Monday 23 July 2007

Have No Fear

Won't we be "squeezed" by the smaller parties, even not counting Labour and the Tories, who now have about three members between them, all living in the same nursing home? No, we will not be, as the sheer hysteria in certain emails forwarded to me, and on certain websites whose authors imagine that I cannot read them, makes abundantly, and hilariously, clear.

Have no fear of being "squeezed" by the Lib Dems, whom we could very largely replace (we certainly could here in the North East) simply by being neither Labour nor the Tories, and simply by subjecting actual Lib Dem policies (not least on the EU) to unaccustomed and unwanted exposure, those policies having been formulated on the assumption that no one would ever examine them. The Lib Dems' ethnic cleansing of the working class in Newcastle, and no doubt elsewhere as well, also deserves, and will receive, relentless attention.

Have no fear of being "squeezed" by Respect or by the Greens. Instead, expect that we will pick up the votes of people who might have voted for the former (if at all) despite thoroughly disliking both Trotskyism and Islam, and that we will pick up the votes of those who might have voted for the latter (if at all) despite being deeply unconvinced that the solution to all the world's ills is the destruction of the high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs of the working class, accompanied by the prevention of people on modest incomes from travelling, and the halting or even reversal of economic development in the poorer parts of the world.

Have no fear of being "squeezed" by UKIP. Instead, expect to pick up at least the Old Labour half of its vote last time, with the recent by-elections in any case indicating that UKIP barely exists any more (and that the English Democrats never really did).

And have no fear of being "squeezed" by the BNP. Instead, expect to pick up every vote that might have gone to it out of sheer despair this time, rather than out of any genuine belief in racial theory or Holocaust denial, views certainly not held by, say, 2500 people in Sedgefield.

Whom does that leave?

Have no fear. Because they certainly have plenty of it...

20 comments:

  1. Interesting you have made this a formal post.

    Obviously, I have burst your balloon!

    Regardless of membership collapse and lack of activists, Labour and Tory still have a formidable election machine, primarily thanks to the media and their residual block vote.

    The Lib Dems will not be a push-over either. They have voting strength in parts of Tyneside, Northumberland and County Durham.

    I agree Respect are nothing (at least, in the North East, only in Newcastle and Middlesbrough did they poll more than a thousand votes last time), but in areas of hign Muslim concentration, they will easily save their deposit.

    The Greens have made no impact in the North, while the English Democrats are moribund both North and South. The SNP and PC will easily see off Independents (proved by the lack of them in Scotland and their relative failure in Wales).

    UKIP won't get the hype like last time, but will still get a resonable vote in many regions, particularly in those with sitting MEPs.

    That leaves the BNP, who have voter recognition (for better or worse). You and your mates haven't, despite your snidey comments.

    Like I said, that leaves you with the vain hope that the Sunderland-based Neil Herron (and a clutch of Independents in other regions) won't stand and cut the ground from beneath your feet. Even if he doesn't stand, you just don't have the same voter recognition for an Independent to make an impact and unless you have persuaded Kilroy-Silk to join you, I think the same will apply to your cohorts.

    Again, I think you are seriously deluded about your prospects.

    I expect you to go the same way as the clutch of 'Weekly Worker'/CPB candidates a few elections back.

    Either don't bother or throw your lot in with an existing group.

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  2. Do you have any plans to bring on board:
    - someone who knows anything at all about communicating effectively via the internet?
    - someone who can write?

    Looks like you have neither at the moment. If you're going to attract wide support, you'll need both.

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  3. so i take it David you have raised the deposit you need for your movement to stand in the elections. Dont forget its £500 for the UK parliament and a whopping £5000 for each region in the Euros.

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  4. It very well might be, but I can't seem to open it.

    Anyway, the deposit thing is in hand. Ask yourself why the sort of people who used to give money either to Labour or the Tories should carry on doing so. Of course, they shouldn't. Indeed, for the most part, they don't (the parties are now reduced to flying kites for State funding). But now, they have somewhere else to spend their money. And they are proving very, very, VERY responsive...

