"Agitate, Catalyse, Galvinise"

Over on ConservativeHome, Paul Goodman could be more impressed:

This must be the most un-Tory manifesto ever published by the Party. It would have astounded that bleak, frowning, gloomy-bearded Victorian statesman. It's altogether lacking in the sense of evolutionary caution, of politics as the art of the possible, of the fragility of public affairs, and of the frailty of human endeavour that, not so long ago, coloured the lifeblood of the Conservative Party.

Consider this: "Our ambition is for every adult in the country to be a member of an active neighbourhood group." Please note: every adult. How will voters find the time? After all, they'll be too busy taking over schools, forming co-operatives to run hospitals, organising their own single budgets if ill long-term, sacking MPs in recall ballots, electing police commissioners, voting in local referendums, undertaking national citizenship service, and monitoring government spending on-line to do very much else at all.

This is not so much a Tory manifesto as a Californian manifesto - so much so that it actually boasts a snap of Silicon Valley. It has Steve Hilton's fingerprints all over it. If enacted, it will make government under David Cameron an invigorating business. The state will be smaller. But it will also be louder. It won't walk away from civil society, but instead will, in the manifesto's words "agitate for, catalyse and galvanise" for change.

Meanwhile, UKIP will not be standing against the Conservatives Philip Davies (Shipley), Douglas Carswell (Clacton), Janice Small (Batley & Spen), Alex Story (Wakefield) and Philip Hollobone (Kettering); note that three of these five are in, not just Yorkshire, but the West Riding. Nor will UKIP be standing in Stroud against Labour's David Drew. Nor, rather oddly, at Castle Point against the Independent Bob Spink, even though he is ex-UKIP.

Drew is not only a Eurosceptic, but also Co-operative as well as Labour, and a proper Christian Socialist who voted against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. But while the Eurosceptic ranks on the Labour side are depleted these days, they are not down to only one remaining. Far from it, even leaving aside figures such as Ian Lavery and John Cryer who are either not yet in Parliament or not yet back in it.

Furthermore, surely there are not only five Eurosceptics on the Tory benches, three of them defending seats within a few miles of each other? Surely it cannot be the case that absolutely no one not seeking re-election as a Conservative, but rather seeking to enter Parliament for the first time in that interest, is a Eurosceptic? Can it? Then again, surely it cannot be the case that five Tory MPs seeking re-election are acceptable to UKIP, a party whose line on pretty much everything is utterly at odds with that of David Cameron, whom it holds in open contempt and whose party it treats with virulent scorn? Can it?

If this were only about securing an In/Out referendum on the EU, then UKIP would be standing down in every seat in favour of the Lib Dems. This is about creating a party within the Conservative Party, including in Parliament, with a view to the realignment that will very soon result from either or both of a hung Parliament and a Leadership Election, probably, though not certainly, a Labour Leadership Election.