UKIP Uncovered

UKIP Uncovered
What motivates the leaders of the United Kingdom Independence Party?

Thursday, May 29, 2003

UKIP Image further marred

In today's Daily Telegraph LondonSpy the following report appears:-

UKIP pins its hopes on former Clinton spin doctor

Now that the war in Iraq has ended, America's major political players are taking an ever closer interest in international politics.

Take Dick Morris, who, as chief strategist, masterminded Bill Clinton's election victory in 1996. Spy can reveal that the former spin doctor - once dubbed "the second most powerful man in the White House" - will spend Saturday and Sunday in negotiations with the UK Independence Party, with a view to running its campaign for next year's European elections.

"Morris believes that Britain's continued membership of the EU poses a fundamental threat to the English-speaking world," says a senior UKIP source. "He has expressed a serious interest in UKIP's philosophy, and we now want to sign him up for the election campaign. The only question is whether we'll be able to afford him."

If nothing else, Morris should at least liven up UKIP cocktail parties. A colourful character - he was once caught entertaining a prostitute in a Washington hotel - he turned against Clinton after the 1996 election, and has since become one of his former boss's sternest critics.

On Europe, he recently wrote (in this column): "The political lesson of the war in Iraq is that the people of America and Britain have far more in common with one another than do the British people with the French or the Germans."

UKIP MEP Nigel Farage said yesterday: "We are having meetings in London at the weekend with Mr Morris, but it's early days yet."

There is so much known about Morris and readily available on the internet that no serious political party would have anything to do with him nor should any individual with any thought for their reputation even touch him with a twenty foot barge pole while wearing asbestos gloves. Trust Nigel Farage to be involved.

On 14th May Reuters reported that Morris was the sixth largest delinquent taxpayers in the US state of Connecticut owing USD 257,624 in income tax. Morris is apparently these days employed as a commentator for Fox News Channel and a columnist for the New York Post, a far cry from his heady days at the White House and the centre of politics.

The best brief reference source we know on Morris is a small book by Christopher Hitchins, 'No one left to lie to (The triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton) published in the UK by Verso of 6, Mead Street, London W1V 3HR.

A quote from the book's jacket:

'Triangulation' is the art of dividing the mid-point between an elite intent on maintaining privilege and an electorate that stubbornly insists on taking its place at the table……

…Hitchens points out that the real coup d’etat was executed by a Democratic president who took every remnant of New Deal liberalism in his party and tore it into shreds. In this he was assisted by finance from Miami Cuban mobsters and advice from his only friend and closest consultant, Dick Morris, a conservative Republican.

The book is littered with references to Morris of which a few below are a sample:-

Page 15

..it is hard to recall any other White House which has had to maintain a quasi-governmental or para-state division devoted exclusively to the bullying and defamation of women….Even Cinton’s best friend, the notably unfastidious Dick Morris, once told CNBC:
“Under Betty Wright’s supervision in the 1992 Clinton campaign, there was an entire operation funded with USD 100,000 of campaign money, which included federal matching funds, to hire private detectives to go into the personal lives of women who are alleged to have had sex with Bill Clinton. To develop compromising material--blackmailing information, basically--to coerce them into signing affidavits they did not have sex with Bill Clinton.

Page 26

He also failed to account for Dick Morris -- the sole human being to whom the mendacious president at once confided the truth….

…The choice of Mr Morris as confidante was suggestive, even significant. A cousin of Jules Feiffer and the late Roy Cohn (the Cohn genes were obviously dominant), Mr Morris served for a long time as Bill Clinton’s pimp. He and Mr Clinton shared some pretty foul evenings together, bloating and sating themselves at public expense while consigning the poor and defenceless to yet more misery…..

…Mr Morris’s most valued gift to the president was his invention, perhaps I should say “coinage” of the lucrative business of “ triangulation”

Page 34

In his awful USD 2.5 million Random House turkey, artlessly entitled Behind the Oval Office Dick Morris moans all the way to the till. “Triangulation” he writes, is much misunderstood. It is not merely splitting the difference between left and right.” This accurate objection -- we are talking about a three card monte and not an even split -- must be read in the context of its preceding sentence: “Polls are not the instrument of the mob, they offer the prospect of leadership wedded to a finely-calibrated measure of opinion.”

Page 85

… “Its not much of a riposte, at this point, for Clinton’s people to say that the unfashionable nobody had some right-wing friends. However shady they were, they didn’t fall to the standard of Dick Morris”

It is worth doing a Google search on “Roy Cohn” to fully understand that particular point made by Hitchens

For a small picture of Morris and an explanation of “Triangulation” by its coiner as it supposedly relates to Chirac and Blair use the link below:

Dick Morris on Blair and Chirac

WHAT CAN UKIP's LEADERS BE THINKING ! letting the party's name be associated with probably the most renowned political manipulator in the entire western world? Surely this time the NEC will bring those responsible to account! Monday 2nd June Last Chance Saloon?

posted by Martin |6:39 PM