Toby on Tuesday

‘We’re all in this together’

 

Funnily enough, it was the Guardian’s Assistant Editor, Michael White, who best summed up the mood at UKIP’s Conference last week at Doncaster Racecourse. Writing on Saturday under the headline “Teflon Nigel Farage bounces back again with help from foreign friends” he declared, “Nigel Farage bounced back on Friday from his own and UKIP’s General Election rebuff. Teflon Nigel always does. Election defeats and party splits, personal toxicity and even plane crashes – he climbs out of the moment’s wreckage clutching a gold watch and grinning…But in a bravura performance in time for the TV lunchtime news, Teflon Nigel brushed it all aside. Rested after a fishing holiday in Cornwall, he was in statesman mode…Most memorable was the Swedish Democrat MEP Peter Lundgren, a bulky road-haulier who had been drawn into politics for Farage-ish reasons. ‘In Sweden I would say Nigel Farage is like a god,’ he said at one point. Lundgren apparently derives social prestige as one of the very few Swedes to have Nigel’s mobile phone number (like half the pubs in Surrey), ‘Look whose number I have,’ he says when showing off at home. ‘If I could be half as good as Nigel I would be fantastically happy.’ After unforced testimony like that, what’s an election defeat here or there? Or splits in the Brexit ranks? Nigel the god duly walked on Doncaster water. ‘I was right,’ he said. He knows it.” Well, that’s quite a tribute from the Guardian!

And on the way to Doncaster, I was lucky enough to be a dinner guest of the good-hearted and generous-spirited people from Business for Britain. We were there to hear James Wharton, the young Conservative MP for Stockton South. He is only 31 but plainly has a wise head on young shoulders. He also has an impressive lack of vanity and ego, so deserves to go far. He earned his spurs with his private member’s bill for a Referendum on EU membership, which failed in the 2013-14 Parliamentary session but did him great credit. He is now Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Communities and Local Government responsible for the Northern Power House and is clearly constrained in what he can say by ministerial responsibility. However, if David Cameron were to allow his ministers to campaign freely in the forthcoming EU Referendum, he would be an impressive advocate in the ‘Leave’ campaign. 

Yet the difficulty for so many well-intentioned groups like Business for Britain, with its “Reform or Leave” strategy, is that the days of fence sitting are really over, any so-called “reform” will be only cosmetic and the car crash that is the EU is now heading for terminal disaster. And to take the motoring analogy further, the crisis over Volkswagen’s “defeat devices” is an allegory for the whole rotten EU project. If it does now sink into the abyss, it is vital that Britain should not be dragged down with the other members.

So for Business for Britain and other moderate, reasonable and well-intentioned “soft Eurosceptics”, the moment has come to accept that no genuine compromise with the EU is on offer. And where this is relevant is that the Electoral Commission, which has been completely meticulous so far in handling the EU Referendum, will soon need to nominate a lead group for the “Leave” campaign. This will have to be an all-party group, so by definition UKIP cannot be the lead. What we shall do instead is support a credible all-party campaign, mobilising our membership and indeed our close to 4 million votes in May’s General Election for the good of our country as a whole. So far only one all-party campaign has shown its hand and that is Leave.EU. In the words of its founder Arron Banks, “The new campaign slogan better represents the question and fits with the strap line – Love Europe, Leave the EU.” In the absence of any other candidate for leadership of the “Leave” campaign, it is this group that will clearly have the support of UKIP’s members. If other candidates do come forward, including the public-spirited members of Business for Britain, so much the better but we are now at a fork in the road and time is very short.

It was our one MP, Douglas Carswell, who best summed up UKIP’s position at Doncaster when he said, “We must be prepared to work with anyone, left or right, politician or undecided…There are good patriotic politicians in all parties and we must work with them all.” And he declared that he was “very loyal to people called Eurosceptics in all parties, as we’re on the same side.” As at so many other times in our long history, Britain faces an existential crisis. The time has come to put our differences aside and combine for our country’s good. That is the message from Nigel and Douglas, it is a message that makes perfect sense and one to which all UKIP’s members and nearly 4 million voters will happily respond!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby