Currently UKIP is on a roll with Farage claiming they are taking votes from Labour as much as the Tories. That claim will fall apart in the 2015 General Election as the backgrounds of UKIP's candidates are examined. Looking at their current crop of MEPs it looks like the Tory third reserve team with people like Helmer, Etheridge, Legge etc ie those who failed to get nominated for a safe seat. They may apppeal to Tory dissidents but there is no way Labour voters will vote for old or young Tories. Even their women are old Tories, Diane James and more obviously Suzanne Evans. Nice ladies but they are no Charlotte Leslies.
Can anyone name a current UKIP MEP or NEC member who was previously a member of the Labour party?
Alex Salmond's SNP came so close to winning in the Scottish referendum by presenting themselves as more socialist than Labour. UKIP have to recognise this and present themselves in this light in Labour held seats and have former Labour members as candidates. That is the way to win. Its the tactic the LibDems used to get up to the 55 to 60 seat mark. Will Farage do it? Of course not he is the biggest failed Tory of the lot. Does he want a group of socialist inclined MPs? Certainly not and neither do the UKIP members and ex-members like the Major. They prefer old Etonians and Eton mess.
The EU's strength is they know the system, play it and run it. France has more than twice as many EU officials as the UK. It helps if you are making the rules and interpreting them but UK officialdom compounds this by gold plating the regulations. Nick Watt pointed this out today on the Sunday Politics opining that this was the probable cause of the £1.7 bn tax demand. I did not know prostitutes were diligent at submitting tax returns. Possibly Latvian pole dancers are more diligent in this area.
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Farage has always completely failed to understand it is an extremely delicate operation to try to build an anti-EU coalition that transcends the left-right divide (as any anti-EU coalition must do if it is to secure the strength in numbers which it needs). I overwhelmingly agree with you that turning UKIP into the Tory Right in exile fatally undermines such efforts. You cannot hold such a broad church together if you start dabbling in unrelated issues. The Helmers and the Dartmouths should stop and ask themselves if they would ever vote for the far-left anti-EU party set up by the late Bob Crow. Of course they would never entertain the idea, so they need to ask themselves why they are so arrogant as to presume a left-wing withdrawalist would be any more likely to entertain the idea of voting for a neo-Thatcherite party.
On the subject of "UKIP's weakness", another example emerges today out of Farage's squalid deal with his new anti-women, anti-semitic, racist allies in Poland.
That vile party's leader Korwin-Mikke, talking about Farage, is quoted in today's media as saying "now we can always blackmail him, he will have to help us."
Full story here (behind the Dirty Digger's paywall, but you can get the crucial first few paragraphs for free, including the incriminating quote):
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/article1475930.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2014_10_25
The article also reports a further addition to Korwin-Mikke's delightful list of beliefs, not previously reported as far as I was aware. We knew he didn't believe in the concept of culpable rape, or giving votes to women, or the veracity of the Holocaust, or refraining from racist abuse. But now at last here is something he does believe in, apparently - apartheid.
And of course, as he's happy to boast, he also believes he's got a euro-hungry Farage by the goolies. At least we can agree with him on that last point.
It was sad Bob Crow died so young. He was a potent force to get us out of the EU and honest in representing his members. He had no airs and graces or title. He did not need one. He reminded me a lot of Alex Salmond.
Bob Crow, I suspect, probably upset more commuters than he persuaded to the cause of independence from the EU.
Party loyalties have bedevilled the debate throughout. In 1975 my father, a triple dyed in the wool Tory was strongly suspicious of the EEC but added" That man Wedgewood Benn's against it. So there must be some good in it"!
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