Britannia Radio

60 per cent of Tory members think pact with UKIP will

There is no doubt my party has the wrong leader and the wrong policy on Europe, indeed the wrong policy on just about everything, partly because they are Lib Dem policies.

A pact with UKIP makes obvious sense but why not go the whole hog and go to the country in the autumn with a policy of withdrawal?

We need to break up the Coalition but without Labour support for EU withdrawal (and Blair is trying to block that) there would be little point in a minority govt, which might not survive a confidence vote anyway.

The obvious replacement for Cameron is that nice man Dr. Liam Fox. Boris has great hair but is wobbly on the EU issue and a bit soft on defence.  He also has some odd views on capital punishment, no offence intended.  There is no need to wait until 2015 for a new leader, we can have one by Party Conference.

What is required is a delegation of party suits to go to Chequers to deliver the bad news to the PM.  I've sent my suit to the dry cleaners just in case.  My comment just posted "M Wood's phrase "robbed us of the seat" clearly implies a belief that the seat was somehow Conservative property by right, and that UKIP's intervention allowed some other party to steal it.    WRONG! I prefer the reply of Lord Stoddart of Swindon who narrowly lost his long-held Labour seat there due to the intervention of a Hard Left candidate. 

Asked if he was bitter, he replied "No - everyone has the right to stand for election and for what he believes in, that's democracy". Does M Wood disagree? If Conservatives fail to win a seat - any seat - and indeed fail to win the election as they did in 2010, then maybe, just maybe, it is because they have the wrong policies and the wrong leaders. - 

Including (for example) a clear preference for this country to continue to be ruled by those we do not elect and cannot remove from office, under a leader who on the one hand tells us his proposals for (what he must know to be unachievable) renegotiations of our EU relationship - while at the same time telling the EU not to worry as there is no possibility whatever that we would leave. 

Surely,  as Bevan once remarked in different circumstances - "Going into the Conference Chamber naked". Having abandoned the Conservatives because of Maastricht, Major and the ERM, and voted UKIP on every possible occasion since, I cannot begin to imagine what the present Conservative leadership could (and would be prepared) to, offer UKIP, in return for UKIP standing down, that would persuade not only UKIP's leadership but UKIP voters to help this Europhile and incompetent clique currently in charge - at least nominally and at least for the next few weeks - of the Party and the country, to win an overall majority that would allow it to continue to collude in bringing about the end of Britain as a Sovereign country. 

UKIP's primary - arguably its only significant - weapon at present is to deny the Conservatives an overall majority until they are prepared unequivocally to guarantee the people of this country the right to decide in a free, even-handed and prompt referendum whether or not they wish to stay in the EU. 

For UKIP to give up that weapon would be as stupid as for Cameron to assure the EU in advance of discussions (which they have in any case rejected in principle) that however much they refuse to give way, we will in the end give up and accept it. 

For all these reasons Tim's article is based on a false premise, at least until there is a change of leadership to someone in whom UKIP and its voters could have at least some confidence. Like most of the country, it seems, we have none whatever in Cameron and Co. nor are we ever likely to given his performance to date..