Farage: No deal offered to anyone

Nigel Farage has released the following statement following claims in the Spectator that he has offered to merge UKIP with the Tories or to stand candidates on a joint ticket at the next election:

Dear UKIP Member

When was the last time you saw
Cast Iron Dave™ crack a smile?

In this week's Spectator, there is an article by James Forsyth talking about potential deals between UKIP and Conservatives. This has already been followed up by the Press Association, Dan Hannan and Conservative Home.

I think it is important to point out that at no stage have I offered a deal, or any intention to stand down, to anyone.

My plans are clear: that we must contest more local election seats than ever before, and prepare to stand everywhere at the next General Election.

Many Conservative Associations now fear that an alliance with the Liberal Democrats could be put to the electorate next time; an alliance which would see both parties' names appearing on the ballot paper under single candidate. Indeed, electoral law has been changed to allow such an arrangement.

As David Cameron has already spoken of a 'Conservative-led' government after 2015, their fears are well founded. The vast majority of Conservative Associations would prefer an alliance with UKIP.

My own view is that any such alliance could only be contemplated after a promise to give the country a fair In-Out EU referendum had been made an unbreakable Manifesto pledge.

For that to happen, we would need to pose an even greater electoral threat than at present.

Please remember that this whole debate is only happening because of your hard work and the very solid recent local election results.

We must prepare for the 2013 County Council elections now.

Yours sincerely, Nigel Farage.

Some members have been quite vocal about the Spectator's claims but there are several reasons why it just wasn't plausible, primary of which is that Nigel Farage has no authority to enter into this type of agreement without a vote of the membership - indeed, nobody in the party has the authority to do so without a mandate from the membership.

There is simply no appetite in the party for a coalition or any type of alliance with the Tories and why should there be?  Other than being notionally right of centre and broadly conservative, what else do the two have in common?  Let's do a quick comparison of UKIP and Tory policy on key issues:

	UKIP	Tory
EU	Like the majority of the population, want the UK to leave the EU	Like the majority of politicians, wants the UK to be integrated even further into the EU
Immigration	Freeze economic immigration for 5 years then introduce points-based system for everyone wanting to move here	Open borders to anyone and everyone who wants to move here, anyone from EU entitled to social housing and benefits
Defence	Properly funded military capable of defending our interests at home and abroad	Sharing an aircraft carrier with the French
Economy	Shrink government as much as possible, bring £1tr public sector pensions into line with private sector, introduce flat tax and raise threshold to take low paid out of the tax system altogether	More government, more tax
Education	Expand the grammar school system so children get an education suited to their needs and abilities, restore status of universities to institutions providing top quality higher education in useful subjects to people who will make use of it	Continue the war against academic selection forcing children who will benefit most from a vocational education to persist in a one-size-fits all education system, suffering humiliation and disenchantment in the process
Crime	Life means life, punish criminals properly, more police on the streets, withdraw from the EU Arrest Warrant, put the rights of victims first	Soft on crime, soft on punishment, cut police budgets and officers
Health	Provide NHS vouchers for those who prefer to see a doctor privately, free opticians and dentists on the NHS, put matrons back in charge of wards	Keep throwing more and more money at a failing system

I see very little common ground there on any of the big issues.  There is plenty of common ground with most ordinary members of the Conservative Party but they don't make policy and have proven to be either incapable or unwilling to unseat the idiots at the top that do.

UKIP is a political party - the number three party in the UK and the second largest UK party in the EU Parliament.  We are not a Tory pressure group, nor are we a eurosceptic think tank or campaign.  UKIP had the largest and most comprehensive manifesto of the four main parties at the last election, putting the policy books of the LibLabCon parties to shame.  We are here to win elections, not force the Tories or Labour into holding a referendum on the EU by picking off their councillors, MPs and MEPs one by one or by attracting large numbers of their members to UKIP.  We don't need to form a coalition with the Tories because we are capable of doing what we need to do ourselves.  We certainly don't need to form an alliance with the Tories or stand joint candidates because we are strong enough in our own right.

It is a misconception that all UKIPpers are disaffected Tories and that if Cameron promised a referendum on membership of the EU then we would all "come home" to the Conservative Party.  Firstly, who would believe him if he did promise a referendum?  He gave a Cast Iron Guarantee™ of a referendum on the EU Constitution and went back on that promise.  The public forced a parliamentary vote on membership of the EU through a petition and he whipped his MPs to vote it down and deny us a referendum.  What reason is there to believe that we would get a referendum if he promised one or that the questions wouldn't be rigged to provide the "right" answer?

