Sue Bowen's past BNP activism was well-known in and around Tintagel. It is inconceivable that the local UKIP operation was ever anything less than fully aware of it, whatever form might have had to have been posted off to London in order to keep the city suits sweet. How many more of these people are there in UKIP? An awful lot, I expect.
Among others. UKIP colludes with the SWP in order to remove its own endorsed candidates, whom it seeks to bribe in cash to withdraw from elections to which they are duly nominated.
UKIP has given council nominations to any and everyone, an approach wholly unbefitting a party which is therefore contesting two thirds of the available seats, and which enjoys lavish coverage on the BBC, with Farage on Question Time yet again last night, when he abandoned the flat tax policy.
UKIP has given council nominations to any and everyone, an approach wholly unbefitting a party which is therefore contesting two thirds of the available seats, and which enjoys lavish coverage on the BBC, with Farage on Question Time yet again last night, when he abandoned the flat tax policy.
UKIP is not going to do very well at these, the English county council elections, the ones at which they would have been expected to do best by their own standards. Other than the Euros, of course. But they are not going to do very well at those, either.
Having gone around ever since the last ones saying that it was going to win these outright, UKIP is now competing with the Conservatives for a second place 10 points behind Labour. And that is before another year of exposures of UKIP's amateurism, with its magnetic effect on cranks and worse.
Meanwhile, the Cameron courtier newspapers are having fits of the vapours that, of the 42 people who have so far been selected as Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, 23 have "links to the unions", defined as being trade union members.
In which case, how have the other 19 slipped through the net? According to Chapter 2A, Part 6b of the Labour Party Rule Book, a party member must:
"if applicable, be a member of a trade union affiliated to the Trade Union Congress or considered by the NEC as a bona fide trade union and contribute to the political fund of that union (a person who does not contribute to the political fund of her/his trade union may not be an individual member of the party)."
Meanwhile, the Cameron courtier newspapers are having fits of the vapours that, of the 42 people who have so far been selected as Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, 23 have "links to the unions", defined as being trade union members.
In which case, how have the other 19 slipped through the net? According to Chapter 2A, Part 6b of the Labour Party Rule Book, a party member must:
"if applicable, be a member of a trade union affiliated to the Trade Union Congress or considered by the NEC as a bona fide trade union and contribute to the political fund of that union (a person who does not contribute to the political fund of her/his trade union may not be an individual member of the party)."
Who, then, are these 19? Are they all retired? Unemployed? Self-employed? Full-time students? Full-time homemakers? I really do only ask.
Or is it possible that they, nearly half of Labour PPCs already selected, are either not Labour Party members, or else hold party cards while ineligible to do so?
Or is it possible that they, nearly half of Labour PPCs already selected, are either not Labour Party members, or else hold party cards while ineligible to do so?
This baleful state of affairs might be ameliorated up to a point by the selection of a proper, and properly local, Labour candidate at Newbury, where the MP has told people who use food banks that they need to practice "better fridge management".
He is Richard Benyon, whose inheritance of £100 million makes him the richest member of the House of Commons.
He is Richard Benyon, whose inheritance of £100 million makes him the richest member of the House of Commons.
No Labour candidate could ever win Newbury? Against this, against the formerly incumbent Lib Dems, and, should it still exist by 2015, against UKIP-SWP-BNP, why ever not? It would depend on the candidate, and on how hard the party bothered to fight the seat.
As well as scores of other previously unimaginable seats that must not be permitted to slip through the net.
As well as scores of other previously unimaginable seats that must not be permitted to slip through the net.
Opinion polls a year before the 2009 Euro's had UKIP in 4th, behind the Lib Dems. Maybe tieing for 2nd with the Tories a year before the 2014 Euro's isn't a terrible position to be in?
ReplyDeleteMaybe not, but it's a lot worse than they like to pretend both to themselves and to everyone else. British politics have changed out of all recognition since 2009, and part of that is that UKIP is now subject to far more scrutiny. Its cheerfully ramshackle operation does not stand up well to that.
ReplyDeleteThe same opinion polls have just 22% trusting Ed Miliband with the economy.
ReplyDeleteAnd the vast majority of people agreeing with Osborne on benefit cuts.
Only some opinion polls make it to Lindsay's blog. Curiously selective, this Lindsay fellow, isn't he?
