Farage would REALLY like to be taken seriously
right now, he knows all he has is a protest vote in a meaningless set of local council elections. He has no power at all. The councillers he has in place are useless, because there isn't a single thing in the UKIP manifesto that is actually controlled by local councils (as a friend of mine said, "what are they going to do, turn up a refuse management meeting and demand the deporatation of all the brown bins?"). And he knows that, come the next general election, best case is they will get a much smaller protest vote maybe one or two MPs taken from the true blue Tory heartlands.

But if he is seen to be even vaguely supportive to or connected with anything to do with the EDL or what even the Tunbridge Wells set see as the far right, then he'll lose even that support. Not because UKIP supporters aren't racists, but because they see themselves as "tastefully racist"
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Fri 31 May 2013, 10:03, Reply)