Secondly, we are not all disaffected Tories.  In fact, the youth wing of UKIP - Young Independence - is growing at a fair old rate of knots and a sizeable proportion of these new members aren't old enough to have belonged to any other political party.  Others (myself included) have never even voted Tory, let alone been members of the Conservative Party.  It's like listening to the BNP talk about sending immigrants "home" when they were born here and have only ever left the country for a fortnight's holiday on the Costa del Sol.  Just because someone's got brown skin doesn't mean England isn't home and just because someone is a member of UKIP doesn't mean the Conservative Party is their natural home.

Conservative MEP, Dan Hannan, has written in his Telegraph column today suggesting that UKIP should merge with the Tories and stand joint candidates in the next election.  I think all his points have pretty much been covered off above but if they haven't, the hundreds of comments largely telling him either that he's come up with the best plan to save the Tories or to bog off, UKIP wouldn't touch the Tories with a barge pole, should do.

Overthrowing leaders is an organised plot

A week ago we said that attempts to oust Papandreou shows the EU is out of control.

Nigel Farage picked up on the theme two days later, accusing David Cameron of "giving tacit agreement to the overthrow of European democracies" and the Spectator's Fraser Nelson follows up with details of a "hit squad" called the Frankfurt Group including Merkel and Sarkozy actively seeking the overthrow of non-compliant EU leaders.

Nelson's article is well worth a read and when reading it, bear in mind that the British government knows about this group and is allowing it to do what it does without any complaints or criticism.  David Cameron is, indeed, "giving tacit agreement to the overthrow of European democracies" as Farage said.

The only thing that spoils Fraser Nelson's article is that he finishes it off with a call for the Tories to negotiate the repatriation of powers from the EU rather than hauling them over the hot coals for running a europhile dictatorship and demanding they give us the referendum that everyone wants but which their tinpot dictator of a leader made sure we didn't get.  He knows as well as everyone else does that repatriation of powers isn't possible but he's a Tory supporter writing for a Tory-supporting paper so it's what you'd expect.

George Papandreou was the first leader to be overthrown by the Merkel-Sarkozy axis of evil, Silvio Berlusconi  is the second but certainly not the last.  There are another couple of petitions for an EU referendum that are on their way to securing another debate on a referendum but these are equally doomed to failure not just because Cameron is a eurofanatic but because he now knows that any leader opposing the EU will end up out of a job sharpish thanks to this so-called Frankfurt Group.  How much of a part did self-preservation play in his decision to issue a three-line whip to ensure we didn't get a referendum?

The only regime that needs overthrowing in Europe is the EU.

Stuart Wheeler in the Spectator

The Spectator magazine has a three page article from Stuart Wheeler on why he's voting UKIP. Here are a few extracts:

Why do we do this? Because the Conservative party is failing the nation. I was at the Tory conference when David Cameron made the ghastly statement that the Conservatives were not going to continue ‘banging on about Europe’.

Do we want a European army? Do we want a semi-permanent president and foreign minister of the EU? Do we want the EU in charge of our criminal courts? Do we want to continue the Common Fisheries Policy which has destroyed our once-great fishing industry? Do we want to continue the inordinately expensive Common Agricultural Policy?

And the borrowing will not go on for ever, but, unless there is a radical change, the cost of being in the EU will go up and up for ever. Putting the cost another way, it amounts to £2,000 per man, woman, child and baby. So an average family of four with one breadwinner would be £8,000 better off out of the EU. And that average family has an after-tax income of only £17,000.

Yet as the unimpeachable Marta Andreasen, the EU’s chief accountant, sacked for exposing incompetence and fraud in the EU, has pointed out, our own scandal here is nothing compared to the EU gravy train. She is now the treasurer of Ukip, and one of many reasons for voting for them.

Their reaction, which has unfortunately been rather successful so far, is for William Hague to use carefully chosen weasel words to give the impression that the Tories are getting tough about the EU. The exact reverse is the truth.

Good stuff from Stuart Wheeler, apart from the end bit where he urges the Conswervatives to win the election at a trot.