And delightfully naive (not to mention historically illiterate) in putting any faith in an opinion poll, taken a year before an election.
Deary me, this has to be one of your worst posts, Lindsay.
Only the polls about voting intentions, specifically.
ReplyDeleteYou really are rattled by the falling apart of UKIP, aren't you? And it's still a year until the European Elections.
Someone else will have to pick up the pure protest votes for the Lib Dems and the bedrock Tory vote in the North, in order to assist Labour in ensuring the election of no Con Dem MEPs from any of the three Northern regions.
But who, and why? Or will UKIP's only legacy be instead to have saved the pretence that the Conservative Party still had at least some support in every part of the country?
"Pure protest votes". Nobody believes that any more.
ReplyDelete"Falling apart"?
Keep dreaming, sir.
We are the only party whose support is growing, by the day, and by the hour.
Your party's votes (and membership) have been dying ever since 1950.
What percentage did you win in 2005, again?
I am not a member of any political party. And you seem to think that I am a Conservative, with figures like that. They still wouldn't be correct, but they would be nearer the mark, and an indication of quite how far back that party's decline now goes.
ReplyDeleteThere still has to be a UKIP for all of these new supporters (and we'll see about that in the rolling English shires, of all places, less than a week from now) to vote for. At this rate, that is by no means certain come May 2014, never mind May 2015. The wheels have come off.
There's a book to be written on the obituary of the Labour Party-it gets less votes, and less members, in each election it contests.
ReplyDeleteIn 1950, it had about four million more members than it had now.
Even when it won a landslide in 1997-it got LESS votes than John Major did, in 1992!
Labour is a dead duck-nobody in the South likes it, and, even in Scotland, they prefer the SNP.
One Nation? That was always just a bad joke (to informed observers)
We shall see in the early hours of Friday morning.
ReplyDeleteAnd again a year later, when Labour increasingly expects to top the poll in Wales (where the Tories did last time) and in all nine English regions, and when Labour is universally expected to top the national poll by about 10 percentage points.
Top the pol of what-the rapidly dwindling share of the electorate who bother to vote at all (or who vote for any of this lot)?
ReplyDeleteA real opposition would be far more than 15 points ahead of the most hated Government in history.
And a real opposition wouldn't be in the uneviable position being less trusted to run the economy than George Osborne (nobody, in any opinion poll, trusts Ed Balls).
No matter how much people hate Cameron-it never translates into love for Miliband's Rabble.
Let's face, it Lindsay. you know this and I know it- if it wasn't for trade union money, the Labour Party would evaporate into a puddle.
They couldn't collect a brass farthing in donations from any normal person
Do you have difficulty facing this fact?
Trade union money is the only money in British politics from normal people, and the participation of those who pay it in Labour Leadership Elections is the only such participation by normal people.
ReplyDelete"Trade union money is the only money in British politics from normal people"
ReplyDeleteHaha-you really think every TU member who pays their membership fee, is a Labour supporter?
Give us a break, Lindsay!
McCluskey, for example, was "elected" with 10% of his members votes. Castro is more democratically-legitimate than that.
If the Labour Party took a collection tin out to Britain's streets, they'd end the year with a few coppers, at most.
No normal person wants anything to do with them.
you really think every TU member who pays their membership fee, is a Labour supporter?
ReplyDeleteNo, and that is precisely the point.
You obviously haven't the faintest idea how the political levy works. One of the absolute basics of British political understanding. Your amateur, now-collapsing party is the correct place for you.
That is precisely the point-trade union money is not money donated to the Labour Party by normal people.
ReplyDeleteEver wondered why Labour gets no donations at all from individuals on the street? Only from dodgy millionaires (who get peerages) and from trade unions?
No-because then you'd have to think.
And we're collapsing?
Because some Tories trawled through thousands of our Facebook profiles in desperation to avoid defeat?
You really are desperate-if Tory sewer politics is all you've got on us.
We could find all sorts of interesting revelations on the Facebook profiles of Labour or Tory councillors, beleive me.
Real voters don't care about all that game-playing-they care about the real world, immigration, failing schools, the things that actually matter.
The things your party has no answer to.
You don't live in the real world, you should go and work for a Tory spindoctor.
That is precisely the point-trade union money is not money donated to the Labour Party by normal people.
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly what it is. You obviously have no idea how the political levy works.
And welcome to grown-up politics. You wanted it. Now, you have it.