I would vote for UKIP as Hobson’s choice.
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"Timothy Congdon" <timcongdon@btconnect.com>Date: 25 February 2013 16:15:57 GMTSubject: Tim Congdon's latest e-mailDear fellow members of UKIP (and others concerned about the UK's relationship with the EU),The Eastleigh by-election will place the UK Independence Party in the centre-ground of British politics. With three days to go, opinion polls and canvassing returns suggest that the gap between the LibDems, the Conservatives and UKIP is less than 10% of the vote. Further, UKIP has made massive gains since the 2010 general election and is the party now enjoying momentum. (Labour is badly behind. There has to be a possibility that Labour supporters will switch to UKIP, as a protest vote, to spite both the LibDems and the Tories. UKIP might then win the seat.)The immediate priority of UKIP supporters must be to help the party team on the ground in Eastleigh by contacting party director, Lisa Duffy, with the details below.Lisa Duffy partydirector@ukip.org38 Market StreetEastleigh, SO50 5RA0800 587 6587Compared with the Eastleigh by-election, my latest thoughts and views may seem even more of a sideshow than usual. But there are one or two things which I wanted to say. (I plan to spend tomorrow afternoon in Eastleigh helping with the leaflets and canvassing.)1. The Huff Post Politics opinion poll – a spin-off from the Eastleigh by-electionThe Huffington media company has a UK political website/blog called ‘Huff Post Politics’, which I have recently checked for polls on the Eastleigh situation. People looking at the website are asked ‘who would you vote for in the Eastleigh by-election?’. Obviously, the result changes by the hour and the poll is very far from scientific, but this was the situation in the late afternoon on Sunday, 24th February.Labour ` 25.44%UK Independence Party 24.45%Conservatives 20.72%Liberal Democrats 15.35%Beer, Baccy and Crumpet Party 4.28%Others (including English Democrats on 1.2%) 9.76%Now it is much too early to start jumping up and down, opening bottles of champagne, waving flags etc. (The poll does give 4.28% to the Beer, Baccy and Crumpet Party!) But two obvious messages are thati. UKIP’s visibility is rising dramatically andii. many people are disillusioned with the three ‘main’ parties (all committed to continued EU membership), and will support UKIP because it is not one of those three parties (‘none of the above’) and/or because they want Britain out of the EU.Three more contentious suggestions arei. UKIP’s key current objective – of coming first in the 2014 European elections – looks increasingly attainable,ii. in the 2015 general election (which promises to be the most exciting election of my lifetime and, I suspect, of many other people’s) scores of and perhaps one or two hundred seats will be like Eastleigh at present, effectively three-way or four-way marginals ‘with everything to play for’,iii. in 2015 UKIP could win a handful of House of Commons seats, probably in areas like the East Midlands (where immigration is a major issue) and the South West (where it is strong), with much depending on tactical voting, and,iv. although the coalition government is unpopular, a Labour landslide in 2015 is far from definite.2. Pamphlet ‘Europe’ doesn’t work: the three-million-jobs-at-risk lie and related misconceptions has now been published by the Freedom AssociationIn my last e-mail to UKIP supporters and sympathizers I mentioned that I had nearly completed a pamphlet on‘Europe’ doesn’t work for the Freedom Association. This is now ready and available for wider distribution. If you want copies for yourself or your branch, please let me know by replying to my e-mail address,timcongdon@btconnect.com. Over 15,000 copies are available, either from me or from the Freedom Association, and I would like them all to be distributed. (If you want to place a large order, please contact Rory Broomfield at the Freedom Association on rory@tfa.net.)A PDF file of the document is attached. Please circulate widely. See also attached both a PPTX file and a PDF file of my presentation to the UKIP conference in Skegness on 16th February.I hope I am not being tedious, but below are an executive summary of the pamphlet’s key points and a bit of text about how the arguments should be presented in public debates with ‘the other side’.Executive summary of the key pointsThe three-million-jobs-at risk lieSupporters of greater EU integration, such as the deputy prime minister, Nicholas Clegg, have claimed repeatedly – on the basis of a 1999 report from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research – that at least three million jobs would be at risk if the UK withdrew from the EU. (The Institute’s director, Martin Weale, repudiated that claim and described it as ‘pure Goebbels’.) The claim rests on a misunderstanding. Three million British people are involved in exporting products to the EU, but their jobs depend on the continuation of trade, not on continued EU membership. Outside the EU Britain – like any other country in the world – would be able to sell goods and services to EU member states. Millions of jobs in China ‘depend on exports to the EU’, but no one has suggested that China must become an EU member. The three-million-jobs-at-risk lie is ‘Euro-centrism gone mad’. (See page 10 for further discussion.)Other main points- The UK’s participation in ‘the European construction’ (i.e., ‘the Common Market’ from 1973 to 1993 and the European Union since then) has reduced employment. If the UK had remained a fully independent nation, employment would now be higher than it is.- The main reasons for the job destruction are two-fold - restrictive EU employment and labour market regulations, and the opening of the UK labour market to workers from poorer EU countries, particularly since 2004. (See pages 12 and 17 on regulation and Chapter 3 on immigration.)- OECD data shows that last year the proportion of working-age people in employment was 63.8% in the Eurozone compared with 70.0% in the UK and over 72% in the main Commonwealth high-income countries. (See page 12.)- EU labour markets are highly inefficient compared with those of other high-income countries, mainly because of excessive regulation.- If the UK were to be become more like the Eurozone, because of yet more regulation and ‘harmonization’ with the Eurozone average, 1.8 million jobs would be destroyed.- In the first 20 years of Common Market membership (i.e., the 20 years to 1993), the number of men in employment in the UK fell by almost two million. (See pages 14 and 15.)- In the Great Recession employment in our country of UK-born people fell by 800,000, whereas employment of foreign-born people rose by 400,000. (See page 19.) About half of the increase in foreign-born employment was of immigrant workers from Eastern Europe, allowed in because of our EU membership.The truth is that our membership of the EU has destroyed British jobs. It has destroyed them in two ways,- first, by imposing excessive and costly regulations on business, including many regulations that make it unprofitable to recruit and employ workers, and- second, by allowing in immigrant workers in vast numbers (the low millions) who have to some extent displaced British-born workers in the UK labour market.Let me repeat in sound-bite form: EU membership has destroyed British jobs because of unwanted immigration and excessive regulation. If we leave the EU, we can relax regulations and stop new immigration. That will bring back jobs and small businesses.3. The failure of Cameron’s strategy to ‘modernise’ the Conservative Party and to ‘decontaminate the brand’David Cameron has had a clear electoral strategy since he became leader of the Conservative Party in autumn 2005. The aim has been to persuade middle-ground Liberal Democrats to switch to the Conservatives by jettisoning the Conservatives’ supposed image of ‘nastiness’ (i.e., of so-called ‘right-wing’ views on social issues). The Conservatives were to be ‘modernised’, and the resulting ‘rebranding’ would make them appear a nicer bunch of people, and a more civilized and attractive party. Like Tony Blair, Cameron saw – and continues to see – the word ‘modern’ as expressing much that is good and desirable, and ‘modernisation’ as something to be pursued. The deliberate intention was to drop the Thatcherite element in contemporary Conservatism, with its allegedly harsh emphasis on unbridled individualism, private enterprise and a smaller state. Thatcher had said, following a theme in some of Hayek’s writings, that ‘there is no such thing as society’, since ultimately every society can be decomposed into particular people and their families. By contrast, Cameron in a 2005 article for The Spectator said that he was in favour of ‘social action zones’ (whatever they might be) and that his larger political ideal was ‘the Big Society’. The three Conservative losses in the general elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005 were attributed by Cameron and his associates to their party’s continued adherence to too much ‘right-wing Thatcherism’.An obvious interpretation of the Eastleigh by-election is that Cameron’s strategy has failed. Indeed, it has been a catastrophe for the Conservative Party. Eastleigh became a LibDem stronghold in the opening years of the 21st century, but before that it was a standard Conservative seat of the safe, Home Counties variety. Opinion polls nationally show that the LibDems are deeply unpopular, but in Eastleigh they throughout the by-election campaign battled as the favourites. Polls have steadily given them 30% or more of the vote. Meanwhile the Conservatives have lost ground to the UK Independence Party. Opinion surveys show that UKIP does particularly well in the C and D groups in the population, i.e., those seen to be in lower middle class ‘and below’. It is these groups that have no truck with Cameron’s ‘modernisation’ (i.e., in reality, the endorsement of ‘political correctness’) and no interest in the rebranding exercise. (What is ‘political correctness? I think, in essence, it is the notion that ‘society’ [really ‘the state’] should deliver equality of outcomes between people, regardless of their educational attainments, race, citizenship, creed, gender and sexual preferences, and even of how hard they hard they work, how much they save and so on.)The emerging pattern is extraordinary. As far as I am aware, UKIP’s surge had not been foreseen by any of the leading political commentators or any member of the party leaderships. The three ‘main’/old parties (i.e., the Conservatives, Labour and LibDems) have increasingly converged on a wishy-washy political correctness which appeals to the A and B groups in the population, particularly – for example – to teachers, civil servants and many opinion-formers in the media. But the C and D groups have been upset by the application of political correctness in practice. This may seem paradoxical, since surely ‘the lower social groups’ ought to be enthusiastic about greater equality of outcomes. That is not how it has turned out.The C and D groups have been the most affected by competition from immigrant workers in the labour market and by the increasing prominence of Muslim forms of worship. They also often see at first hand how the welfare state has been corrupted. Instead of promoting ‘social justice’, the UK’s welfare arrangements frequently offend against basic principles of ‘natural justice’ by giving too much to the undeserving. At any rate, UKIP has made large inroads into the votes from the C and D groups, and it has made these inroads from all of the three ‘main’/old parties. Some people have noticed that UKIP support does not seem to be closely connected with EU membership, since it is related to concern about identity and immigration. However, UKIP supporters are right to see EU integration as a major force behind the implementation of the political-correctness agenda.So Cameron’s ‘modernisation’ was meant to persuade the media and its key opinion-formers that the Conservatives are a party of nice people who are not particularly Thatcherite. Perhaps it has achieved that. But the result has been to alienate millions of former and/or potential Conservative voters in the C and D groups, many of whom have switched to UKIP. The Eastleigh by-election demonstrates that the planned electoral benefits of the Cameron strategy, in terms of gaining LibDem votes, are also uncertain. The UK political situation is remarkably fluid at present. But I don’t see how – with Cameron as prime minister – the Conservatives can recover support from the C and D groups in the next two years. Cameron is too obviously a member of an elite that has become remote from the daily lives of most people.The majority of voters say that they care more about health and education than they worry about the EU. But the Conservatives have nothing particular to offer on health compared with the other two main parties, while Gove’s radical initiatives in education are too new for any definite verdict yet. One of Cameron’s blunders has been to think that emphasis on health and education would be good salesmanship. In fact, no party has a ‘unique selling point’ in these areas. By contrast, UKIP has a very strong heart-and-soul USP in its rejection of EU membership. Voters do see – correctly – that EU membership is against the UK’s economic interests. The European election in 2014 and the general election in 2015 will be fascinating political theatre. My expectation is thati. the Conservatives will do badly, with the loss of votes to UKIP being generally regarded as the main reason (even though UKIP will in fact also be taking votes from Labour and the LibDems), andii. the Conservatives will then split, with a majority of the party adopting withdrawal from the EU as a main policy, indeed as possibly their distinctive policy, and a rump trying to differentiate themselves (unavailingly) from Labour and the LibDems.I have no idea what will happen after that. It would however be crazy for a Labour government elected in 2015 to ditch altogether the idea of an In/Out referendum.As UKIP supporters, we have an exciting three or four years ahead of us. As the party’s economics spokesman, I see it as my job to ensure that UKIP wins the debate on economic issues ahead of the two key elections and the In/Out referendum. So I will continue to send out these e-mails from time to time and hope they are of interest.With best wishes,Tim CongdonEconomics Spokesman for the UK Independence Party, and runner-up in the 2010 UKIP leadership election
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