Despite the best efforts of the media to minimise the damage to their appointed successor to Tony Blair becoming Prime Minister at the next election, David Cameron's Tory party is in complete disarray.
Call Me Dave's "cast iron pledge" has turned out to be nothing more than a sandcastle washed away by the tide of EU integration and he knows damn well that his promise of a referendum over future powers being ceded to the EU is pure hogwash. The Lisbon Treaty is designed to make it possible for the EU to take new powers without the need for future treaties and therefore bypass member states requirements to hold referendums.
Meanwhile, many current and experienced Tory MPs are furious over the way they've been treated by Cameron regarding their expenses. While Cameron has stamped hard on certain MPs for their misdemeanours he has let those close to him off with the merest slap on the wrist and Cameron himself is far from squeaky clean on this matter. Consequently, some MPs have decided to stand down at the next election while others have been forced out against their will .
All of this provides a huge opportunity for UKIP. I said after two Tory peers defected to UKIP a couple of years back that UKIP now need to get similar defections from MPs - but, as usual, UKIP missed the opportunity preferring instead to indulge in another round of internal wrangling and argument.
But now they have the perfect opportunity to snap up a number of disaffected and highly experienced Conservative party members. UKIP need to be reaching out to those Conservative MPs who feel hard done by and convince them to join UKIP and to stand for UKIP in the next election.
It will only take a couple of successful defections of former Tory MPs to make others consider their options and if by doing so UKIP manage to capture a seat or two in parliament then the conservative grass roots support which the Tory party relies on may well start to support UKIP in growing numbers.
Will UKIP seize this fantastic, once in a lifetime opportunity? I have my doubts. The problem is that the UKIP leadership will worry that a bunch of experienced former Conservatives - particularly if there are one or two well known names - will represent a challenge to their own ambitions.
It would be great if, for a change, UKIP could actually put the future of this country ahead of their own personal ambition, but I fear this will not be the case. It's a shame - because I believe this is a golden opportunity for UKIP and if they fail to take it then they will fail as a party.
5 comments:
Stan, I think you're on the wrong tack here. Over at A Very British Dude, Jackart reminds us that our anger should not be directed at Cameron or the Conservatives. It was Labour with the complicity of the LibDems that ratified the Treaty in the HoC after Bruin slipped in through the tradesman's entrace and signed up to the treaty after everyone lese had gone home.
Cameron's "cast-iron" guarantee was made at a time when Bruin was expected to call but bottled out of calling a general election. The Conservatives are the official opposition, not the government and as such are powerless to stop the current bunch from railroading legislation through parliament (cf. recent enabling Bill on extension of Proceeds of Crime Act).
After Cameron becomes Prime Minister in May, and he will, there are no ifs - Brown and Labour are no longer a credible party of government, Cameron will have far more pressing concerns to worry about than whether or not the Uk remains in or out of the EU.
With all due respect, Henry - it was the Conservatives who took us into the EU, the Conservatives that signed the Single European Act and the Conservatives who signed the Maastricht Treaty - all without referendum. The only party that has ever offered the British people a say in the matter were the Labour Party in 1975. Cameron has never indicated once that he regretted or opposed any of those actions by previous Conservative administrations.
Cameron should not make "cast iron" guarantees that he can not keep. It is nonsense to suggest that he can not hold the referendum now the Treay has been ratified. We held a referendum in 1975 even though the treaty allowing our entry to the "Common Market" had been ratified three years earlier.
Once upon a time - not that long ago either - if a party made a manifesto pledge then it stuck to that manifesto pledge. All too often we see those pledges being abandoned once the election is over. I don't care if it is Brown, Cameron, Blair or Hague - if you promise something to the British people as a political party you must honour that promise or resign. Does honour mean nothing to anyone anymore? How can we consider someone credible as a leader of the nation when they it is proven that their word - either spoken or written - means nothing?
There is nothing more pressing than our membership of the EU. As long as we remain part of that organisation then we are unable to take the action required to set this nation back on course in every other respect.
One more thing - I don't share your view that a Cameron win at the next election is a foregone conclusion. Far from it.
The Tory lead in the polls might seem considerable, but given the voting system and the constituency set up a share of around the low 40's per cent will not see the Tories win a majority.
Cameron may well become PM - but he will be dancing to someone elses tune and it will be a very short lived administration. My money is on Cameron not surviving one full term.
"Cameron may well become PM - but he will be dancing to someone elses tune and it will be a very short lived administration. My money is on Cameron not surviving one full term."
Well our economy is now worse than Italy's and if we do end up with a coalition government then our political system will be just as bad.
The problem is that it ISN'T our political system: not any more.
It's a sandwich of cultural Marxism down at almost all levels of local administration and quality-of-life public expenditure: from anti-patriotic teachers to the benefits culture that's nearly killed off the family, marriage, and the very idea of work; through the academy, the quangos and a supine, Left-liberal Church, with the EU on on top, with its centralising, metastasising, nation-dissolving and pointless urge for ever greater union, with the population who were once called the British people in between.
UKIP counts because with the Conservative Party an occupied country today, they offer a refuge and a salient back into the world of representation and perhaps one day office for good Tories that our fascistic political class have exiled. Cameron and Osborne can mess with the family budget all they want, and Liam Fox may preach something or other about buying cheaper guns for our soldiers, but there's no direction to the modern Tory Party. There's no sign that they are even vaguely interested in fighting against the huge and powerful vested interests within the British State and its overseas masters that are ranged against freedom, the rule of law, any chance at achieving long-term prosperity for our people again, and the remnants of Christendom.
So what if UKIP's full, perhaps, of nostalgic types who remember and cherish our nationhood. Even if they are all elderly gents with awful wavy Freedom Association hair and battered Road to Serfdoms and Reflections on the Revolution in France and the Collected Enoch Powell in their hearts, big deal. UKIP actually exists and has nothing to lose, and as far as I can tell it's the only game in town until the Tories ditch the would-be Mayor of London David Cameron. I hope there will be a Right-wing Tory rebellion one day, but they all share such hunger for office I doubt it will be soon. But if UKIP gathers a million or two votes in summer and it can wave them at small-majority Tory MPs in tough marginals... then we might be talking one day.
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