Toby on Tuesday

'Going Postal'

This is my final post before the New Year, so where better to close 2015 than with a cool look at this month’s Oldham West and Royton by-election?   Our candidate there was the highly credible John Bickley, but to understand a Labour heartland constituency like this the best place to begin is the Oldham Council website.   Under ‘Postal Voting’ this reads, “You can have a postal vote instead of going to your polling station.   We can send it to any address, even abroad.   The ballot paper must be returned by the day of the election.”   

When Tony Blair introduced postal voting on demand in 2001 he knew just what he was doing, as did the public sector unions and Labour Party client communities at whom the change was directed.   So did Jim McMahon, former leader of Oldham Metropolitan District Council and Labour by-election candidate, and it would be fascinating to know just how many postal votes were in fact sent abroad and to which countries.   So it is in this context that we need to read the by-election numbers.  

The following table really says it all:

Of the 27,706 votes cast at the by-election, a low 40.3% turnout, 7,115 (25.7%) were postal votes.   Given its mastery of the system, it is a safe bet that the vast majority of these were for the Labour Party.   And so the by-election marked solid progress for UKIP but not the hoped-for breakthrough in Labour’s heartland.   Both the Conservative and LibDem vote collapsed and it continues to surprise me that neither party is pressing to repeal the 2001 postal voting legislation which the Labour Party continues to exploit in a way that is certainly irregular if not illegal.

And what of UKIP?   Over the next four years we must persevere in the knowledge that a Corbyn-led Labour Party will entrench itself still more in constituencies like Oldham.   And we must offer an upbeat message about what Britain can become at a time when the politics of identity are all-important.   The narrative over the dysfunctional EU is nearly won now and so we need to build a new narrative of a post-Brexit Britain.   This will be of an outward-looking nation of brave, creative, enterprising men and women, well able to cope with all the challenges of the new world.  

If we find that we have to stand alone, so be it, as we have always been at our best when we have stood alone.   This is the positive message that can forge a renewed identity for UKIP, enabling us to win elections across the country however much our opponents twist and bend the rules to their advantage.   There’ll be more on this in the New Year.   In the meantime, a happy and peaceful Christmas to all the readers of this blog, website and facebook, who now number well over 3.000 every week!

Until 2016!

Toby