    And I don't know why Jack is obsessed with Neil Herron. He has won his thoroughly good cause, and should now take Yes for an answer. But he was always a single-issue candidate, however worthy. This, by contrast, is the beginning of a whole new movement, out of which at least one entirely new party will emerge in the fulness of time. Neil Herron never had any such aspiration: he just wanted to prove a (very good) point. And he has now done so. As I've said before, he deserves a peerage.

    The national publicity is also well in hand (you should see my emails...) for what is going to be this national movement, with candidates in every region. With the best will in the world, neither Neil Herron nor any of Jack's other unnamed Independents can hope for that sort of publicity. As I say, you should see my emails...

    Labour and the Tories simply do not have "a formidibale election machine" (although your use of the singular there is very telling, and quite true in so far as any machine at all still exists), and their cosy relationship with the media now very noticeably fails to translate into even a "residual block vote". It just isn't there.

    Even of the few people still voting for either of them, most remaining Tory voters would instead vote for a pro-life, pro-family, "nationalist and theoconservative" candidate if any were available, and most of those would consider it a bonus if that candidate were also pro-worker, anti-war, "statist and syndicalist", provided he made it clear, as ours will, that that "statism and syndicalism" extended to farmers, small businesses, and so forth.

    Likewise, most most remaining Labour voters would instead vote for a pro-worker, anti-war, "statist and syndicalist" candidate if any were available, and most of those would consider it a bonus if that candidate were also pro-life, pro-family, "nationalist and theoconservative".

    People only vote Lib Dem because, for whatever reason, they don't want to vote Labour or Tory. Give them an alternative from within this country's mainstream political tradition and, although you wouldn't actually kill off the Lib Dems (it would take PR for Westminster to do that - they'd just split once it had come into effect), you would nevertheless reduce them to a fringe element, with nothing more than a few Councillors here and there, and some peers waiting to die.

    There are not very many people in rural Northumberland, and the Lib Dems' almost comical mismanagement of Durham and Newcastle City Councils should see them off elsewhere. If, of course, people are given an alternative third force.

    But I see that you are still only talking about the North East, whereas this is a national movement. Have you got that?

    Oh, and UKIP's days are numbered. The Electoral Commission is out to get them (it gives me no pleasure to say that, but it's true), and coverage of their jaw-dropping internal goings on will increase in the run-up to the European Elections. Which should reduce their vote very dramatically indeed. If, as a party, they even live to see those Elections.

    As for the SNP and Plaid Cymru, each of their small core votes already has at least four parties dancing to its tune. Whereas we are offering a voice to everyone else, not least on the language question in Wales. I think that we are going to do very well indeed both there and in Scotland.

    We'll have plenty of recognition by 2009 (see above), and next to nobody would vote for the BNP if confronted with the specific content of its policies and tactics rather than with some concept of its general tone. The BNP is like the Lib Dems in that regard.

    We will be so confronting people, both in relation to the Lib Dems and in relation to the BNP. I for one would be delighted to debate with Andrew Spence on Look North or North East Tonight as the Election approached. It would be tremendous fun, even if not for him.

    You all really are rattled, aren't you!

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  5. Well you should be. No wonder you haven't answered any of David's points. I haven't read so much sense for a very long time.

    David is in the tradition of Tony Crosland rejecting the European Coal and Steel Community because "the Durham miners would never wear it," of Douglas Jay calling it "the blueprint for a federal state" and of Hugh Gaitskell denouncing the Common Market as "the end of a thousand years of history."

    Having no Communist or Trotskyite background, David does not need to compensate for being a nuclear pacifist during the Cold War when it mattered by being pro-Trident now when it doesn't matter.

    I remember Labour politicians who defended the grammar schools as the ladder of working class advancement. I remember Labour politicians who were tough on crime because most of the victims were poor.

