Saturday, January 13, 2007
Someone Else You've Never Heard Of Joins UKIP
Seeing as I take great pleasure in reporting defections to the Conservative Party I might as well be 'fair and balanced' and report another Conservative defection to UKIP. Former Birmingham PPC Alan Blumenthal has decided to walk the plank. Full story HERE.
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i'm another conservative you've never heard of who recently defected to UKIP.
i happen to think that the damage being done to our country by our membership of the EU is so great that it goes beyond any party loyalty.
the regulations alone - never mind the interfereing, the chattering and the sheer cost of the thing - are strangling this country while others forge ahead.
i also think that david cameron - particularly in ruling out tory support for grammar schools, but in other ways too - is proving himself unsuitable to be leader of the conservative party.
he may 'play well' with the bbc and the liberal media but he isn't playing well out here in rurla warwickshire and isn't (it seems) actually the right medicine for the illness.
on a related point, when will the tories stop apologising for their past? the fact is that conservative principles are the best ones by which to run a country. they benefit the rich, yes, but they also do more to drag the poor up and provide them with opportunities to help themselves. if anyone can name a truly successful socialist country with a long term future other than basketcasedom, please do so.
We'll have to wait and see what stance Cameron takes on the EU (assuming that he does actually take a stance). I follow the mainstream media and still haven't heard him state a clear and unequivocal approach to Europe.
I trust, Iain that you will agree that nonentity never-heard-of ppcs defecting both to or from the Conservatives are equally irrelevent?
This what Mr Blumenthal is quoted as saying "I used to be a conviction politician when I was a Conservative but these days all David Cameron does is what he thinks will get him votes, he does not seem to believe in a thing,"
"Everyday this Government and Europe make my life harder as a businessman so I wanted to join a party that is doing something about that."
So to get action on easing regulation Mr B leaves the Conservatives (a party now in with best chance since 1992 of winning a GE) because they are focused on winning elections and getting power which can then give them the ability to roll back the regulations. Instead Mr B joins UKIP who have NO CHANCE of winning a GE in his lifetime or of changing any law to stop this regulation.
Sorry Mr B, I fail to see the logic in your decision.
Centre right people in the USA understand that there is only one party to win an election, the Republicans. They do not form some other minor party, they focus on working with their centre right party in a common cause. It is called realism.
Alan and his family are very well known in Birmingham. I know that you're ignorant about Midlands politics, but there's no need to wear that on your sleeve.
Of more significance and on the flip side, another Birmingham Labour MP has thrown in the towel.
Great, we have lost another non entity.
Sorry to see Simon go though. seriously Simon, have you actually read Camerons speeches, or are you just relying on the Labour/media spin on them?
UKIP has been described as being like a bath with no plug.
As Nigel Farage focuses exclusively into turning UKIP into a 'new' extreme-right wing Conservative Party and recruiting Conservatives - at the bottom longstanding UKIP members are flowing out - as in the South East Essex Branch resignations, Plymouth branch meltdown and the entire West Dorset Branch resigning, a third of UKIPs National Executive Committee resigning, the loss of 13,000 members in 2 years (UKIP membership down from 30,000 to 17,000)
Nigel Farage keeps topping up the bath more and more members flow out.
I however do not underestimate UKIP - they are now exclusively focusing on 'vote splitting' - targeting seats, not to win, but to take Conservative votes and letting Labour and Liberal Democrats win.
Their 2007 local election strategy appears to be to focus on those seats and councils where the loss of a few Conservative seats will result in the Council becoming Labour, Liberal Democrat or No Overall Control.
John Redwood argued recently why the Conservatives shouldn't campaign to leave the EU before we have tried to reform it. Leaving unilaterally would be worse than staying in under the current conditions.
UKIP will end up just preventing Conservative MPs from being elected, resulting in yet more Labour government.
A couple of days ago, on the thread about Tim Congdon's defection to UKIP, I wrote, "It is because the Conservative Party is not giving the UK the leadership it should, that I anticipate that Tim Congdon’s defection to UKIP will certainly not be an isolated incident, since his reasons resonate with thousands of Conservative Party members and supporters." Prophetic?
Like many here, I've been a Tory voter all my life and my parents were also lifelong Tory voters. But I will not vote Tory this time if that self-regarding, smug fool Cameron is leading the party.
In addition, because he comes from such privileged circumstances himself, he does not understand how important Tory principles are for people to better themselves and provide their children with a better life. He is too apart from 99% of British people. I harbour a strong dislike for him. He may be popular and much admired for his windmill in Westminster village, but people in the country regard him as being as heavyweight as a piece of floating thistledown.
Despite the inevitable defections to UKIP from the Conservative Party, I support the view of my fellow-Conservative and fellow-BETTER OFF OUT campaigner Philip Davies, MP for Shipley who said to some UKIP MEP's, "The Conservative Party will pull the UK from the EU before UKIP forms a Government."
So why are you so pleased when Lib Dem or Labour candidates we've never heard of defect to the Tories?
Leaving unilaterally would be worse than staying in under the current conditions.
I'm sorry, but I have comprehensively debunked that myth a number of times, including at Wanabehuman (warning: no swearing!).
UKIP will end up just preventing Conservative MPs from being elected, resulting in yet more Labour government.
