UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage has brushed off the revelation that a local Ukip candidate reportedly makes his living in the pornography industry.
“Oh, please. He hasn’t done anything illegal, has he? You know, when I look at the people who have been jailed from the other parties, I think this is a fairly minor issue,” the often politically incorrect Farage told the London Telegraph .
Although this may be a more extreme example, Ukip (or UKIP) prides itself on representing a broad cross-section of the British populace rather than the elite levels of society that traditionally form the country’s establishment political class and who are roundly criticized for being out of touch with everyday citizens.
The local candidate in question, John Langley (stage name Johnny Rockard), informed the Mirror that he is not ashamed about his past or present as what the publication called a “porn baron.”
“This is no big deal. It is just electioneering and it is the type of thing you expect in the run up to any election. I have never made a big deal out of what I do and I am not breaking any laws. Ukip is a working class party which appeals to working class people. Normal people go to the pub and enjoy a pint and then probably go home and enjoy adult entertainment. What people do in their private lives is really up to them. What people do in the privacy of their own homes is nothing to do with politics and I cannot see why there should be any problem with any of this.”
About 600 Ukip candidates are running for the British parliament, as well as another 5,000 seeking local elected office on election day May 7.
With 30 years in the adult entertainment industry, Langley, 49, apparently now works behind the camera as a producer and manager. He reportedly advised Ukip about his background before deciding to run for office, and evidently party officials did not give him a hard time about it because his vocation was legal.
Separately, Langley disclosed to The Independent of London that he suffers from a personality disorder.
During the election season, Ukip has sacked several candidates for offensive remarks or financial improprieties, with each of these incidents making big headlines. The other political parties in the country have also been rocked with scandal but generally do not receive the same level of scrutiny from the media as Ukip, which has been branded racist for seeking to control open-door immigration. British news outlets across the ideological spectrum treat Ukip similarly to the way the mainstream or legacy U.S. media portrayed/demonized the Tea Party.
Perhaps as a result of the negative media coverage, Farage and several other UKIP candidates have been physically accosted by left-wing mobs during the campaign and his family has even been harassed by protesters at one point. “UKIP activists are facing threats of physical abuse and are being spat at in the street in the run up to the election, they claim. Party members across the country have reported death threats and vandalism against property,” the Express of London reported .
Ukip local candidate John Langley discusses his unique background in the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtqtHZpZEAw
Last May, Ukip under Farage’s charismatic and teleprompter-free leadership won the most seats for Britain’s representation in the European Union, the first time in about 100 years that a third or fourth party won a national election in England. Farage is himself also a candidate for the British parliament, the House of Commons, for the South Thanet constituency.
Even a modest number of Ukip wins on May 7 could play a decisive role in forming a governing coalition in Westminster. Ukip already holds two seats in parliament as a result of special-election victories and came within a few hundred votes of winning a third.
The rise of Ukip has resulted in part because a significant portion of the British electorate has become disenchanted with the Conservatives/Tories on the right and the Labor Party on the left. As such, neither is expected to achieve an outright majority in parliament on election day, with the liberal Democrats (who are currently in a coalition with Prime Minister David Cameron’s conservative government) fading into irrelevancy according to opinion polls.
Labor voters coming over to Ukip are roughly equivalent to what we would call or used to call Reagan Democrats.
Ukip wants to reassert the sovereignty of Britain by exiting the European Union via referendum and leaving behind all its assorted heavy-handed regulations, and also, among other things, to clamp down on massive immigration into the U.K., which has come from both third-world countries as well as from Eastern Europe, the latter as a result of EU decrees. The influx has destabilized social services and pushed wages downward in the country, Ukip and Farage maintain.
Farage also insists that waves of immigration into the U.K. have stretched National Health Service hospitals to the limit, something that the other major political parties in the country, despite insisting that they intend to address the immigration issue in broad terms, seem reluctant to discuss openly.
Against that backdrop, Farage was strongly denounced on all sides during the April 2 multiparty televised leaders debate when he controversially warned about so-called health tourism, i.e., he claimed that a large percentage of those suffering with HIV in U.K. hospitals are foreigners receiving free treatment paid for by the British taxpayer. About two weeks later, however, the Cameron government instituted a new policy aimed at determining if patients in the country’s government-run medical system are indeed eligible for care. “Patients could be asked to produce their passport before receiving hospital care as part of a clampdown on health tourism under new government guidelines,” the Times of London explained .
Last year, as the Inquisitr reported , an ex-porn star unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the Palm Beach County (Fla.) Board of Education.
Whether or not this particular Ukip candidate provides his opponent with stiff competition, do you think experience in the porn industry is a resume enhancer for a political office-seeker?
[Nigel Farage photo by Mary Turner/Getty Images News]
Added: A reporter tries (and fails) to play the race card against Ukip.