1 Down, 23 To Go

For all the celebrations last May from UKIP at 'winning' the European elections (on a very low turnout), and achieving an unprecedented 24 MEPs, those who had seen it all before were instead mentally marking up the odds of how many UKIP MEPs would be left by 2019.

Anticipation and history suggested strongly that the tally won't be good. UKIP's track record of keeping and maintaining MEPs is remarkably poor. To lose one or two maybe careless but to lose over half during the last Parliamentary session suggests a far more serious problem within the party.

And it's in this context we note that the Telegraph reports that UKIP MEP Bashir has defected to the Conservative Party:

One of the UK Independence Party’s most senior politicians has defected to the Conservatives in a major blow to Nigel Farage’s general election campaign.

Amjad Bashir, a Ukip MEP and the party’s leading Asian figure, told The Telegraph that Ukip had become a “party of ruthless self-interest” that was incapable of delivering a referendum on membership of the European Union. 

Interestingly the Mail also reports the defection with a different headline emphasising perhaps there was a different motive:

A senior Ukip MEP has defected to the Conservative Party as it emerged that he was suspended pending investigations into 'extremely serious financial and employment questions', the party said.

With two contrasting accounts for the defection it's naturally difficult to say for certain which report would be the most accurate. However given that the Mail's 'breaking news' piece had a link to the Telegraph website (which it very rarely does and is now removed) would indicate that Telegraph were planning this for a Sunday scoop. Thus all the signs suggest that having got wind of the defection the Mail has been briefed as a spoiler from sources close to Farage.

Whatever the true reasons though we can only agree with much of Bashir's analysis of UKIP:

In a damning broadside against his former colleagues, he described Ukip as “pretty amateur” and condemned its “ridiculous” lack of policies. He said the party was “delusional” about its chances of winning seats in May.

The lack of UKIP policies has long been issue and has led to defections before. Yet to point this out, even as rather gentle constructive criticism, invited much ridicule.

But the facts are clear, UKIP participated in the European Elections with no manifesto, and despite reassurances to its supporters by Farage leader that there would be a fully costed one by the 2015 general election we see little sign of one. Even here its deja vu all over again:

Ukip's policy chief has quit just six weeks ahead of the party's manifesto launch in February.

Thus UKIP candidates are being thrown into an election campaign with no party policies; a betrayal of those who have to campaign on doorsteps and in hustings meetings. No wonder many of them (maybe in frustration) are in absence sending out to the electorate the 2010 version which was dismissed by Farage as drivel.

So with a general election impending UKIP's catalogue of bad press is increasing substantially. Much of it self-inflicted is now entering its third month and shows no sign of letting up. It's clear there UKIP has significant problems which particularly suggests a deep dissatisfaction with the leadership.

Any idea that UKIP will hold the balance of power or even help the eurosceptic cause secure a referendum is looking wildly over-optimistic.

My Party Won The Euro Elections

By a complete landslide the party which I was part of but for whom I did not vote won the Euro elections. I was a member of the 65.8% of voters who declined to participate to send any more MEPs to what is a very lucrative (for those elected) but largely pointless Parliament.

Much though instead is being made of the party which came a very distant second - UKIP. It does demonstrate the utter pointlessness the Euro elections have for UK voters, and contempt for domestic parties in general, that not only did most not bother to vote, but of those who did many were prepared to vote for a party which has no policies...at all.

By dismissing the 2010 manifesto as "drivel", yet failing to produce a new manifesto in its place and to have no EU exit plan, UKIP officially has no policies by its own admission. Voters' are effectively dismissing the Euros as irrelevant by lending their votes to UKIP safe in the knowledge it won't actually change anything.

Therefore the Euros are rarely a guide to how parties will fare in general elections. UKIP won 4,352,051 votes, nearly 4½ times its 2010 general election vote. Experience shows that when it comes to the more serious business of general elections the UKIP vote will undoubtedly be squeezed hard. For example in 2009 it won 2,498,226 votes in the Euros which then dropped to 919,546 in 2010.

