Just think: this could be your next MEP

David Coburn, who is UKIP’s London Regional Chair, is the leading UKIP candidate for Scotland in the European elections in May.

@ReachEd Your views on Gay marriage and Equalities prism are Jacobin

— David Coburn UKIP (@DavidCoburnUKip) March 2, 2014

This being Scotland, UKIP are polling better than the LibDems, who are still sliding into their slow electoral wipeout for giving Scotland a Tory government at Westminster again. (It’s not that we’re vengeful. It’s quite possible that LibDems will recover in Scotland. After the last of the current batch of politicians has lost their seats, MP, MSP, and MEP, and Nick Clegg is kicked out and the LibDems after 2015 start pulling themselves back together again and trying to figure out what they’re for, well… sometime after that, Scotland might start voting them again. It’s not that we’re vengeful. It’s just that we think cheating politicians who put Tory governments into office should suffer humiliating electoral defeats until morale improves.)

So, UKIP are polling better than the LibDems: there are more racists in Scotland than LibDem voters. This is a tad embarrassing, but we’ll live with it, so long as UKIP stays out of office. In England they may be entitled to party political broadcasts on all channels: but in Scotland they just don’t have that kind of support. Give them representation – MEP or councillor – and that could change.

As the Peat Worrier pointed out, it is a false dichotomy to suppose that the sixth seat in the European Elections has been opened up to Green or UKIP by the collapse of the LibDems. SNP or Labour remains electorally more likely. Maggie Chapman would be a good MEP, though. Certainly a better one than this bloke.

David Coburn thinks there should have been a referendum on lifting the ban on same-sex marriage.

@ChrisMoos_ @Voltairesbeast @ReachEd A Referendum means everyone gets a chance to have their say & let the voters speak

— David Coburn UKIP (@DavidCoburnUKip) March 2, 2014

This was moderately popular as a meme in England and Wales, not so much in Scotland. Perhaps because in Scotland we have a clearer idea than in London that national referendums are for really big political issues – not for who should get to marry whom.

He also thinks that marriage is only for the religious and, apparently, that religious rules control who can and can’t get married:

David Coborn also thinks that countries which have sound human rights legislation for LGBT people – and Scotland leads Europe in this respect, now we’ve lifted the ban on same-sex marriage – are provoking countries like Russia and Uganda to pass their anti-gay laws.

So, LGBT people everywhere should be content with the minimum – you can’t get jailed for your sexual orientation. In Scotland we moved forward from that since 1981: it seems David Coburn’s views are thirty years out of date.

Do we really want a Londoner with sad tired bigotry representing Scotland, even just in the sixth European Parliament seat?

Oh, and it seems he thinks Labour are “paedo sympathisers” and the Sun is “mainstream consciousness”. Lovely.

@andreassoridis @willsouth70 @ProudPatriot101 Once this stuff goes in the Sun it goes into main stream consciousness -v bad news for Labour

— David Coburn UKIP (@DavidCoburnUKip) March 2, 2014