I don't see this at all. UKIP will field candidates in all constituencies (other than in those occupied by Better Off Out signatories); the fact that the people who are most likely to vote UKIP happen to be old-school Tories is the fault of the Tories for not listening to their core vote, not UKIP's fault for attracting those voters.
The Tories have made it very clear that they are abandoning their traditional values: that another party have sprung up to fill that void is surely a good sign in a democracy.
There is a deeply unpleasant tendency amongst Tories at present to say something along the lines of "those are our seats" when, in fact, the voters have decided that they are not.
I was all set to vote Tory a year ago; anything, I thought, to get these NuLabour bastards out. But now I believe that the Tories will be no better and no different to the current government; given this and given that I would never vote Labour, why on earth would I vote for a party that emulates them?
This is one of the main reasons that I joined UKIP. And remember, if people vote for UKIP, then they will form a government: all parties have to start somewhere.
DK
Why would a PPC (albeit a former one defect to UKIP? Is he not interested in entering Parliament after all?
Seriously though, I think the party should at least worry about these defections. UKIP are not as extreme as they are painted. The Conservative Party should ask itself whether, by its words and deeds, it is disenfranchising many on the Right.
Iain, it is wrong to be so complacent about this. I agree with Keith Standring's point above, and that is why I am a Tory party member still. However, just because activists, Councillors, Constituency officers etc etc haven't been on BBC News 24 to review the newspapers, or on Newsnight, the party can't ignore them nor should we try to dismiss them as insignificant people "you've never heard of". The vast majority of the Conservative party is made up of people you've never heard of who work very hard- if we lose them we are in trouble.
"I however do not underestimate UKIP - they are now exclusively focusing on 'vote splitting' - targeting seats, not to win, but to take Conservative votes and letting Labour and Liberal Democrats win."
How else can traditional tories get the current conservative leadership to understand that they're not happy with the policies/lack of policies (delete depending on what aspect of government you're talking about) that are presented as an unchangeable fait accompli by the seemingly stone-deaf self-referring little clique at the top?
Only by the fear of yet another defeat upsetting their watery bowels. Maybe then they'll take notice of the views of the majority.
UKIP can't win, but they can certainly prevent the tories from doing so.
Whilst I am fully in sympathy with many of the UKIP sentiments about Europe. I am of the firm belief that much of the trouble over European legislation is compounded by the present Government's interpretation of european regulation. Also they tack on nasty bits of their own. As long as nulabour are in power, Europe will not be challenged. The greatest harm from Europe comes from the present Government. Unfortunately any vote for UKIP will be a vote for Labour. Like it or lump it.
Failed Tory PPCs do all sorts of things - change party, start a blog etc
Duncan, aren't you a failed PPC and a blogger?! For the record, I started my blog in 2002, long before I had even thought of being a PPC.
benedict - yes, i've heard his speeches first hand.
let's just look at grammar schools - the single biggest factor after family breakdown, in my opinion, in determining the quality of education available to the masses in this country. on which cameron said:
"I want to say absolutely clearly, the Conservative party that I am leading does not want to go back to the 11-plus, does not want to go back to the grammar school system."
this is an extraordinary thing for a conservative leader to say (not least because grammar schools are actually popular outside the labour party, the bbc and the guardian, and because we'll all benefit from a better educated workforce).
he talks endlessly of wanting to create a 'new, compassionate conservative party' - thereby agreeing that the old one was not compassionate and that, by extension, the socialists are. i just don't happen to agree with him on this; i'm afraid that sometimes telling the hard truth and applying what appear to be painful policies is the compassionate way forward. i don't think taxing people to distraction, wasting billions on the nhs, failing to educate two generations and riddling our lives with surveillance, nannying and regulation is compassionate at all, though i'm sure polly toynbee would disagree.
i'm under no illusion about UKIP; they have no chance of forming a government and they will undoubtedly cost the tories seats. but then i have no inerest in electing new labour lite just because they call themselves conservatives, and a protest vote on a masss scale might shift the tories the right way.
the weird thing is, this current labour government is about as unpopular as any in living memory, and i include thatcher's and major's (their unpopularity was always overplayed in the media, until right at the bitter end). and cameron thinks being more blairish is a good thing.
>>i'm under no illusion about UKIP; they have no chance of forming a government<<
It is the very fact that UKIP won't win that makes them a powerful protest vote.
The more people highlight the fact that UKIP won't win the better really. A safe protest resonates well with the general public.
But Iain, three non-entities that no one had ever heard of within the Lib Dems were the tlak of the Tory Party just three weeks ago. you can't have it both ways !
To be fair to Duncan Borrowman, he has never stood as a target seat candidate.
Norfolk Blogger, ah, but there were three of them, which actually brought the number to seven. Seven PPCs defecting is a story in my book.
And as to your second post, er so what?..
Bodger - "Just look at what has been done to the UK and then ask yourself why. The dividing of the UK into regions (so that "Scotland" and "Yorkshire" will be equivalent under the EU model), the new EU model Army regionalised and nearly ruined......"
Regurgitating this arrant nonsense is hardly the best way to face the new politics in the UK.
How exactly did the EU "divide" the UK into Yorkshire and Scotland in a way that, say, Edward I or the Wars of the Roses didn't?!
Anyone who still spouts that rubbish that civil servants in Brussels or national politicians in other EU countries know or care about the tedious domestic arrangemnts of UK local government are more deluded than they realise.
Pick a proper issue to challenge, rather than lazy, scary-sounding but false ones...
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