But while being the Official Monster Non-Policy Policy Party will have little effect on its performance in the Euros it will pose a very significant and potentially damaging problem for UKIP in 2015.
 
Leading up to the Euros UKIP came under a great deal of inevitable smearing regarding alleged racism, homophobia and anything else the papers could conjure up (or received as briefing from the Tories forensically searching social media sites). Clearly though the tactic didn't work and it's rather nauseating to see the rapid about turn in newspaper editorials as a result, particularly this from the Mail:

Instead of addressing voters’ genuine concerns on mass immigration and the corrupt, power-hungry EU machine, the big three parties believed they could defeat Nigel Farage with smears and lazy accusations of ‘racism’.

The Mail – while, we repeat, carrying no torch for Ukip – warned that such arrogant, cack-handed tactics would backfire, and so it proved.

The smears though did have some effect, albeit one that is probably marginal according to UK Polling Report:

Together those two [polls] make it look pretty conclusive that the attacks on UKIP did damage perceptions of the party. More people think the party and Farage are racist. However, it does NOT necessarily follow that it damaged their vote – it could just have served to further entrench negative views amongst people who didn’t like UKIP anyway.

As a consequence of the limited damage done, we can now anticipate that there will be a change of tactics, assessing instead the performances of newly elected UKIP councillors and highlighting the lack of substance within UKIP policy.

Here the real danger lies - a party of no substance will be quickly exposed and will be damaging. We have already seen the consequences of this with Suzanne Evans' recent incoherent interview over UKIP policy (or lack of) on UK exit. We suspect that a number of newly elected councillors, representing a party without policies, will fare little better under more intense scrutiny either.

Meanwhile as Richard North notes despite what the "citizens of the EU" say the march of integration continues. Nothing amply demonstrates this better than the Lib Dem Andrew Duff losing his seat. Duff was the co-author of the Fundamental Law of the EU - the next step forward in EU political integration via a new Treaty. Losing his seat will have no bearing on the progress of this. Barroso says as the results were being declared:

"It is now of the essence to have a clear understanding on political priorities for the next political cycle, so that a proper institutional transition according to the treaty rules demonstrates the Union's capacity to act".

In other words it's business as usual for the EU. As Complete Bastard observes: 

The people are no closer to the levers of power, and we are no closer to leaving the EU. 

UKIP's lack of policies will ensure this will remain the case.

Not Voting

For some today there are local council elections but in the words of the 'unbiased' BBC the "big one" across the country is the EU elections:

"There are local council elections in England and Northern Ireland - but the big one this year is the European election on the same day."

I've noted before that I have always been a reluctant participant in any EU elections. To do so is to legitimise a system I completely and fundamentally disagree with. The EU would actually rather have copious numbers of UKIP MEPs in the EU Parliament on the back of high participation than a low turnout altogether. A high turnout would act as a comforting safety valve for the EU - it means citizens are participating. A sentiment which can be seen by the reaction from 2004 after a low turnout (my emphasis):

"A wake-up call" is the way the current President of the European Parliament Pat Cox described this week's [EU Parliament] election results; the Dutch used the word "disaster".

But working out what went wrong is now crucial to working out how to put it right.

Officials labelled the turnout "pathetically low" in the new states, as ministers warned the political credibility of the whole EU was now at stake.

The election simply left most voters cold from Portugal to Poland. Where they did vote, most people chose to punish their governments or to promote Eurosceptic parties.

Certainly the elections were a shock for the political elite across Europe in the wake of the recent enlargement which they thought would provide renewed vitality for the European project.

With this in mind I have decided not to vote today. Previously I have done in Euro elections for UKIP and I did so through very gritted teeth (no reflection on UKIP at the time) for pragmatic reasons. I took the view that in order for UKIP to break through into the UK Parliamentary system the EU elections gave an opportunity for much publicity and funding to make a difference domestically against an unfair system.

