UKIP Becomes First British Political Party to Establish a Branch Within the Second Life Online Simulation Game

A member of Britain's fourth political party, the libertarian UK Independence Party, has today announced plans to make it the first British political party to open a branch within the online simulation game Second Life, the internet’s most popular virtual world.

(PRWEB) October 24, 2006

A member of Britain's fourth political party, the libertarian UK Independence Party, has today announced plans to make it the first British political party to open a branch within the online simulation game Second Life, the internet's most popular virtual world.

Joining the likes of Reuters, Sony and Adidas, UKIP Second Life (http://www.ukipsecondlife.com) will seek to attract new members and donors to the UK Independence Party from the hundreds of thousands of residents within Second Life.

The plans for the UKIP Second Life branch was the brainchild of the unofficial UKIP support group UKIPHome (http://www.ukiphome.com) the group behind the now world famous webcameron spoof (http://www.webcameron.info) that mocked the way Conservative Party leader David Cameron is crudely copying the style and spin of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

UKIPHome founder Chad Noble (Second Life name ukiphome Regent) spoke of the need for small political parties to innovate in order to compete with the budgets of the big three political parties.

"UKIP has a new younger base of members that are not just bursting with new ideas, but have the fresh-thinking approach to use innovation rather than big budgets to spread our positive libertarian, low taxation, small government message," he said. "The UKIP Second Life branch idea has firmly established us as the party of the 21st century and will enable us to reach a broad cross-section of people to share our message of low taxation and less government interference.

"The other parties are devoid of fresh-thinking and I fully expect them to now copy us and follow our lead, but we are now showing with this plan that even when they do copy us, we are setting the political agenda for the 21st century. We are the first party to seek to reach online audience in this way, with a branch within Second Life."

The Second Life online simulation, with over 1,000,000 members, was created by Linden Lab in San Francisco and is the closest thing to a parallel universe existing on the Internet. Akin to the original city-building game SimCity, Second Life is a virtual, three-dimensional world where users create and dress up characters, buy property and interact with other players using a real-money economy,

"At a time when disillusionment with politicians and politics in Britain is at an all-time low, it is vital that UKIP as the anti-politics political party using all methods to engage directly with the public. The carefully scripted and insincere webcasts of Conservative Party leader David Cameron have taken politics to a new low, by using new media methods as a crude extension of spin," Nobel said. "UKIP's newly elected leader Nigel Farage has brought a refreshing and honest 'does-what-it-says-on-the-tin' approach to politics and I am sure that UKIP Second Life, like any UKIP branch in the real world, will play an important role in helping the party to grow."

UKIP Second Life will go live before the end of the year and full details are available at http://www.ukipsecondlife.com.

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