Conservatives must make a pact with Ukip, Lord Tebbit says

Not really sir, but the poll from a clearly dodgy source (lol) was done in January,

Oh, has a lot changed since January? I'd be very interested to hear your in-depth analysis and evaluation of the polling methodology used by Ashcroft/KPMG. It looked fine to me.

...that nice Mr Farage should know his own non BNP members

What?

... the irrelevance of Ukip was in mid March when, thanks to Mr Miliband it should have become clear to the thickest of Ukip voters that the Conservatives are THE ONLY option for an EU referendum

Why do you assume the Conservative Party are losing voters to UKIP because of their policy on the European Union? Perhaps they're disgusted by their record in government.

TBH, I think Labour could play the referendum pledge to their advantage. It could be a useful way of reminding voters of the huge split in the Conservative Party. You could make Cameron look very weak if you point out that he wants to stay in the EU but he's not a strong enough a leader to carry his party with him. A referendum was the only way he could appease his MPs.

... – and one has to remember that less than 66% of the people voted in the 2010 General Election – and come 2015 the economy will look a lot different than under Labour in 2010

Turnout will be low in 2015. The economy will play a part but it's not the only thing to consider. I'd imagine many voters will also examine the electoral pledges in 2010 and how well the Tories have stuck to them.

However as I’ve said elsewhere numerous times, thanks to Labour’s deceit in 2010 not outlining THEIR cuts/spending/new tax hike plans, the Labour electoral advantage due to boundary lines and nearly 1 million new non EU migrant workers, I still agree with the findings – so in your words, come 2015 the Conservatives are ‘Donald Ducked’, or something like that

They're fucked because people don't support them in big enough numbers to win a parliamentary majority. If Cameron couldn't win a majority in 2010 running against the most unpopular PM ever I doubt he'll manage it in 2015.

Clearly the Ashcroft’s in the Conservatives want pre election blue blooded Tory style tax cuts, or spending splurges like Labour did 4-months prior to the 2010 election for votes, but in my view, like a deficit reducing Ken Clark in 1997, you do what is right for the country, not splurge to try and save your sorry political party ar$es

"But we’ll see this week and the same time next year"

Yes, I suppose we will.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/may/19/labour-government-spending-spree

Not really sir, but the poll from a clearly dodgy source (lol) was done in January, that nice Mr Farage should know his own non BNP members, the irrelevance of Ukip was in mid March when, thanks to Mr Miliband it should have become clear to the thickest of Ukip voters that the Conservatives are THE ONLY option for an EU referendum – and one has to remember that less than 66% of the people voted in the 2010 General Election – and come 2015 the economy will look a lot different than under Labour in 2010.

However as I’ve said elsewhere numerous times, thanks to Labour’s deceit in 2010 not outlining THEIR cuts/spending/new tax hike plans, the Labour electoral advantage due to boundary lines and nearly 1 million new non EU migrant workers, I still agree with the findings – so in your words, come 2015 the Conservatives are ‘Donald Ducked’, or something like that.

Clearly the Ashcroft’s in the Conservatives want pre election blue blooded Tory style tax cuts, or spending splurges like Labour did 4-months prior to the 2010 election for votes, but in my view, like a deficit reducing Ken Clark in 1997, you do what is right for the country, not splurge to try and save your sorry political party ar$es.

But we’ll see this week and the same time next year.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/may/19/labour-government-spending-spree

Did you miss the bit from Ashcroft's poll that said Over half of the defectors have gone to UKIP (less than 20% have gone to Labour or the LibDems)?

Claig….so much has happened, so many word spoken, yet you keep repeating the same ‘Conservatives will defect to Ukip’ claptrap.

Lord Ashcroft may vote Conservative, but if memory serves, as of around this time last year, he is no longer an ‘insider’, as he could not cope with coalition policies more Lib Dem than traditional Conservative e.g. gay marriage – so all the polls etc he is conducting, is trying to prove he is right, rather than be ‘constructive’.

