By Harry Phibbs
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As part of the natural "set them up, knock them down" rhythm of the media, UKIP has had a generally bad press over the last couple of days. This is right and proper. The Observer has some leaked emails showing that many within the Party are concerned that achieving coherant policies is a struggle - Godfrey Bloom MEP says its like "herding cats."
As a protest party, the difficulty is that adopting anything much by way of policy narrows their potential support.
It has also emerged that several of their council candidates have racist links or connections. Again this media scrutiny is welcome - especially as a warning to voters before the elections on Thursday. It is no good UKIP complaining about it being a "smear campaign" if the revelations are true. If any of their candidates are caught out as secretly being former BNP members - or making racist or anti semitic comments - then the response from UKIP should be to remove them and to thank the media for alerting them to it.
There are 1,739 UKIP candidates on Thursday. It does seem that the Party should have done more to vet them - in the age of Google it is not that hard. UKIP's rivals have obliged in doing the task for them.
However, the number exposed as extremists is under 1% - indeed I think still in single figures. Furthermore UKIP should be commended for removing them. Chris Scotton, Alan Ryall, Anna-Marie
Crampton and Susan Bowen are all out.
Where I think they are in trouble is over the case of Caven Vines in Rotherham.
By Peter Hoskin
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Once
upon a time, only a small gaggle of commentators – including the Express’s
Patrick O’Flynn – gave Ukip much thought. That, of course, has changed over
recent months, and it seems to have developed even further during the past
week. On Friday, my old boss Fraser Nelson devoted
his Telegraph column to Nigel Farage and how he’s “extending his message
beyond Brussels-bashing”. And today the Sun on Sunday contains an
editorial about the same man that is noteworthy in its effusiveness.
“Nigel Farage talks nothing but common sense,” starts the Sun’s leader, before continuing, “It’s hard to argue when he trashes David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, three supposed ‘leaders’ who spend their days being buffeted around by feedback from focus groups.” But, however that sounds, the piece doesn’t end up as a full endorsement of Ukip. It concludes by suggesting that, to win the next election, Mr Cameron should work up a pact with Mr Farage: “Because unless those two can strike a deal, Ed Miliband could wake up in Downing Street on May 8, 2015.”
By Paul Goodman
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David Cameron gave Conservative MPs "a very strong indication" at the recent Parliamentary Party meeting that he wants to introduce legislation before 2015 for his planned EU referendum after the next election. Or so the Spectator's Isabel Hardman reported recently. But the Prime Minister knows as well as anyone that Nick Clegg wouldn't support such a move: it would simply be vetoed. So what on earth was he doing playing up to his Euro-sceptic MPs? Was one of his weaknesses on display - namely, his tendency to duck short-term trouble, whatever the medium-term cost ? Or were the Spectator's sources mistaken? Did they mis-read or exaggerate?
Perhaps. That's been known to happen - and often, too. But I believe that Isabel knows what she's about, and that there's another explanation for Cameron's nods and hints. Both he and Nick Clegg - and most MPs in the parties they lead - want the Coalition to continue. They recognise that if they don't hang together they will hang separately, and that a snap election, forced amidst strife and chaos, would benefit neither of their parties. (Yes, yes: I appreciate that there's a Fixed Terms Parliament Act. But it might not be sufficient to prolong this Parliament until 2015, were the Coalition to break down.)
Continue reading "Cameron should end the Coalition in September 2014" »
By Peter Hoskin
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Another poll to enflame Conservative concerns about a split vote on the right: tomorrow’s ComRes survey for the Independent on Sunday has Ukip on 17 per cent, which happens to equal the highest level of support they’ve recorded with any pollster.
The Tories are on 28 per cent, with Labour on 37. That means that, by ComRes’s numbers at least, the gap between the Tories and Labour is only two percentage points narrower than the gap between Ukip and the Tories. Shudder.
Continue reading "Ukip on 17% in latest ComRes poll – Tories on 28%" »
By Tim Montgomerie
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Over the last year, since March 2012, the percentage of Tory members thinking that Cameron and the Conservatives can stay in power after the next election has shrunk from 62% to just 25%. The percentage thinking Cameron can win an outright majority has shrunk from 23% to just 7%. The specific expectations are:
Continue reading "Only 7% of Tory members think Cameron can win a majority in 2015" »
By Peter Hoskin
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Remember when Nigel Farage mentioned the possibility of an electoral pact between his party and the Conservatives, back in September? His condition for any such deal was “an absolute promise, written in blood, that they would give us a full, free and fair referendum on our continued membership of the EU.” He was happy, of course, for that referendum to be held after 2015.