    I remember staunchly Unionist Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs. I remember at least one staunchly Unionist Labour Northern Ireland Secretary who treated terrorism as a security problem plain and simple.

    I remember Methodist Labour MPs against deregulated drinking and gambling. I remember Catholic Labour MPs against abortion and easier divorce.

    And I remember how every last one of them was pro NHS, pro trade unions, pro public sector, pro Welfare State, pro everything Old Labour.

    But I thought that I'd never see the like again. Well now I am seeing it.

    If all the candidates are like David then all 12 will certainly get in. Many of us have been waiting 30 years and more to have someone like that to vote for again.

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  6. It doesn't matter how good his platform is or how well he articulates it. The simple fact is that he will be lost in the crowd.

    The media will concentrate on the big three and throw scraps to the smaller parties (while demonising or ignoring the BNP, depending on how jittery they are.)

    Ultimately, it will boil down to money. £5k to stand (approx 3% of the vote needed to get it back). At least a £100K (nationally) to fight a campaign from scratch.

    In the North East, he will be vying with Respect (providing they are still in existance) for the wooden spoon. I give him 1% max, if Neil Herron stands. 2% max if he doesn't (and I'm being generous.)

    It will be the same in other regions. Just look at the votes of the Independents last time (pitiful, bar Neil Herron), plus Kilroy Silk may fancy his chances in the East Midlands, further undercutting your chances.

    No amount of wishful thinking will obscure those facts.

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  7. Oh the media are going to give him plenty of attention. If I told you who I am then you'd believe me. But I can't just yet.

    David's regular contributions to certain other blogs have gained him and his blog plenty of attention in all the right circles. And he's been hanging around a major university for ever. So he has plenty of contacts in the print and broadcast media as well as the blogosphere.

    At the end of the day, he's not just some local campaigner or crank out to prove a point. He's that age-old English figure, the anti-Establishment candidate with close ties to the heart of the Establishment. So look out for him all over the papers and the airwaves as things hot up.

    If I told you who I am then you'd believe me. But I can't just yet.

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  8. Peter Hitchens has been calling for a party just like this for some years now. Anonymous 12:31 gives almost exactly the list of characteristics that Hitchens gives routinely of those whom that party would re-enfranchise. So that's one high profile coverage for a start. Especially as David seems to know Hitchens slightly.

    Richard Littlejohn would also be more than sympathetic, a chance to get back to his right-wing Old Labour roots. Him and a hell of a lot of other people of course. Does David know Richard Littlejohn?

    Paul Routledge is another distinct possibility, as is the Mirror generally. The Telegraph will ignore Ukip this time because it has become such an embarrassment, and will be only too happy to egg on the splitting of the Labour vote. And Neil Clark can write highly supportive articles in the Guardian, where Larry Elliott is also a strong Eurosceptic of the Left.

    Notable that David actually links to Hitchens, Routledge and Clark from this blog. Clark, at least, links back here. So the links, in every sense, would seem to exist already. Jack, you don't know what you are dealing with. Get on board and tell Neil Herron to do the same.

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  9. David, once you have your full list of candidates, have you thought of asking peers to be patrons of your campaign? I can think of a dozen off the top of my head and no doubt so can you. They are mostly getting on a bit now, but you'd only be asking them to put their names to it, not necessarily to do anything more.

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  10. Mmmmm, so David is using his mates in the media to promote himself and his cohorts (if we believe the Monty Python nudge, nudge, wink, wink post made earlier).

    Same old, same old.

    Where is Screaming Lord Sutch, when you need him?

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  11. Dead.

    I don't know if David actually knows these people. But I know that their views correspond to his and that they despise the existing parties. So they'd probably give him some sort of coverage if he got in touch with them. He might already have done so. He certainly links to three of their blogs and the only one of those that does links has a link back here.

    Then there is the Sun, half of whose readers always were Old Labour (I've a feeling that I first read that here but it more than rings true) and all of whose readers are strongly Eurosceptic. The Sun is also pretty much allergic to Cameron as well as inclined to help split the Labour vote. So David would do well to have a word there. Has he done so?

