http://www.ukiphome.com/comments.asp?sid=735

“We should be working now, in every possible seat where our votes could result in a defeat for a Conservative candidate.

This will help Labour and the LibDems this one time”

and

“If we do this, then for one more Labour term, there will be the real chance of a Tory split”

and on the Epping Forest Borough Council by election Grange Hill ward 14 December 2006:

http://www.democracyforum.co.uk/about15916-0-asc-70.html

“…By winning this seat the Tories gained control of the Council which they were denied by our standing in another ward in May,when the long term incumbent and Eastern Regional Assembly member for Theydon Bois ward was ousted by 23 votes.UKIP took 136 votes having never stood there before.Had we had the notice of the Grange Hill by election in time we WOULD have stood and I’m confident that we would have denied the Tories success.”

I think these comments show what UKIPs game really is. Not to campaign to get Britain to withdraw from the EU.

Oh no - their aim is to defeat Conservative candidates and get Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates to win. Their long term aim is to split the Conservatives. What a pathetic waste of space and a waste of good votes. They are betraying everybody who votes for them.

With your parties current acceptancec of standard socialist prhetoric and policies the sooner this happens the better, we currently have the three largest parties as varieties of the same nig goverment sociliast parties, respect and the BHP as hard left socialists, so the country beeds a “right” wing party (bad description).

I would have thought that you of all people would realise that a conservative party in power enacting socialist policies is no use to the country or the conservatives left within your party.

Remember the promise to leave the Epp? lots of backbone there

John,

The above quote seems rather patronising to me. It hints that difficult ideological issues should be left to the elites who can understand them, while the masses who cannot grasp the argument are merely placated with bribes.

The examples you give of political issues - the constitutional, and public services - are not mutually exclusive. Just because people are concerned for the tangible changes to their own lives, that does not mean that they cannot concern themselves with the more ideological issues over the constitution. In fact, I would go so far as to say that they should worry about these things.

Democracy should be more than electing people to think for us.

you vote for the people that say what the mean and mean what they say.

Do you support grammar schools?

Do you oppose the extension to state funding of political parties?

Do you support a portable education voucher to ensure all parents can use their entitlement?

Do you support a flat tax system?

Do you oppose protectionist regionalist private members clubs that damage the trading ability of the poorest nations on Earth?

Do you support a ‘tough’ rather than ‘tough love’ approach to crime prevention?

That is the point of UKIP. We are now relevant to many across a range of values. That is why tories like yourself, rather than seek to argue against our policies, opt to insult us instead.

Everyone knows you attack the threat and ignore the irrelevant. Boy, those defections are starting to hurt, aren’t they?

Highlighting the facts that the EU makes the majority of British laws, promotes political correctness, controls all trade and hobbles economic growth and competitiveness, they made the case for withdrawal to loud cheers and enthusiastic applause from the 400-strong audience.

Mark Wallace, BETTER OFF OUT Campaign Manager, said, “David Cameron may not want to ‘bang on’ about the EU, but we think it absolutely right to bang on about how to achieve a successful economy, a healthy democracy and a free society. Leaving the EU is crucial in achieving those goals.”

A major benefit of BETTER OFF OUT is that it brings clarity to the debate. By asking people to sign up to the principle and the case that Britain would indeed be more prosperous and more free outside the European Union, we give them the opportunity to make their views clear on a cross-party initiative. That David Cameron has decided to ban those who do so from his front bench is misguided of him, but we should not let that blur the debate itself- that is what our opponents would like us to do.

In pledging not to oppose BETTER OFF OUT-committed MPs, UKIP has been very constructive and the whole anti-EU campaign has taken a big step forward. The unambiguous clarity BETTER OFF OUT has brought allowed that to happen. Before the ten MPs committed their support to BETTER OFF OUT, there was no way for anyone to be clear about sitting MPs’ views of the EU. Whilst I am a free-market, libertarian Conservative, I can see entirely why UKIP are not willing to extend their offer to MPs who profess to be “eurosceptic” but are not willing to commit to BETTER OFF OUT. As Nigel Farage has said, “The BETTER OFF OUT campaign has redefined euroscepticism in Britain. Anybody not signed up to BETTER OFF OUT should not call them eurosceptics”. As UKIP’s aim is to get Britain out of the EU, it is hard to see how they could justify dropping opposition to MPs who simply want to renegotiate and stay inside. What is the difference between saying that and William Hague’s impractical “In Europe not run by Europe”?