As a result, despite UKIP's many failings, its current position in terms of dominating the media is somewhat of an achievement. It's worth noting that hardly any party in UK history has managed to break through the stranglehold that a two party system entails. One rare but obvious example is the rise of Labour in the late 19th Century.

However I've come to the conclusion that UKIP's rise is less a reflection of the party's competence more of an example of a 'canary down the mine' regarding our electoral system. Less of a solution and more of a warning of what's to come. A warning that came via the paper in 1971 named FCO 30/1048:

...the transfer of major executive responsibilities to the bureaucratic Commission in Brussels will exacerbate popular feeling of alienation from government.

Despite EU funds, the potential opportunity of UKIP finally "breaking through" properly has been squandered and it has been squandered for years. The significant funding has not resulted in a UKIP research department, a decent UKIP website and a coherent unified policy on how to exit.

Such a vacuous intellectual void leads to confusion and argument among UKIP supporters, acutely demonstrated by Suzanne Evans when interviewed by Andrew Neil. As Complete Bastard notes one UKIP activist even argued:

"Personally, I think it would be an alienating and self-indulgent mistake for UKIP to waste its limited resources on the withdrawal mechanism at this time."

Limited resources? I'm not sure Farage struggles with 'limited' resources that prevent a policy on how to exit. And of course seventeen unpaid volunteers (helped by many others) produced exit plans within four months for the IEA prize - UKIP has been going for twenty years and has still failed to produce one. What a pathetic excuse.

Given then UKIP are failing to provide policy on exiting the EU, we have to consider then what is the point of voting in Euro elections. "People died for your right to vote" is sometimes the cry. Yet the right to vote and democracy are not the same thing. It's not a right to mark a piece of paper that counts but what that mark can achieve. The crucial question is always can we throw out the executive?

In terms of the Euro elections we can't  - the executive is with the EU Commission whose Presidential elections are being held with no real reference to the "citizens" of Europe. As an example of ballot paper impotency, the people of North Korea have the right to vote via a piece of paper regarding elections to the People's Supreme Assembly, but no-one in their right mind would argue that makes FatBoy-Kim democratically accountable.

As Richard North observes regarding the Euro elections:

Certainly, there is nothing "democratic" about Mr Cameron's "top table", the Council of Ministers. There, when a vote is called, qualified majority voting (QMV) applies. Britain has 29 votes out of 352, representing eight percent of the vote. A qualified majority is 252 votes (73.9 percent), leaving Britain with a structural deficit of 223 votes.

However, in the European Parliament, the situation is little better. There are 73 UK MEPs, and these represent a mere 9.7 percent of the 751 elected MEPs (post-2014 election). Given the party splits, this level of representation is notional. UK MEPs rarely vote together as a single bloc. Even if they did, they could never muster the 376 votes needed for a majority.

Furthermore, the powers of the Parliament and the Council are limited in important but poorly recognised ways. As an increasing number of laws come into being via international standards, these are most often implemented by the EU as delegated legislation (Commission Regulations) using the comitology procedure.

Every year, more than 2,500 measures are processed via this route, passing through one or more of the 200-300 committees set up for the purpose. That is approximately 30 times more measures than are processed via the mainstream ordinary legislative procedure.

The impotence of the EU Parliament could not be better expressed than by the fact that if every one of the 73 MEPs elected from the UK were UKIP candidates, they simply could not execute their manifesto on behalf of their voters and remove the UK from the EU.

That point brings me neatly on UKIP's exit policy. Aside from having no plan, we see from Autonomous Mind that UKIP intends to remain de facto members of the EU:

...An article today in the Financial News (£) might just explain why there is no exit plan for leaving the EU… UKIP is apparently developing a carefully crafted secret weapon that would see the UK stay inside the Customs Union!  Not inside the internal market, but inside the Customs Union and negotiating its own trade agreements:

As can be clearly seen from this Wikipedia page Turkey's 'customs union' is EU membership by default. I have tweeted and emailed Tim Aker (supposedly head of UKIP's policy) to clarify the party's position to as yet no response.