No worries, if fools like that wants to let in Labour rather than allow gay people to be happy, then on a ‘cut wealthy nose, to spite a blue face’ strategy, so be it - as all will pay SOME taxes or own A high priced UK home that will plummet in value.

Seriously though you need to keep up; as I’ve alluded to on several posts now, by Miliband not allowing an EU Referendum, the voter bun fight is between Labour and Ukip. Labour appears to believe their votes are firm WITHOUT a vote, while Ukip knowing by taking votes from the Conservative it is counterproductive to an EU Referendum well into the 2020’s, see their main gains from the Labour Party.

So WHERE did the so called Tory defectors go, as according to your glorious leader Farage yesterday, it is not Ukip – yet the Tory voters who supported Ukips tougher rhetoric on the EU, are likely to come back AS UKIP CANNOT BRING THE UK OUT OF THE EU, whereas a Conservative referendum gives the people the option.

'New UKIP' will take votes from Labour, says Nigel Farage

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26602101

"Mr Farage suggested that Labour leader Ed Miliband had made an error by pledging to hold an in/out referendum on UK membership of the EU only if a further transfer of power from Westminster to Brussels was on the table."

In practice, this would mean that an EU referendum in the next parliament was unlikely, Mr Miliband has said.

"What the Labour Party has done this week with Miliband's speech is to open up a huge flank to us, and that's what we're going to go for," Mr Farage said.

It was wrong to believe that UKIP took votes only from the Conservatives, he said.

"Most of our voters are coming to us from Labour, some from the Lib Dems, and a lot are non-voters.

"Two thirds of our voters would never vote Conservative anyway."

IsItMe, I don't think Clegg would claim that. AFAIK membership of the EU wasn't in the LibDem or Labour manifestos so he can't really claim a mandate to remain within the EU.

The latest data I've seen (from YouGov, am BFing at the moment so impossible to C+P) puts the 'ins' at 39% and the 'outs' at 41%.

That's the trouble with FPTP though Spin, no prize for second place.

Lord Ashcroft has done some research into the Conservative 'universe'. There's an interesting article on it by Andrew Rawnsley. Basically it looks like the Conservatives are fucked in 2015.

"The Tory peer segments what he calls "the Conservative Universe" into four groups. There are those he labels the Loyalists, people who voted Tory in 2010 and would do so again in an election tomorrow. There are the Joiners, people who did not vote Tory last time but say they probably will do next time. There are the Defectors, people who voted Tory last time but say they will not do so next time. Finally, there is a group called the Considerers. These are people who didn't vote Tory last time and wouldn't do so tomorrow, but might be lured over by David Cameron because they don't rule out supporting the Conservatives in the future.

The contrasting sizes of these groups tells its own story. By far the biggest of them – just over a third at 37% – are the Defectors . Those who have deserted the Conservatives since the last election are considerably more numerous than those who have stuck with or been attracted by the party. The number of Joiners is 6%. The Considerers are smaller still at just 3%. In short, the numbers moving into the Tory column don't come near to compensating for those leaving it. As Lord Ashcroft correctly concludes, to have any hope of winning a parliamentary majority, the Tories must keep all the Loyalists and Joiners, convince all the Considerers and win back all of the many Defectors."

Over half of the defectors have gone to UKIP (less than 20% have gone to Labour or the LibDems). The Tories need to win back all those who voted for them in 2010 + all the Defectors + all the Joiners + all the Considerers in order to win.

I can see why a pact might be attractive but I can also see that it would repel a number of voters. For that reason I don't think they'd go for it.

