23/12/2014
Lord Ashcroft has been
lecturing the Conservatives on how to win the next election. In so doing, he warns that trying to win back Ukip voters will be costly if done wrong. Most, including a majority of Conservatives, would be unhappy to see Ukip as part of a coalition government. Indeed Tories would rather see the Lib Dems or the Greens as part of a coalition than Nigel Farage's party.
On the basis of his polling, Conservative voters give higher (or rather, less low) ratings to Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems than to Farage and Ukip. His marginal polling has consistently shown around three quarters of Conservatives saying they would definitely not vote Ukip.
This, says Ashcroft, illustrates that trying to win back defectors by trying to be more like Ukip would not only fail on its own terms but would risk alienating some existing Tory supporters â not to mention putting off potential joiners from the Lib Dems.
On the other hand, the message "vote UKIP, get Labour" can only have limited success. Most voters either disagreed that a vote for UKIP made a Labour government more likely, or didn't know whether it was true or not.
Some voters may also hear a patronising message to the effect that they are too dim to understand the consequences of their vote â and many live in seats where UKIP present the only prospect of removing a sitting Labour MP.
Ultimately, the biggest motivation of Ukip voters is that the established parties have little to offer and that there is nothing to choose between them. Those who are willing to return will need to feel that it matters who wins in 2015.
However, I suspect all this was written â and the thinking done â before the last weeks of Ukip train-wrecks. And now, with a
Populus poll we see Ukip's vote at a mere eight percent, climbing only to 12 percent if voting intentions are taken into account.
Rusbridger, he of the
Guardian, writes in the
New Statesman in terms that match the current polling.
"As stories about Ukip candidates' deranged attitudes towards women, gays and immigrants emerge almost daily", he writes, "the truth about the party is beginning to dawn on the public. It may still get enough votes to affect the election outcome in a few seats, but it will not, I predict, return more than a couple of MPs and quite likely none at all".
If this prediction proves true, these last two weeks will have been the turning point â more so than a
dubious poll highlighted in the
Express which puts anti-EU sentiment at 51 percent, against 49 percent who want to stay in the EU.
Interestingly, the posted question asked is: "If there was a referendum tomorrow in your country on whether Afghanistan should remain a part of the European Union, would you vote to stay in the European Union or to leave the European Union?" See page 2 â that's what it says.
Nevertheless, on the basis of the status quo effect kicking in during the campaign, the result (even without taking account of the undisclosed "don't knows") means that we lose any referendum. Unsurprisingly, no such considerations trouble this newspaper or its vapid commentators.
But what also disturbs is the tenor of the article, typified by the illustration (above), which effectively turns a referendum into a contest between Cameron and Farage. But this it is not. Neither represent either side and, especially, Farage does not represent the anti-EU movement.
And this is why the fate of Ukip is important. We cannot accept Farage or Ukip as representing something as important the case for leaving the EU. They are not up to the job, and so many of us have not expended so much energy for so long to see the case lost by incompetents.
They, given the chance, will deprive us of a referendum and, given that we get to fight a referendum, they will lose it for us. The words "over our dead bodies" come to mind. We need this referendum, and we need to win it. And if we have seen the turning point, the battle has already started.
