Have you been to Bongo Bongo Land? I have – but only in Tintin and dogeared copies of Sanders of the River and the fabulous Deborah Kerr and Stewart Grainger version of King Solomon's Mines. Still, I think we all have a good idea what Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom was on about when he told a meeting of supporters in the West Midlands that he didn't want vast sums of taxpayers' money being squandered on pointless foreign aid. Often, he noted, it ends up not in the hands of the needy but on "Ray-Ban sunglasses, apartments in Paris, Ferraris and all the rest of it" for grasping Third World kleptocrats.
If anyone has a problem with the factual basis of Bloom's argument, let them speak up now. I'd be truly fascinated to hear them make the case that – contra Jonathan Foreman's bravura demolition of the foreign aid industry Aiding And Abetting (Civitas) – our ringfenced foreign aid budget is anything more than a massively wasteful exercise in post-imperial arrogance, moral grandstanding and self-delusion. I'm also mad keen to hear them explain how – contrary to all evidence – standards of governance, transparency and moral compunction in failing African states are every bit as high as they are in the UK. And if they are unable to do this then the case against Godfrey Bloom is risibly weak. It depends entirely on the immeasurably trivial semantic significance of his use of the phrase "Bongo Bongo Land".
It's not a phrase I'd use myself – but purely for generational reasons. I'm quite sure that the phrase would have resonated quite nicely with Bloom's West Midlands audience who, being Ukipers, would have no truck whatsoever with political correctness and would have warmed to this cheeky, jolly, defiantly old school outburst of retro, comic-book xenophobia. What it didn't do, I'm equally sure, is instil in his audience an immediate urge to go and lynch the nearest black person. Only someone who worked for the Guardian or the Independent or the BBC would think that, which is why they've been giving this non-story so much play.
Bloom was absolutely right, I think, to tell the star chamber of the Today programme that he doesn't "do" political correctness. This refusal to climb down will have won him – and his party – many more supporters than it has cost them.
I'm less impressed by Ukip's response. "We're asking Godfrey not to use this phrase again as it might be considered disparaging by members from other countries."
All right, so it's a very, very mild rebuke, delivered with some reluctance and more for the sake of immediate back-covering than anything. Nevertheless, I think it's a grave mistake ever to fight battles on terrain of the enemy's choosing.
What we have seen just now with Godfrey Bloom is the classic Alinskyite Left in action. On the real issues – Ukip now commands a significant chunk of the vote; the Coalition's foreign aid policy is a disaster – it cannot win, for the facts are not on its side. Therefore, it has to distract, by focussing on areas where it thinks it can win: suggesting, for example, that Ukipers are guilty of that ne plus ultra of modern crimes – racism.
We're going to see a lot more of this in the next couple of years, not just from the Old Left (Guardian, BBC etc) but also from the New Left in the form of Cameron's Conservatives (who really are a force to be reckoned with now that they've got Machiavels Lynton Crosby and Jim Messina on their side).
These underhand tactics are clearly unsettling Ukip, which can't quite decide whether to brazen it out as Bloom did (and as Farage is so good at) or whether to come over all career safe and disingenuous and emollient like all the other parties. Personally I think the latter is a huge mistake. The moment Ukip starts aping the cant and dishonesty of LibLabCon it will lose its legitimacy among all those of us – and I've met plenty, most recently at a Ukip hustings in the West Midlands – who value the party precisely because it doesn't represent more of the bloody same. If the Guardian and the BBC are offended by our tone so what? Worrying about what the Guardian and the BBC is the sort of thing Cameron's Conservatives do: and Ukip are not Cameron's Conservatives.
By James Delingpole