UKIP Uncovered

UKIP Uncovered
What motivates the leaders of the United Kingdom Independence Party?

Monday, May 17, 2004

Making a Vote for UKIP a Respectable Eurosceptic Choice

The Sun poll discussed and linked below shows UKIP at 5 per cent rising to 15 per cent if everyone had Kilroy as a choice. How then does UKIP get the maximum of the Kilroy effect into the other regions?

Over the past week the anomaly of UKIP's sitting MEPs campaigning for our removal from the institution they were desperate to rejoin was hinted at as cynical. On 30th April 2003, we foresaw and discussed this problem in a posting titled Should UKIP's MEPs Stand Again? which is linked from here. The consequences of what became an obscene scramble to get to the top of the regional lists by other senior officers of the party now makes this an even broader question. We recommend a read of the entire earlier posting as it remains valid but quote these particular paragraphs:-

The philosophical position that we sent them to Brussels to seek Britain’s withdrawal from the EU and if they have made no progress in that direction after one term in office it would seem unlikely they would succeed in two or more terms is powerful. Even more so is the danger that the comforts of the lifestyle enjoyed by the MEPs might become an end in themselves thus converting our representatives into closet Euro-federalists.

In a situation where UKIP had enjoyed the most fantastically able sitting MEPs, who had worked tirelessly for the Party and been responsible for the recruitment of many new, mainly young, but all enthusiastic members AND who had also advanced the UKIP cause by arguing and debating long and often with the ablest members of the pro-European and federalist forces AND who had made many able and frequent contributions to the national media THEN a strong case could be made that such sitting members should be placed no higher than third on any regional list.

The benefits should be obvious, the celebrity gained as a result of having had the support of the party in gaining initial membership would be re-invested in propelling two new candidates into the Brussels Parliament with the added bonus of the sitting MEP having an outside chance of re-election.

....Unhappily UKIP has not had sitting MEPs who exactly meet the description above. Thus they are scrabbling to be lead candidates in their original regions, apparently more intent on retaining their MEP benefits than bringing new colleagues to the fight.

In fact the impact of the internet which was briefly discussed in the earlier post on this site today, will most likely be used by our opponents to make their re-election and all those candidates beneath them on their regional lists practically impossible. The damage is unlikely to be confined to those regions alone as other outstanding candidates with unblemished records and no backlog of adverse press comment lying around at the click of a mouse, will also suffer as the UKIP Party name is dragged through the mud.

Intervening events show this concern was more than valid. It is now too late to change the lists, but for the sake of the Eurosceptic cause I see no reason why declarations from certain lead candidates that they will stand down immediately after the election if voted in, in favour of specified candidates further down the list, cannot be made and may well save the day!

New blood and untainted reputations can then take up the fight in Brussels and Strasbourg with new vigour, while the higher profiled ex-MEPs, and degraded party apparatchiks such as Nattrass, could start the battle for Westminster seats which is the only parliament from which withdrawal from the EU can eventually be made a reality.

Even I, might conceivably then consider a vote for one such as Ashley Mote as my MEP and even thereafter possibly one for Farage for a seat at Westminster!!

The alternative is also to risk the details of the last years internal party disputes being paraded by Euroscepticism's opponents, possibly in the press to the detriment of the entire Eurorealist movement and the loss of any realistic chance of a major upset.

It is time for those at the head of UKIP to put the cause before themselves! Farage likes to take the lead, let's see him lead the way now by declaring that he will stand down immediately upon re-election to concentrate on the fight for Westminster!

posted by Martin |5:54 AM