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Saturday 24 November 2012 |
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Saturday 24 November 2012 |
By Simon Heffer
FOLLOWING their devastating defeat in the Corby by-election earlier this month, the Tories are seriously divided over strategy.
Some MPs understand that apart from Labour, the most pressing electoral challenge they face is the increasingly popular Ukip. It won 14.3 per cent of votes in Corby, trailing the Tories by just 4,368 votes.
However, others including the party's leadership pig-headedly refuse to grasp this obvious threat.
For example, David Cameron has dismissed Ukip as fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists' just as his predecessor as Tory leader, Michael Howard, described them as cranks, gadflies and extremists'.
Both insults were idiotic, for the truth is that many natural Conservative voters increasingly identify with Ukip's anti-Europe stance, as well as with its other policies such as lower taxes and immigration controls.
I first noticed this transfer of loyalty from Tories to Ukip just before the 2004 Euro elections. I was speaking at a Tory party dinner in a safe Conservative seat in the West Country. Afterwards, many members told me that while they would always vote Tory in general elections, they planned to vote Ukip in the Euro poll.
Back then, Ukip was a single issue party campaigning to secure a referendum on Britain's continued membership of the EU. But as the Conservative Party under Mr Cameron started to stop championing a number of traditionally Tory policies, Ukip's leadership cannily spotted an opportunity.
At the last election, it broadened its appeal beyond anti-Europeanism by stressing its support for grammar schools and calling for more defence spending and tougher immigration controls.
In short, it advocated policies remarkably similar to those of the Conservative Party before Mr Cameron and his friends took charge.
As a result, experts reckon Ukip cost the Tories between 15 and 20 seats at the last general election by siphoning off natural Tory votes.
T hese lost seats forced Mr Cameron to form a coalition with the Lib Dems, instead of being able to govern alone.
Rather than learn from this and seek to win back traditional Tories, Mr Cameron perversely prefers to pursue policies that pander to his metropolitan friends and appease the Lib Dems.
Thus, at a time when the public is crying out for decisive economic reforms, a new relationship with the EU and more efficient public services, the Prime Minister's main priority seems to be to rush through legislation to allow same-sex couples to marry.
It is this obsession with such low-priority policies that have led so many natural Conservatives to desert the party and boost Ukip's insurgency in Tory heartlands.
The truth is that the majority of Britons want strong economic leadership and a review of our stance on Europe.
Despite the BBC's Leftish propaganda, voters predominantly inhabit the centre right politically. Proof of this is the fact that the combined Conservative and Ukip vote at Corby was almost 41 per cent even at a time when the Tories are deeply unpopular.
Mr Cameron needs to understand that his continuance as prime minister after the next general election will not depend on his relations with the Lib Dems. Instead, he should be working out how to find an accommodation with Ukip.
At present, Ukip has no chance of ever forming a government. But it is no exaggeration to say that after the 2014 Euro elections, it could become the largest party in terms of the number of MEPs and then could take countless voters away at the next general election, due the following year.
The likelihood is that many more Tories not to mention some disillusioned supporters of the other main parties will vote Ukip in 2015. This would certainly stop the Tories winning outright.
Yet the Prime Minister seems to be in denial of this obvious threat even though it has been growing steadily for a decade or more.
One way of tackling Ukip is to call a referendum on a looser' relationship with Europe. The PM can hold such a vote to give him a mandate to renegotiate the terms of Britain's membership of the EU something that will not work unless all the other 26 EU states agree to renegotiation.
Ukip's policy is more straightforward. It wants an in-or-out' vote because it knows this is the only sort of vote that would have any meaning.
By adopting a similar policy and this week a poll revealed 56 per cent of Britons favour quitting the EU Mr Cameron has the power to trump Ukip. Of course, if he did this, it would not guarantee the Tories will win the next election, but it would at least give them a fighting chance. Otherwise, the perception of a weak Tory party will continue to feed the Ukip insurgency.
The Corby by-election was not a flash in the pan. It was the culmination of years of dissatisfaction by those natural Tories who can never bring themselves to vote Labour or Lib Dem, however angry they are with their own party.
Now, though, Ukip offers them an alternative where they can lodge their protest vote with a clear conscience.
Ultimately, unless David Cameron finds a way to bring Ukip into his tent, the people he mocks as fruitcakes and loonies' will end his reign in Number 10.