Now Labour has CONFIRMED they will not offer the people an EU referendum, I wonder if the dynamics of THE CLEGG vs FARAGE debate has changed, as based on the 2010 General Election turnout, where a combined 15.4 million people voted for the pro EU Labour and Lib Dems and only 10.7 million voted for the Conservatives – arguably Mr Clegg could legitimately say that ‘the people’ are happy to stay in the EU, as their COMBINED socialist voters are unlikely to vote for the Conservatives – and similar to 2010, all a vote for Ukip means, is the one party that can offer the people a referendum, are guaranteed to fail in getting a majority.

Maybe the Ukip voters will see the nonsense of voting for a party that has no powers to bring the UK out of the EU, seeing Mr Farage for what he is – again from an ‘inside’ source?

“UKIP members are fantastic people. Unfortunately, they are lions led by a preening show pony”

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2581805/Nigel-Farage-bullying-hypocritical-preening-pony-Sex-change-MEP-clashed-ex-boss-argues-hes-disgrace-UKIP-intelligent-women-like-her.html

The real story for me from the local elections was the 800 or so seats where we came second. This has continued in sporadic local election results since then, always with higher polling than the opinion polls suggest.

Hence if we are on 30% with a couple of months to go this is very encouraging for the local elections, which are far more important to me than the euros.

Banging on about the EU whilst standing candidates for the higher offices is all fine and well, as long as you have local councillors in spades. They are the ones who local people can see to be doing a good job and making a difference. They are the local face who campaign at the bigger elections. They are the ones who can push support for Grammar schools and lower taxes.

Until very recently it was a topsy turvy party ( arguably simply wrong). May should change all that.

If you look at Eastleigh we only need a 2% swing to take it in 2015. Several consituencies were predominantly UKIP at the local elections. We don't have much data on many areas, which will change.

More interestingly claig, from John Redwood's blog it appears that some tories did take UKIP seriously in 2009. Cameron however confidently predicted, with an edge of certainty, that our vote share would decline to almost nothing.

Whether that confidence was predicated purely on political nous, or inside information, is not clear. I was in the sandpit at the time but it appears that remarkably few members busted a gut for a leadership whose first pronouncement was that he would not stop stalking on his 10,000 acre estate.

He was honest enough to say that he wasn't up to the job.

The opposite case of course is the Reform party in Canada, who came from nowhere to destroy that nation's conservative party. They refused any notion of pacts and suffered extremely unpleasant infiltration tactics from the Canadian tories. At a similar point in the election cycle to where UKIP now stand a group of tories posed as Reform members during a rally, chanted racist slogans and turned the rally into a mass brawl.

This destroyed Reform's support - until the truth came out, at which point the tories were annihilated at the polls.

Whilst I've already stated my opinion on a pact, they are an interesting topic..

The last party that I know of to benefit was in fact labour, all the way back in the very early 20th century. The Liberals ( not to be confused with Cleggy's mob) agreed to step aside in about 30 seats to give them a chance. They took it with both hands and the rest is history, about twenty years later they formed a weak government.

I can see the attraction if you merely do some arithmetic, that presupposes that things are as simple as arithmetic however.

UKIP might benefit in that they could devote resources to particular campaigns, and that there would be a rump of voters in any constituency whose favoured candidate was not running or viable. The arithmetic claims that these voters would switch en masse however are flawed.

Due to the lib dems woeful performance in government there is already the best part of 20% of voters in each constituency who fall roughly into this category. Adding another 30% or so might make things more interesting for wonky speculators but I suspect most would simply refuse to vote in disgust at the undemocratic shenanigans or run local look a like candidates.

There is also the question of what is in it for UKIP? This might seem obvious - to gain more MPs - but how many? Concentrating resources on a limited number of constituencies is already likely, with our current vote share in the opinion polls ( 13% or 17% prompted) we would probably return 5 or 10. The magic figure however is 22% which isn't far out of sight. At that point we would start returning lots of MPs, due to the spread across the country 25% would give us between 80 and 100. Much more than that and, whilst it depends upon where the votes were coming from ( labour or tory), we would be serious contenders for government.

