Toby on Tuesday 

'And the dust settles…'

 

 

If, as they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity, then UKIP has had a truly wonderful ten days since the General Election. With nearly 4 million votes in the bag, the commitment to an in/out EU referendum from the Government, the most professional of all the parties’ manifestos, 120 second places and an outstanding elected MP in Douglas Carswell, there is much to celebrate. There is also much to build on if wise heads are allowed to prevail. As William Hague’s Constituency Chairman in Richmond during his leadership of the Conservative Party, I well remember turmoil and in-fighting in a disappointed party. Yet the Conservative Party in 1997 had suffered a devastating setback from which it has only just recovered 18 years later. UKIP in 2015 has enjoyed an astonishing advance and, when the dust settles, its full extent will become clear.

What is also clear is that the Government is now determined to rush through the EU referendum with no Treaty amendments and only cosmetic changes to certain welfare and other benefits. The existential questions of border controls, the security implications of Turkish accession, the Common Fisheries Policy (once a Conservative priority), financial contagion as the Eurozone plunges into recession, will simply not get a mention. No doubt the EU itself will help fund the “In” campaign and every trick in the book will be used to ensure its success. It is to these great issues that all UKIP’s energies must be focussed in the coming months.

And the reality is that in Nigel Farage we have most effective Eurorealist campaigner of our time and in Douglas Carswell the most original and creative Parliamentarian. As well as these two, we have outstanding MEP’s in our own Jane Collins and Mike Hookem, in Paul Nuttall our Deputy Leader, in Stephen Woolfe, in William Dartmouth and many more, and we have the truly excellent Suzanne Evans, who did such a superb job with our manifesto, and many others. The simple frustration of finding ourselves under first-past-the-post with so many votes for just one MP is understandable, but once the dust settles the sheer scale of our achievement on 7th May will become clear. We can then regroup and go forward to fight a staged referendum on EU membership, led by Nigel and our MEP’s across the country and, in Parliament itself, by Douglas Carswell, on whom great responsibility now rests. They will have the support of all our members in this, the country’s greatest challenge of our time!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby