Chris Davies wades into Ukip foster care row. Why?

by Stephen Tall on January 16, 2013

chris daviesA couple of months ago you may recall a big row when it was alleged three eastern European children were removed from their foster parents by Rotherham council because the couple were members of Ukip.

Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies certainly recalls it. And on Monday he made a one-minute speech in the European Parliament about it:

Chris Davies (ALDE ). – Mr President, before Christmas there was, rightly, a furore when social workers in Rotherham took away children from foster parents because they belonged to UKIP, believing it to be racist. Yet what are they to make of the fact that the UK Independence Party’s local MEP, Godfrey Bloom, is a former president of the European Free Alliance, a body that includes the French Front National, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and the Austrian Freedom Party, whose leader has recently been compared by a judge to a Nazi? These parties are the natural recipients of racist votes.

I have called on the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, to expel Godfrey Bloom, but instead he has hugged him close, giving a nod and a wink to the racists. It is dog-whistle politics. Website references to some of the links between UKIP and these parties have strangely disappeared in recent weeks, but I have kept copies. Nigel Farage denies that UKIP has racist associations, but the characters of parties, just like people, are formed by those with whom they choose to associate. By your friends shall ye be known.

He followed it up with a succession of tweets. Rather confusingly numbers 1 and 4 contradicted each other:

But whether to defend or attack Rotherham’s social workers, I’m not clear what Chris Davies’s reasons for wading into this debate in this way are.

There are two separate issues here: whether the foster parents were able to provide the children in their care with a loving home; and whether any of Ukip’s leaders can be said to be guilty of racism-by-association.

It’s crude beyond belief to link the two in this way for the sake of a political point.

Here’s all Chris’s tweets on the issue in sequence:

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, a Research Associate for the liberal think-tank CentreForum, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.