If UKIP agreed to some form of a pact the above scenario is toast. Whilst we might return a handful of extra MPs in the shires we would certainly lose our support in the North and Wales especially. The tories have nothing to lose as they have displayed a total lack of ability in taking labour's rotten boroughs. Giving up these constituencies loses them nothing.

Then there is UKIP's membership to think of. We lost 40% of the membership overnight when Lord Pearson ( leader at the time) offered an electoral pact to the tories before the last GE. Many more simply didn't renew their membership or campaign in 2010. More again resigned over his policy decision to ban the burka. As did many when Nigel announced that our flat tax policy might be dropped. I could go on, however the fact is that Libertarians are... somewhat volatile when it comes to matters of principle. I know a couple of ladies who resigned because Godfrey Bloom was punished by the party, they were appalled in many ways but the principle of freedom of speech was more important to them.

It is in fact quite remarkable that the UKIP membership agrees on anything, the best analogy I heard was that organising them was like trying to herd cats with a sheepdog.

The one thing that Ukipians do appear to agree on however is that we distrust, dislike and disagree with tories. Subreptile and conniving, the fact that we keep them awake at night brings joy to my little libertarian heart.

The fact that we don't keep the other two heads of the MiliCleggEron beast awake annoys me greatly. Clegg may have finally been pushed through desperation into debating against Nigel but he did it in a smug way. Miliband's contempt for the public may have been evident in his recently ruling out a referendum, but his contempt for the threat from UKIP was greater still.

Generally we peak late, whilst the GE polls put us in the teens I have seen remarkably few actual results from council elections or by elections which concur with the polls.

Hence this is heartening..

"The poll also asked about European election voting intentions and found toplines of CON 21%, LAB 28%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 30%."

blogs.independent.co.uk/2014/03/15/ukip-leading-in-euro-elections-race/

No one expects the Coalition (incumbent government) to do well in the EU elections in May, governments rarely do in between General Elections - THE MEP PRESSURE IS NOW ON UKIP & LABOUR.

Miliband’s Labour has now confirmed that THEIR voters will NOT get an EU Referendum after 2015, as similar to the Lib Dems, NOTHING will change their based socialist views that the EU is good for the UK.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2025445-Miliband-is-an-EU-Referendum-ever-worth-voting-for

Miliband is clearly confident that Labour will NOT lose any more voters to Ukip, so if Ukip do NOT get Labour votes in May in a EU/immigration electoral platform, Farage will be soiling his boxers that the CURRENT Labour support he has, will fall away by the 2015 General Election.

Ah, should have realised this was one of Claig's threads.
Bring on the pact. If anything can make the Tories very unelectable, that'll be it.

There is a really interesting post on John Redwood's blog. He quotes a report from the UKIP website "The article says that at 16% of the vote – the highwater mark of polls before the recent decline in support – UKIP does most damage to the Conservatives. From 16-25% UKIP damages Labour more. "

Assuming this is true, UKIP are currently at 13.85% - so in their damaging the Conservative range.

I hate the notion of pacts, it's dangerous and anti-democratic. Tactical voting by individual voters is one thing but a pact saying "We'll stand aside for you" would do irreparable damage to democracy. How could any party that won an election through this kind of pact have a clear and legitimate claim to a mandate?

The actual data. A Tory (there aren't any conservatives in that party) pact with UKIP would have some real entertainment value, and heighten the chances of getting neoliberal economic illiteracy out of No. 11.

How many moderate, pro-EU conservatives would they lose if they made a pact with UKIP? I don't think they could win an electoral majority without those centre-right voters. So the question is: can they win a majority without those 'swivel-eyed loons' ?

UKIP do seem to to an outsider to be somewhat, shall we say, poorly disciplined and disorganised. For many that's part of their charm and a marked difference between the three main parties. I think that would act as a significant barrier to any agreement.

Look at what's happened to UKIP's as the official opposition on Lincolnshire County Council.