More notes from a blue corner: Whoops apocalypse!

As the dust settles on Clacton and Heywood and Middleton and attentions turn toward Rochester and Strood, I think it is a good time to reflect on this “earthquake”. Being the sad politico that I am, I have read the contrasting views of the pundits and caught up on the coverage. I must say that the whole thing casts a very dim light on the quality of our politicians from across the party spectrum, including UKIP. 

The nadire of the whole thing came when the lightweight Greg Hands MP and the chippy, cracked-record Michael Dugher MP started slugging it out over the UKIP swings in Heywood and Middleton. It was like watching two adolescents in a ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ competition, full of excuses and dominated by Andrew Neil’s loaded questions. If the main parties was to communicate to the country they need to do better than these turkeys. Why are they not putting their most charismatic, eloquent and media-savvy spokespeople in front of the camera to play this down and rubbish the speculation?

For example, if I had been David Cameron, I would have sent my chief whip down to defend his record (this thing after all happened under his watch) and to offer a shot across the bows for any other Conservatives looking to defect. From a Labour perspective? They should have someone who can effectively communicate the party’s policy and stop Tory-bashing with hollow soundbytes rather than concrete reasoning. I want to see some courage and conviction from an authoritative government and a strong, feisty opposition. Sadly I didn’t see this that night. 

Turning to Clacton, the Conservatives seemed lacklustre, with none of the soapbox sparkling of yesteryear. Of course it was un-winnable, Carswell is a highly popular, local MP who has a very convenient, UKIP sympathetic demographic and has invested a huge amount of his personal time building up support for his cause. However, I think it would have set a good example to have fought the election tooth-and-nail despite the pre-destined outcome, rather than simply saying ‘oh, it’s a by-election, the results will be different in 2015’ - maybe, but this kind of complacency is so deeply unattractive and slightly insulting to the people who want to see the party given the respect and recognition it deserves. 

In my last post, I wrote that we needed to take our message to the doorsteps now, wee beed to have a clear, coherent and thoroughly defiant message. If we believe the Conservatives are doing the right thing by the country, let’s enunciate it through actions as well as words. We should have been all over Clacton, making public statements and vilifying a turncoat, showing that the party machine was prepared to mete its full force on Clacton, in a similar vein to Newark. 

Carswell’s defection reflects the feelings of his voters, the result shows it and he is an intelligent fellow. However, when asked to elucidate his view it was something of a car crash (although no-one probably noticed). His interview with Mr. Neil was spent sparring with the deeply unimpressive Hands and then offering vacuous rhetoric filled with platitudes and the word ‘change’, yet I was left wondering ‘what change’. His speech on re-election was even more devoid of content - then again, isn’t that representative of his new party! Anyway, I had better stop before I am accused of ‘negative campaigning’! 

Rochester and Strood will be a tough one for us, but we (The Conservatives) could win! We need to pull our collective fingers out and dominate the area, the media output, everything! The big hitters need to be seen in the town centre, on the doorsteps, in the supermarket and beating UKIP in the battle of both personalities and ideas - we have so much more to offer, let’s get better at selling it! Let’s stop being complacent about these by-elections. In the words of my old chum, Eric Pickles, “Let’s get campaigning and let’s get cracking.”

Notes from the blue corner: A few thoughts following the recent elections

In a short interlude to my Latvian adventure I want to share a few thoughts as a loyal Conservative Party supporter about the recent elections...

It was difficult to watch the recent results of the Local and EU elections flood in without a slight admiration for Farage, his cocky and assured performance is one of a man riding the crest of a wave. In fact, he rather reminds me of Michael Heseltine when he stood for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1990 or Tony Benn when he felt sure of his ambition of wrestle the ideological heart and soul of the Labour Party in the early eighties. There is something quite comical and yet tragic in watching such hubris unfold as he allegedly lays waste to the old political order to replace it with... more of the same but in a different clothing. 

The leader of ‘the people’s army’ has apparently spoken and now, with his loyal and charismatic lieutenant Roger ‘Hang em high’ Helmer (formerly of the Conservative Party and current UKIP candidate for Newark in the upcoming by-election) we are going to see a new brand of ideology to appeal to the masses. It’s all very well and under the very clever flag of yellow and purple (an amalgamation of the main parties colours) they seem to have the ear of both the swaying and disaffected voters.

I watched coverage the coverage of the EU elections and closely followed the local elections, indeed, I will be fascinated to see the results a Newark (a litmus paper to see if the Conservative vote can stand fast). One thing from the coverage was worryingly clear, UKIP have nothing to say. I was expecting nuggets of wisdom when Farage, O’Flynn, Helmer and Hamilton (a gross opportunist if ever there was one - who even had the gall to accuse Angela Eagle of Libel! I almost chocked on my whisky) got on their soapboxes but there was no talk about policy, constructive debate or even about their intention for their tenure in office at the EU coalface. 

I was at work the other day and where two colleagues had a mind to vote UKIP with another few friends of mine tossing up whether to follow the traditional blue or ‘shake it up’ in protest and go purple. Do people know what they’re voting for except a wish list of small ‘c’ conservative pipe dreams? A look at the UKIP website is revealing, particularly in its ‘issues’ section.

A longtime supporter of the Conservative, I was fortunate to work for them in the last election, and although I completely disagreed with Labour and the Liberal Democrat offers (I even had a few reservations of our own), all documents were grounded with an understanding of the social makeup of the UK, our international position and a varying degree of economic realism. I found all these points lacking from a read-through of UKIP’s call to action for voters. 

Ironically, the claims for lower taxes cannot be real, for all the money they want to take out of particular pots will have to be reallocated to deliver on some of their bolder claims: tougher borders, increased defence spend, tougher sentencing and more prisons, extraction from EU institutions, renegotiating treaties, finding new trade partners, means-testing social housing allocation, disestablishing the current education system to set up new grammar schools, introducing a new means-testing on benefits... just to name a few.

It sounds like an attractive proposition to a number of this in the blue corner, but it is a slim offer, just over a page of text. It takes no account of costs (not that most manifestos do!), it has no long term vision (for example, no elaboration on how it would be integrated) and furthermore, it doesn’t reference any tough decisions that the party would have to make in power. It’s a classic case of a person from the outside the ideological tent pissing in. Offering to outline the problems, but putting in marginal, unrealistic goals which might have looked more in place in the time of Macmillan and Wilson than in the landscape we now live in. 

However at this stage Farage has every reason to be pleased with himself and is enjoying his time in the limelight, Rothman’s in one hand, a pint of Courage in the other, but I urge swaying voters to ask him some key policy questions, expecting the same answers that Miliband and Cameron would have to give. Furthermore, what about his band of merry men and women who back him? I want to see other figures from the party, including Mr. Helmer for example, speak on key issues of the day. I have seen the latter on Question Time before and his comments are controversial (nothing wrong with that), designed to provoke reaction and chock full of NIMBY-ism and cynicism. If this is the UKIP vision of the UK I want it even less than I want the concrete-clad, Marxist visions of Ed Miliband and comrades. 

Far be it from me to tell readers how to vote, I certainly believe in following your conscience and the principle of the secret ballot, I urge people currently undecided to think very carefully when they put a tick in the UKIP box as, usually the case in these matters, they might live to regret the decision.