With UKIP failing to exploit their position as EU MEPs for domestic reasons - instead for personal gain - it's very difficult to not conclude that to vote UKIP today merely puts more of Farage's 'mates' on the gravy train thus shoring up his position. The EU quite deliberately makes expenses, or should I say allowances, easy to claim - it encourages people to go "native". And that is what exactly happens.

UKIP may win the Euro elections, but it will have no bearing on our exit, it will be irrelevant and nothing will change. But I guess it will give a few more MEPs a comfortable salary and pension.

Nick Clegg In Oxford Review

Witterings from Witney and I attended Nick Clegg's debate today in Oxford having unexpectedly been allocated tickets in a ballot. We did wonder whether our allocation had occurred due to a lack of popularity for the event. Having attended this lunchtime our suspicions were confirmed, though there was a reasonable attendance, the hall clearly wasn't full or packed.

Indeed as we entered we were asked to fill in empty seats near the front - no doubt to make it look good for Clegg on television. Needless to say WfW and I ignored such requests and sat where we liked.

The 'comforting' title of "Meet Nick in Oxford" Lib Dem website had noted before the event:

If you are successful [in the ballot for tickets] you will need to arrive at 12.30pm as seats will be limited. The hour-long event is free and you will have to bring photo ID to gain access to the event.

What it didn't state was what time it would start, and nor could anyone at the event give any confirmation. But as it turned out it was 13:00 and even then Clegg was late (an old trick). Then the "hour-long event" suddenly was announced as a 45 minute one. In addition the requested photo ID wasn't asked for on entry (though we suspect that was requested in anticipation of disruption, which indeed happened at the end which we will return to later in the post).

So all in all not a good start. But then we were under no illusions that this would be a proper "robust Q&A" session. We also expected Clegg to insult those who wish to leave the failed anti-democractic project that is the EU, which he duly did on many occasions. However we anticipated that at least there would an opportunity to take Clegg to task during the Q&A session if selected, via a show of hands, to ask a question.

What became quickly apparent was that this was most certainly not going to be a "Meet Nick in Oxford". Despite the Oxford Mail hosting the event and introducing Clegg, the decision to select which members of the audience would ask questions was left to Clegg himself. A situation very different to hustings meeting attended where a Chairman adopts that role to ensure fairness in question selection. Why did the Oxford Mail not adopt this role as it was the host?

It subsequently became rather revealing who was being selected. Despite WfW putting his hand up every time - and myself on a couple of occasions - neither of us were nominated. WfW in particular was quite obviously being ignored. Clegg noticeably avoiding eye contact at every opportunity perhaps sensing that WfW by clearly being a gentleman of much more experience might give Clegg a somewhat difficult time (and he was right).

Instead virtually every audience member chosen to ask was under 30 and mainly they were in their early 20s. They are likely to ask the easiest questions - as an example one question was whether an England World Cup win was more likely than a Liberal Democrat electoral success. This from a hall that had a fair number of Oxford University students in the audience. Is this really the level of our political debate?

Only three men in total were selected, the rest were women. And only one person was selected who was over the age of 30; a lady who turned out to be a local Lib Dem Councillor - to feigned surprise by Clegg. What a coincidence!

After every question Clegg then proceed to waffle on extensively, adopting the technique of filibustering to drag out the 45 minutes - it was like a glorified extended version of "Just A Minute".

Despite the billing that this debate was about Clegg's views on UK in the EU and the opening remarks by himself concentrating on the EU and the forthcoming Euro elections there were no specific questions on the subject. The closest we had was the last question about gay rights which was linked rather tenuously with our membership of the EU.

