Thought For The Day: Matthew Parris

Amusing on Tuesday to hear Nigel Farage’s principled defence of individual liberty. There should be a room in pubs, he said, for people who want to smoke; nobody who doesn’t like it need go there.
Fair point. Reflecting on UKIP’s ferocious opposition to gay marriage, it strikes me that there could perhaps be a room where same-sex couples could get married; nobody who doesn’t like it need go there. Mr Farage might propose this too. Or am I missing something? 

Matthew Parris in The Times.

His fellow Times' columnist, Hugo Rifkind, wrote on the middle England, little Englander doublethink appeal of Ukip yesterday;

"This party, as the Lemonheads once sang about something quite different, is a Great Big No. They’re against some arguably restrictive things, such as the EU, employment protection and political correctness, but also against gay marriage, building on the green belt, wind farms, immigration, out-of-town supermarkets and travellers concreting over fields. How they square all this with “libertarianism” is anybody’s guess, but I suspect it’s largely done by not reading books...

"What they all do, though, whether they mean to or not, is prioritise the provincial straight white male British experience while ascribing a sort of irritating deviance to everything else. It’s parochialism rather than prejudice, but it’s delivered with a carelessness that can make the distinction hard to spot. That’s the trouble with plain speaking. It could sometimes use a little polish."