BETTER OFF OUT of course understands that there are MPs who sympathise but don’t feel comfortable in committing yet, and our job is to reassure them and coax them into a full commitment, not to accept them half on board; to do that would be to blur the lines whose clarity has been so crucial to our success thus far. We also appreciate that there are frontbenchers who agree but are kept from public agreement by Cameron’s ban. The best thing to do is to marshall support in their party and in their constituencies sufficiently that they do feel able to join us. Dilute the campaign and we will not gain more supporters, nor will we make any headway against the EU. Rather we will lose our current purpose, lose our publicly committed supporters and also lose any attraction. We are not in this for a quick partial fix, we are in it to succeed through a principled, pragmatic and open-minded approach. The success we have had to date is a testament to that, and is a sign that we should not turn aside now. In light of the foregoing John, why not sign up to support BETTER OFF OUT?

It’s astonishing how agitated the denizens of ConservativeHome blog have got over John Redwood’s statement of the obvious that voting UKIP will damage the chance of Cameron’s Tories winning the next election.

The Cameroons on the list (and Mr Redwood) must be extraordinarily na

While His Grace has enormous sympathy for you and your position, he cannot ignore the fact that he was present at a meeting when Mr Cameron gave his ‘cast iron’ guarantee to remove Conservative MEPs from the EPP ‘within weeks, not months’. It was this promise, from a man that His Grace wanted to trust, that swung his vote away from Mr Davis, who was making no such promise.

His Grace has no time for the capricious hopelessness of UKIP, but you must admit that Conservative promises on the EU amount to nothing at all. A ‘principled’ objection to the Euro or the Constitution today, in opposition, is easy to give. One wonders if both will be upheld when in the stark realities of office, or if the ascendancy of the Gummers and Clarkes of this world means that the Conservative Party will continue in exactly the same direction as Labour, if only because the whole direction of the EU project is fore-ordained, and our subjugation to it therefore ‘inevitable’.

In reality whilst we remain in the EU it really does not matter who is elected to Westminster because who ever they are, they will have to play the game to the power of the EU and the ECJ will still be the supreme court of this country.

There are some Conservatives whose credentials on the EU are beyond doubt, they would therefore command a sense of trust from an EUsceptic voter and would have the leeway for manoeuvre, I would count you are being a member of that group. There are also some very powerful Conservatives who are extremely strong EU intergrationalist; whos commitment to the EU Project has been a declared stance for many years. Then there are those who will go with the flow, at present the flow does not appear to be with the Eurealist camp.

It should always be remembered it was a Conservative administration which landed us the EU project in the first place, gave us the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty etc. All this administration has done is to follow in Conservative footprints. It only appears to be more pro the Project because the Project has increased its activity since 1997.

The European Project creates it own momentum and is always travelling in the intergrationalist direction the present fuzzily defined stance on certain aspects of the project you mentioned the Euro and constitution, would only create a brake on the momentum it would not reverse it, neither would it change the intergrationalist direction.

The European Project is moving on one direction, it will move as fast as it can or as slowly as it must, and can wait for many years for an opposing administration to loose power before continuing. We need for Britain to literally get off of the train stopping a station for a short time will not in reality achieve anything.

We are natural Conservative voters, we are waiting for a lead from the Conservative party to take this great country out of the morass of that is the European Union and to restore power to our elected parliament and therefore restore our right to elect our own law makers. That is not going to happen whilst the Conservative party continues to attempt pacify the intergrationalist with its own ranks.

I joined UKIP because no other party seemed to capture the essence of the problems we are facing. For sure, it has largely been ignored by the media but just as Churchill warned in the 1930s of the `gathering storm’ (and also ridiculed for it), we too are facing another menace from the continent.

No anti-European me. I am half-German and feel we should embrace Europe. I just have a problem with the EU. And why should I throw my lot in a with Conservative party who calls me racist when I point out to him directly that I am married to a Black Jamaican woman and have interracial children? What kind of leader do YOU support when he is too weak to apologise for this gaffe?

