it is)" types - barely tolerable at the best of times, but when things aren't so good, it becomes very clear who gets kicked out of the car first. "Hey, we've all got it tough, but you don't hear us moaning about it, Sambo!". He also dumbs down the 'sovereignty' debate to football-style jingoism, shot through with Loaded-era postmodernism. Ha ha, the Frogs and Krauts can't take a joke.

And after that, well, you know how it goes.

[Boiler]

An excellent post, Andy.

I knew someone who, in his own florid words, 'proselytised' for the Referendum Party. When that vote came in 2016, his self-published magazine had a massive "NO" on it.

Some of us took comfort that he never lived to see the exit from the EU he so craved.