Should Nigel Farage's expenses scandal be able to burn the whole UKIP political movement?

Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist UKIP party, has ironically fallen foul of some popularly controversial media coverage. Allegations have been made regarding his exploitation of expense allowances provided by the EU for MEPs (Mason, 2014). Stories such as these have affected the outcomes of elections and turned public opinion to or from political movements.

The reason populist methods work is simple: populism, by making simple and emotive appeals to the people, is able to bypass reasonable consideration and sensible process. Regardless how pleasing the irony may be of a populist being caught out by populism, and whatever the truth behind the allegations, it's still a dangerous game to play.

The Liberal Democrats have seen both sides of that game. Their fortunes over the last five years have risen and fallen on the personal popularity of their leader Nick Clegg. In the process, objective opinion has been lost on the merits of Lib Dem ideas. Their ideas were swamped by positive popular opinion before the election and since have been drowned by popular dislike for Clegg.

This kind of shift in popular opinion creates both tremendous instability and prevents us from making informed, well reasoned decisions about the policies and ideologies with which, and by which, we will be governed. Instead we get sidetracked into confusing personal scandals or corruption, debates over technicalities of the truth, or measures of personal integrity, as playing a role in our political beliefs.

It is, ultimately, problematic to judge public policies on the basis of individual private lives or personal scandals or corruption. Hypocrisy, or the inability to live up to your own ideals, is no measure of the ideals themselves. They should be weighed rationally on their own purposes and merits; and the parties that propose them should be weighed on their own track record for applying those ideals and their capacity to do so according to those ideals; just the same as the individual figures should stand and fall themselves alone on their own integrity.

As one man's integrity must be judged on the evidence regarding his own individual thoughts and actions, so too must an organisation receive the same treatment, and ideals as well. If UKIP are to be beaten at an election, it aught to be because their manifesto has been rejected because of its seriously problematic elements (Randall, 2013) - and certainly not because of the indiscretions of one man.

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References:
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+ Rowena Mason's 'Nigel Farage rejects 'outrageous' EU expenses allegations'; in The Guardian; 16 April 2014.

+ David Randall's 'Special Report: What voters should know about UKIP'; in The Independent; 3 March 2013.