Largely we felt the whole experience was a waste of time, but as a consolation it did give an acute lesson in the art of stage management and audience manipulation. We were reminded of stage artists such as Sally Morgan who claim they have psychic powers. They don't of course, instead it's a combination of cold reading, educated guesses based on statistics and the use of information provided before the show. With this in mind it's worth noting that the application form to enter the ballot was headed with:

Your question to Nick

Thus giving Clegg advanced warning of questions to come. Doris Stokes would be proud.

On a final point, Clegg made great play about the Liberals historically being a party of democracy, liberty and freedom, but after the session ended a gentleman was rather roughly and physically bundled out of the building after he attempted to present Clegg with what was clearly Lib Dem literature (we're guessing as a protest against broken Lib Dem promises). This we suspect is why the photo ID request was made. And there goes the party of liberty...

In conclusion it was a stark reminder of what we already knew - those in favour of EU membership simply cannot be honest about it and lack the backbone to justify their position.

This piece has been cross-posted with WfW.

The "Life On Mars" Option Lives On In UKIP...

Not unreasonably we assumed that the question of how we exit from the EU had been resolved by UKIP. Farage made clear that we would need to invoke Article 50 and rightly so for reasons that have been well rehearsed here and elsewhere.

However as can be seen in the image above policy consistency within UKIP on how to exit is still frustratingly elusive. The image has been scanned in from a UKIP newspaper from an article titled "We Expose The Top 10 Myths About The EU".

The paper was delivered to me today along with an election leaflet as part of a campaign for the upcoming Euro elections. Given that the newspaper has not been "localised" in any way we can only assume this newspaper has been sent to households across the country as part of a nation-wide campaign.

We are initially perplexed why a UKIP newspaper directly contradicts Farage himself on major party policy? In addition it is an idea that prompts a "head in the hands" moment that we can undo 40 years of integration, trade agreements and regulation in one single day and carry on as normal. It is simply beyond a joke.

To give an example of the complexity of international relations, the UK's entry into the then EEC took 11 years - we first began negotiations in 1961 and didn't sign a formal agreement until 1972.

Another example is Greenland, a vastly smaller country than ourselves who voted to leave the then EEC in a referendum in 1981. But it wasn't until 1985 that a Treaty was formalised. It was hugely complex and even now it still has a special relationship with the EU as part of its overseas countries and territories.

Switzerland demonstrates other complexities with its bilateral agreements which are now falling apart; bilateral agreements which are still ongoing 22 years after rejecting the EEA agreement in 1992.

Thus should we have an "in-out" referendum the europhiles and the pro-EU media would rip the "Life On Mars" option to pieces, liberally sprinkled with FUD on top. Any referendum would certainly be lost.

I guess though on a very slightly upbeat note if nothing else at least the UKIP paper resolves one long running dilemma for me. I have always been a very reluctant participant in Euro elections. If I voted at all, it was always done through very gritted teeth. To vote in the Euro elections is, for me, to legitimise a system I fundamentally disagree with.

However I understood the pragmatic point that the Euro elections provided a political platform - and money - to help UKIP grow in the face of a hostile domestic political system which inherently is heavily weighed against the rise of new parties.

Yet despite 15 years of MEPs, and all the money that goes with that, UKIP has still failed to provide any coherent strategy or plan to leave. A failure compounded by the fact that very workable and coherent strategies are freely available on the internet, not least by Richard North.

This then leads to two conclusions; that a vote for UKIP is to put more people on the MEP gravy train for no obvious benefit to the eurosceptic cause, and even worse that a vote for UKIP would actually mean we remain in the EU for generations to come by virtue of losing any forthcoming referendum due to a complete lack of a feasible workable exit plan.

The question is often asked when critising UKIP, if not them then who? The answer is now simple - no-one. A vote for UKIP is no different than a vote for the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems: The outcome will be precisely the same - we remain EU members.

After 20 years what a waste...