Reason 9: Making it legal for a man to rape or assault his wife

I have received a comment about last week's blog 'Top reasons for voting UKIP?' which asked about point 9, 'Making it legal for a man to rape or assault his wife'. Here is a brief answer to that comment.

In 2006 UKIP members voted against a resolution titled "combating violence against women", one which "urges member states" ... "to make rape within marriage a criminal offence".

Now UKIP almost always either abstains or votes against absolutely anything and everything which comes up in the European parliament (which is why their claim to "give the UK a voice in Europe" is particularly nonsensical), so it might have made some sense for them to abstain. At least they would have been being consistent in doing so. But they didn't abstain, they voted against. At the time there were 12 UKIP MEPs, and the vote went 545 for and 14 against, so you can see that apart from UKIP there were only 2 MEPs disturbed enough to vote against. To absolutely everyone else UKIP must have been seen as a pariah, and Britain too by extension, because we are disturbed enough to vote these people in.

It could be argued that voting against the criminalisation of something is not the same as voting for that something, so that technically the list of ten reasons is slightly inaccurate, but that is a technicality which I think wouldn't impress many people. What cannot be doubted is that UKIP made a very wrong move, one which showed them up and showed Britain up, and they should be ashamed about it.

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