SETTING UP UKIP

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UKIP were on the receiving end of today's The World This Weekend, with reporter Jon Manel scrutinising their immigration policy. This was an audio essay, structured as an argument. If its conclusions are true then UKIP's immigration policies are (a) baloney or (b) ineffective. Mr Manel spoke very, very slowly to make sure that we got the message. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rzmkg
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Taken at face value it was a good piece of investigative journalism that forced UKIP to clarify what it means by 'immigration' and demonstrated that surprising numbers of people do not fall under its definition of 'immigrants' and that this means that UKIP policy wouldn't have the effect on reducing the flow of migrants that it claims it would. That's what an argument does - it persuades. It still may not be true though.
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The doubts flow from certain features of the report:
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1. Its chosen expert is Will Somerville, introduced thus: "Will Somerville has worked as a civil servant in the cabinet office on immigration for the left-leaning think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (the IPPR!!!) and for the Commission for Racial Equality. He is now a senior policy analyst at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute based in Washington DC." It's refreshing to hear a BBC reporter label the IPPR as 'left-leaning' (though he avoids 'Labour-aligned') but the label 'non-partisan' may mislead people. Yes, the MPI is 'independent' of party allegiances but it is a pro-migration organisation. His initial view is that UKIP's proposals are 'unworkable' and 'completely unrealistic' - and that's only for starters.
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2. Jon Manel had sought out a particular UKIP parliamentary candidate to interview: Mike Wieteska, who's standing in Aberconwy. Why go to Wales to seek out Mr Wieteska and interview him on immigration? Did Mike write UKIP's immigration policy? Is he UKIP's immigration spokesman? 'No' to both questions. So why then? Because, as Mr Manel explained, "Mike Wieteska has an interesting background. He emigrated as a 17-year old to Australia, is married to a woman from the Phillipines who works for the United Nations, they live much of the time in Geneva, and - if you're wondering about his name - his father came to Britain from Poland in the 1940s." He used this to put Mr Wieteska on the spot: "Your wife is from the Phillipines. Do you accept that it would cause difficulties, your cap, for people like her who want to follow their spouses to Britain?" When Mike stood up for the UKIP position, Jon Manel persisted, "So again those individuals, like your wife, would not be included within that 50,000 cap?" Maybe I'm too squeamish, but this felt very shabby. It seemed like a set up, and it seemed overly intrusive. After getting his clarification from the man (unnamed) who did write UKIP manifesto committment, Mr Manel used Mrs Wieteska again in his argument: "People from countries like the Phillipines who want to join their spouses would be effected by the cap but only when they try to become permenant residents." By that stage I was getting very hot under the collar.
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3. Here's how Jon Manel ended his report, saying very slowly: "Well, I went back to Will Somerville with the new information from UKIP and here's his verdict". And with Will's highly negative verdict serving as his own negative verdict the report came to a close.
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UPDATE: Robin at Biased BBC is also onto this story and he's even angrier about it than me:
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/04/lets-kick-ukip.htm