UKIP ELECTION STRATEGY

‘Hurt’ not ‘Nudge’

The Tories say they need to win 117 seats to gain an overall majority (after boundary changes).

With perhaps 20 possible gains in all of Wales and Scotland and English LibDem seats, the Tories need to gain 100 English Labour seats.

The political effect of the Cameron speech, dropping his guarantee of a referendum on Lisbon and refusing any referendum on ‘a negotiating mandate’ ,as advocated by David Davis, means there is no meaningful chance of ‘nudging’ the Conservatives into a more eurosceptic direction in the next Parliament. This fact needs to be properly absorbed.

The political conclusion is that there is no advantage for eurosceptics to support the Conservatives in the 2010 election.

It is necessary for UKIP to show muscle and win big votes which will deny the Tories seats. In effect, UKIP needs to make eurosceptic voters the swing votes of elections rather than the million targeted voters in England who are hovering between Labour, LibDem and Conservatives. This is interestingly the strategy being advocated by conservatives in the US vis-à-vis the Republicans.

Generally the three major parties target the million swing voters and this produces a clustering of the parties in the middle ground. They neglect their core vote. They got away with that when there were no realistic alternatives. The rise of realistic minor parties has changed all that. (The Greens play a similar role to UKIP, BNP, etc. on the Left). Once they start losing their core voters as easily as the middle million, they will pay attention.

UKIP, therefore, needs to ‘hurt’ the Tories and while putting up a national spread of candidates, the strategy should be focused on the Tory target seats between, say, seat 60 and seat 140 (of the most winnable seats) in England plus perhaps ten LibDem-Tory marginals.

If the Tories gain less than 60 seats they will have lost the election anyway. If they gain more than 140 they will win whatever UKIP does (this allows for a little leeway on either side).

Therefore, all UKIP’s efforts should be concentrated on 80 Tory/Labour marginals and 10 LibDem-Tory marginals. Moreover, this should be announced as a strategy, communicated to members with a clear understanding that all resources should go to these seats.

Quixotic action such as standing against the Speaker should be downgraded and no party resources deployed there (it is, of course, useful colourful publicity but has no political meaning as it is a Parliamentary expenses story)

The suggestions above are by Tony Schofield whose political essays I tend to read whenever they pass my way.

This, as with much that he writes and says has much merit and in my dealings with him I have found his judgement on strategy to be relatively sound though I believe he is not as competent on tactics.

I shall be interested in YOUR views.
Regards,
Greg L-W.