Mr Farage’s position has rather shifted now that David Cameron has promised a referendum on Europe. During an interview on the Andrew Marr Show in January, he said that the “full, free and fair referendum” should come “before the next election”. He added that a pact would be “virtually impossible to contemplate” while David Cameron is Tory leader.
By Paul Goodman
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There's a triple significance to the post-Eastleigh interventions of the three main Conservative members of the National Union of Ministers - Philip Hammond, Theresa May, and Chris Grayling.
It may look at first glance as though Hammond's plea for savings from welfare to be found to protect his budget, and May and Grayling's interventions over the European Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act last weekend, have little connection, if any - but they've more in common than meets the eye.
Continue reading "The next Conservative leadership election is under way" »
By Tim Montgomerie
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Yesterday a senior Tory adviser told me that Nigel Farage was acting like Father Christmas - promising goodies to everyone. It was a point I'd made in last Monday's Times (£):
"In a leaflet distributed to the voters of Eastleigh Nigel Farage’s party promises to “reduce everyone’s taxes”. That’s right – “everyone’s”. At the same time it promises to reintroduce free student grants, increase the size of the military, increase police numbers, put more people in prison, enhance pensions and give every voter a free lollipop. Okay, I made the last one up but UKIP makes Ed Balls look fiscally responsible. Labour may have opposed all of the Coalition’s tough decisions on the deficit but the shadow chancellor has at least attempted to stop his colleagues from making unfunded additional spending promises. UKIP’s economic immaturity may, in due course, become its Achilles heel."
Number 10 is clearly pushing the Santa Claus line. In his Mail on Sunday column James Forsyth writes that "Tories will soon start hitting [UKIP] as the ‘Santa Claus party’, ridiculing the claim that it can cut taxes while vastly increasing spending on defence and public services. They will seek to portray Nigel Farage as a confidence trickster, trying to pull the wool over voters’ eyes." The Christmassy image also reached Andrew Rawnsley: "Ukip's literature in Eastleigh promised tax cuts for "everyone"," he noted, "and more spending on everything from the restoration of student grants to more generous pensions to more prisons. It must be the only party to be led by people who still believe in Santa Claus."
I don't think the Tory leadership has any choice but to try this tactic. The fiscal follies of UKIP's manifesto deserve to be exposed and it will stop many serious voters from supporting Nigel Farage. It won't be enough, of course. Many voters aren't voting for UKIP but against the political establishment. Closer to the election the anti-politics sentiment may subside but it may not and it's very unlikely to disappear completely.
By Tim Montgomerie
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W1W 7PQ are being cancelled. Ministerial schedules rearranged. Day return rail tickets to Eastleigh are being booked. Looking at Twitter, a lot of Tory MPs are already in Hampshire, delivering dawn raid leaflets and beginning a constituency-wide telling operation.
The newspapers are full of speculation about the result of today's historic by-election - historic because it's the first between two coalition partner parties in modern history - and of the implications for David Cameron. Anything other than a win is going to be difficult for the PM. The Tories' general election strategy is based on winning up to twenty Lib Dem seats. Many Tory MPs will worry a great deal about that strategy if we can't win Eastleigh in the middle of the Rennard controversy and, much more significantly, when Clegg's party is positioned so badly in national polls. Tory HQ will legitimately reply that Eastleigh is not typical of our target seats - it is, after all, a seat where the Lib Dems have a total grip on the local council. I believe that every ward in the Eastleigh constituency is represented by a Lib Dem. There hasn't, nonetheless, been a shortage of Tory activists in the seat. Lord Ashcroft's final poll identified 90% visibility from the Tory campaign and 92% from the Lib Dems. The problem for the party is that we did not have a full canvass in place and we don't have local activists to ensure our door-knocking is of maximum persuasiveness.
By Tim Montgomerie
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There is a huge new divide in British politics. Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg want to deny the British people a vote on their future. Nigel Farage's party is too small to deliver a referendum and give anyone born after 1957 a say on whether their country should be part of this huge European enterprise. David Cameron can and will deliver an In/Out referendum if he is still Prime Minister after the next election. That will be guaranteed if Britain votes for a Tory majority in the House of Commons. If there is another hung parliament the Tory leader's aides have told the Daily Mail that he will make a referendum a pre-condition of coalition negotiations.
Last night I published extracts from Cameron's big speech.
In his Opinion Pollster column Stephan Shakespeare notes a 27% swing in favour of EU membership in just eight weeks - simply because pro-EU voices have joined the argument. He also suggests that the speech will make it "slightly" more likely that Cameron will still be PM after the next election.