How to lose votes and alienate people
Do we want to turn UKIP into a minor, fringe political party again, one
that loses deposits in most seats nationwide? Or are we prepared as a Party to
wake up before it’s too late?
The recent opinion poll showing UKIP down to 6%, and incredibly behind
the Lib Dems, may well be a rogue poll and it may very well prove to be a
statistical outlier. It may overestimate the amount of support that UKIP has
already lost, but it does show something – the trajectory on which we are
headed.
I’ll be charitable here: I suspect that some of our people aren’t
actually setting out to destroy UKIP or to take us back to the margins of
political irrelevance. It’s far more likely to be born out of political naïveté
and blinkered rage than true malice against the Party. But if anyone truly
wanted to destroy UKIP, this is what they would do:
Appeal only to UKIP’s core vote.
We would focus on issues which are only going to appeal to people who
already vote UKIP. We might focus our leadership campaign on issues such as
wearing the burkha in public places (my office is in a UKIP target constituency,
and in two years I’ve never once seen anyone in a burkha in that town), the
death penalty, becoming a clone of the Conservative Party, or many
others.
If we wanted to destroy the Party we would ignore the polling evidence
that shows the UKIP brand to be fairly toxic to the wider public. Amongst Remain
voters, the latest polls show UKIP’s net popularity at -85%. Fair enough,
they’re not exactly our target market. But amongst Leave voters, you might
expect UKIP to be just as popular as we are unpopular with Remainians. We’re
not. Our net popularity is a miserly +12%. This should be a wake-up call that
we’ve been ignoring many Brexit voters.
That same poll shows that overall, UKIP is even less popular than the
Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. The Conservatives are -19% overall, Liberal
Democrats -24%, Labour -28%, and UKIP way out behind at -38%. The two polls I’ve
quoted in this article are from different companies; the one showing our net
popularity is awful was from an online polling company; that traditionally
overstates our support rather than understates it.
Now, who is the person in all of politics with the least favourable
rating? More unpopular even than Vladimir Putin’s -64%? Why yes, that’d be
Donald Trump at a whopping -75%! The only two individuals with lower ratings
than UKIP are Putin and Trump. One good way of annoying the general public would
be for us to publicly praise Putin or Trump or both. That would do a good job of
losing us support.
A Party which wanted to drift into political obscurity would now be
saying ‘steady as she goes’ and proposing more of the same. In case anyone
thinks I’m picking on Lisa regarding the burkha, I also think she’s spot on in
what she’s said about the NHS and mental health.
Sell out to the highest bidder.
We need money, like any other Party does. Of course we must solicit
donations, both large and small, and we must look after our donors. We mustn’t
ever give the perception that we’re sellouts though, or that money can influence
the Party’s policies or inner workings. A Party that wants to head southwards in
the opinion polls is a Party which will allow the direction of travel to be
determined by the size of the cheque being written. The heart and soul of UKIP
would only be for sale in a Party determined to reach the doldrums.
Act first, think later
Good Alice-in-Wonderland stuff is a great way to lose votes. Let’s call
an EGM first, then think about what it will accomplish! An EGM to change the
names on the ballot paper for the leadership election? Great idea, small
problem: a Party EGM couldn’t be called in that timescale.
Let’s use it to abolish the NEC altogether then! Oops, an EGM doesn’t
have the power to do that. Let’s use it to force an NEC election! No, wait,
there’s one of those taking place anyway. Nominations will have closed by the
time an EGM happens.
We all agree that the Party requires internal reform. It would be nice to
have a credible, sensible plan for reform first, and then work out a roadmap for
achieving it, preferably with the least fuss possible.
Act first, think later is a recipe for division and loss of
votes.
Pick a side, any side
A leader wanting to destroy UKIP will chose a side in the internal
debates. Rather than wanting to heal the rifts and bring everyone around the
table, she (I’m using the female pronoun as it’s rather unlikely that we’ll end
up with a male leader) will pick one side and alienate the other, leading to
further infighting and mass resignations.
Such a leader would either bulldoze a plan through the Party, probably
for fundamental sweeping change, misunderstanding her electorate and creating
massive animosity. Or she would go to the other extreme, ignore the mood in the
Party for reform and make change little more than window-dressing.
Conduct witch-hunts
We all know that political parties can’t possibly survive if they contain
a broad spectrum of political opinion, so let’s take a leaf out of McCarthy’s
book and conduct a good old-fashioned purge. Douglas Carswell? He fell out with
Nigel, he’s got to go. Suzanne Evans, let’s see the back of her too. Whilst
we’re at it, Patrick O’Flynn was involved with the Vote Leave campaign so he
needs his marching orders too. Now on to Wales. Here we can choose our poison.
Will we purge Neil Hamilton or Nathan Gill? Perhaps we could get rid of them
both. Shall we go for David Coburn in Scotland too whilst we’re at it? Next,
let’s remove every NEC member from the Party too, and then we can pause for
breath before we work out who’s the next target.
The best way of holding a witch-hunt is to soften the membership up with
horror stories about the people you want to purge. Brief against them to the
newspapers, leak about them, embellish stories so that they can become the new
figures of hate. I’m not a particular fan of everything Douglas Carswell says,
but I was so enraged at one senior meeting when I literally heard every problem
in the Party being blamed on him. After an hour of being told that every problem
was attributable to him, to the point that he was the reason we couldn’t analyse
ways to improve election results, it became clear. We were just one step removed
from needing the Orwellian daily Two Minutes’ Hate, with Carswell playing the
Emmanuel Goldstein role.
If we can get rid of enough people from our own top talent, many more
will leave voluntarily and then we can truly be a minor party once
more.
Fight in public not in private
Let’s all run to the tabloids every time someone does something we don’t
like. Let’s all leak what Steven Woolfe’s had for breakfast this morning in case
they can manufacture another scandal about him. Let’s inspire hate-pieces
against Lisa Duffy and tell the press what medicine might or might not be
concealed in Bill Etheridge’s car. If we can conduct an internal civil war in
the newspapers, everyone will see us falling out. Nobody could possibly miss
it. Supporters of the leadership candidates should set up anonymous venomous
Twitter accounts to drip poison at every one of their opponents. There’s nothing
like an American-style negative campaign to really turn the general public in
Britain off.
I got out of the leadership election campaign, mainly for the reasons set
out in my statement but also because I don’t want to take part
in a mud-slinging contest. As a wise man once said, the trouble with the rat
race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat. Rats desert sinking
ships.
Let’s all take a good, long, hard look in the mirror and work to keep the
UKIP ship afloat.