    The BBC is under pressure for ignoring left-wing Euroscepticism That pressure is likely to increase in the run up to the Euro Elections. But regularly having David and his other candidates on the air would provide them with the perfect answer to it. So he should write to them and say that. Has he done so?

    And don't forget the religious press, from fawning interviews about casinos, drugs, the sex industry and social justice in the Methodist Recorder, the Baptist Times and the Church of England Newspaper to fawning interviews about abortion, euthanasia, the sex industry and social justice in the Catholic Herald, the Catholic Times and the Universe. Again these are all newspapers that openly despise the existing parties.

    Even the Anglical liberal Church Times and the Catholic liberal Tablet have published him the past. The Catholic Herald has done so numerous times. And the Northern Cross has also done so several times. What he is likley to get in the Northern Cross could hardly be called an interview at all.

    And the Northern Cross is handed out FREE at the back of every Catholic church from the Tees to the Tweed, right where he will be standing. It is published at the start of each month. Doesn't that mean people picking it up on the Sunday before polling day? Yet why bother interviewing him any earlier than that edition?

    A hundred grand? You're having a laugh Jack! With this sort of publicity, plus all that I said earlier, who needs to campaign much at all for an election in which hardly anyone is going to vote anyway? More than enough of the right people will feel moved enough to vote after this, yet without a penny having to be spent.

    And who knows who the other 11 candidates are going to be. They might be very well-connected indeed. Even compared, I suspect, to David.

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  12. What makes you think the media will be trooping to David's door, other than the speculation above?

    £100K for a national campaign (at least)

    £10K approx for each region, unless he doesn't intend to produce any publicity material and just rely on his 'friends' in the media and the blogosphere.

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  13. It's not speculation. I can't explain that all over the Internet, but it isn't. Whoever wrote the anonymous comments above is either very well-informed or the best guesser in the business. I rather suspect the former.

    Almost nobody votes in Euro elections and nobody at all reads the campaign literature for them. If David does what it says above then he and his other supporters will have got it made.

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  14. But no one outside of Consett Labour party has heard of him!

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  15. Oh but they have. I thought that we had established that. How did the radio interview in Wolverhampton go, David?

    The more I look into this as I am in a position to do, the clearer it becomes that David has been putting in the ground work for several years. His contacts elsewhere have long marvelled at Labour's failure to give him anything remotely appropriate to his talents or links. They just wonder what took him so long that he has only parted company with Labour in recent months. But they always knew that he would eventually. As, it seems, did he.

    If he and his associates play their cards right then at least a quarter and possibly a third of voters in the Euro Elections will be people who would otherwise have abstained and are only turning out at all in order to vote for them. That's enough to top the poll in every region.

    Why not? We are talking about views that have been systematically excluded from the political process despite enjoying enormous public support. The people who hold them are more than averagely angry. In an election in which most people aren't going to vote, getting them out would be decisive. The machinery for getting them out is already largely in place. David has been quietly constructing it for years.

    And he is not from Consett anyway. Where is he to tell you that?

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  16. So quiet, that no one noticed!

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  17. Is this thread still going on! Well, I'm glad to see that I've caught people's imaginations.

    The radio interview in Wolverhampton went very well indeed, thank you, Lord Gnome. Neither the local Tory hack nor the local Labour hack had any idea what to say, because they can cope with Greens, they can cope with Trots, they can cope with the BNP, they don't even have to talk about ideology or policy where UKIP is concerned (just mentioning its ever-more-bizarre internal doings will suffice), but they simply cannot cope with this.

    And I can confirm that I am not from Consett. A small amount of even the most basic research on Jack's part would do him no harm at all.

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  18. Observer, you need to get out more!

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  19. Basic research should tell you that you are wasting your time contesting the 2009 Euro elections.

    Why not go for the new Durham County Council? It's free. Also, you can help split the Labour vote and help someone more sensible get in!

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