Where we have announced other policies, the Tories remain silent. Where you protest against the EU, you stop short of declaring withdrawal from it. Your problem is that you represent the worst of all politicians: The fence sitter. At least your so-called Europhile colleagues are honest enough to say that want to remain in the EU. You, on the other hand, dance around like a fairy on the subject, gently tickling the issue with your magic wand. At times offer tantalisingly sparkles with each prod, you fail to conjure up anything magical and leave your audience disillusioned. Good god, man! Is this what your political obituary will read as? An almost-leader who skirted on the issue of the EU?

Do us all a favour and stop vacillating: Be a BOO candidate, or better still, come over to us and be our first MP. That way you can tell your grandchildren that you made a difference even in your political twilight years. And who knows? You might give yourself a renewed reason to be in politics after years in the wilderness, just like Churchill.

The problem isn’t just the die hard eurosceptics. The Polly Tonybee trianglation disaster has really scared a lot of Conservtaive party members who are now wondering if the same trick that was used to highjack the Labour party (NuLabour) isn’t being tried on our party. Things will get a lot worse if we conclude that it is.

With the current electoral system a vote for UKIP is at best an abstention that lets in a Federalist as you say - but to care we have to be shown there is something to be gained by electing the Conservative candidate. I’m a party memeber and have voted Conservative every election since I was 18, I knock on doors (take the abuse that used to be handed out) and deliver leaflets - I don’t say any of this lightly. For the first time in my life I can imagine joining another party. Take care.

You ask “What is the point of the UKIP?” when the real question is “What is the point of the Conservative Party?” And I am truly stumped for an answer; apart from that it serves as a vehicle to allow a chosen few to attain power and privilege.

Let’s be quite clear; people like me will vote UKIP not in anticipation of them winning, but in the expectation of completely destroying the Conservative Party in its current form.
This will compel a reconstituted Tory party to forcefully make the case against the EU (and all such centrally planned bureaucracy) as part of its commitment to leaving that corrupt and wholly unnecessary institution; and may also have the happy side benefit of replacing Cameron’s quasi-socalists with candidates who recognise that the duty of the state is limited to supporting the rights and the sovereignty of the individual.

Frankly, I’m puzzled by this article. You ask “what is the point of UKIP” - well, their point seems perfectly clear to me, and it comes across far more clearly than Conservative Party policy on the EU.

If the Conservatives are so opposed to the Euro, opposed to the EU constitution, and opposed to the interference of Brussels in our legislation, then why are you still broadly supportive of our continued membership of the EU? The question I don’t see you addressing here is “What is the point of the EU?”, and this leads me to think that, if your words more or less represent Conservative policy, then you are not fully explaining that policy. You see, for many of us, the issue is simple: Either we are in charge of running our country (via you, our elected, accountable representatives) or else the unelected, unaccountable EU is in charge. It can’t be both. So which is it?

By voting UKIP you are sending a message that British politics-as-normal no longer holds. This is an entirely rational strategy when the three main political parties hold positions on Europe which in saner times would be held as treasonous to the Crown.

Proof please.

UKIP is not the answer yet - you Mr Redwood could have been - the Tories never, after all they were, are and ever more will be the problem - unless removed. At least Cameron offers hope of the latter!

1. I would be voting with my principles intact,
2. I would be delivering a protest vote, telling that we would like a real Conservative as leader (if I gave you a dagger as Christmas present, would that serve as a hint?),
3. I wouldn’t have to hold my nose while voting (at least not much) and
4. I wouldn’t be responsible for sending champagne socialists like DC and friends to the House of Commons.

Wow, four advantages, any of which would be enough. The UKIP could well get their first seat(s), if people like me (I don’t necessarily want the UK out of the EU) vote for them. And as you know from other countries: for a new party to get the first seat is the difficult part; once it get one the momentum may well roll. If they get a lot of votes, the Conservatives will have to work together with UKIP and later get most of them back - not much of a problem after DC has been kicked out.

The disadvantage of voting for UKIP is that a conservative (with small ‘c’) candidate will not get my vote. I truly feel bad about that, but that can’t be helped.

Great to see that you have made a blog as I have always been among your admirers!