So, Where Are You?

Are you pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war? Are you an economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriot? I am. I will be contesting the 2009 elections to the European Parliament, and I seek colleagues to do likewise. We need two in each region in Great Britain and, because of the different electoral system, one in Northern Ireland.

Regular readers of this blog will of course know this already. I have never read even any of this project's most abusive critics (who daily try and post comments here) deny that if we got onto the ballot paper, then we'd get in at the election. That is what they hate. It's getting onto the ballot paper that's the tricky bit. We need deposits, but I already have people offering to pay part of those if we can find the candidates, and there will be plenty more such offers once the ball is rolling. But we need candidates. Not "good idea, keep up the fight", but "yes, I'll do it".

In Scotland, Northern Ireland, the North, the Midlands and London, our constituency is obviously vast. And, for example, Anglican and Nonconformist laypeople and parochial clergy are often staunchly pro-life and pro-family, while farm subsidies are in fact an expression of social democracy, and the ninety per cent public opposition to the Iraq War must by definition have included the majority of Tories. So our constituency is no smaller, if currently less organised, in the South outside London.

In addition, there are six hundred thousand staunch Unionists in Scotland, there are three times as many again with grave doubts about the present direction, there are the culturally neglected entirely English-speaking areas of the Far North, there are the English-speaking and increasingly marginalised eighty per cent of the Welsh, there are the Catholic Unionists in Northern Ireland (probably half of all Catholics there), there are those supporters of Catholic schools and Catholic morality in Northern Ireland who cannot now vote for either Nationalist party, there is the strongly social-democratic Protestant working class there, there are the Gibraltarians (who define their very passionate Britishness specifically both in terms of traditional morality and in terms of social democracy), there are the fishermen, and there are numerous others besides.

All in all, a seat in each region is well within our grasp. Especially since this election will be conducted by Proportional Representation, and the extremely low turnout will favour those who organise locally in order to get out the vote. A Strasbourg breakthrough in 2009 would set us up for a Westminster breakthrough in 2010, when we would only need to be the first past the post in any given constituency, again on an extremely low turnout.

So, where are our candidates? For campaigning and fund-raising purposes, I need to know by the end of May 2008. Email only, please – davidaslindsay@hotmail.com