Quote:
Originally Posted by Britannist
David Cameron insulted UKIP in comments made in April 2006 on an independent radio station in London. The remarks were widely quoted by the national media. He made a mistake in criticising UKIP and he may have lost the support of many anti-EU people (including in target marginal seats he wants his party to win next time) by doing so.
Labour do not openly criticise the Greens because they know that they need the votes of Greens in highly marginal constituencies at General Elections.
If there were any people in UKIP who had hoped for co-operation with the Cameron-Conservatives and who had been working to try to achieve that - their case was damaged by David Cameron's criticisms of UKIP.
As a result of David Cameron's hostile approach to UKIP the two parties (UKIP and the Conservatives) are now further apart than ever before.
The Conservative Party has not won a General Election since the formation of UKIP.
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I agree it was a stupid thing to do especially since he was supposed to heal the Europe split in his party. I can accept him being cautious over the EU for the reason he wants to gain power but that looked to me like deliberate provocation. However I’m just trying to look at things in a practical way, and for the UKIP to respond in a similar way is probably just what the Europhiles want. In my mind it is better just to keep on building strong, sensible and moderate looking arguments to explain to Joe Public why the EU is ripping them off. I think the Lib Dems are fair game to attack because it’s hypocrisy at its finest. How can you possibly say you are a democrat and hand away your country’s democratic power to something that is intrinsically undemocratic. That’s the meat of the argument and a lot of middle England people think they are smart to vote for the Lib Dems! So it’s a case of who informs them of this, if the Conservatives carry on battering the UKIP when it comes out with sensible policy then they will be battering themselves and they will appear to be the extreme ones.
The UKIP does one very useful function in all of this and that is that Cameron can’t assume anyone right of the Marxist Labour party is going to look to them. It means he has to keep his eurosceptic credentials in his party or voters will just shift to the UKIP. Ironically the worse the UKIP does the healthier is the general spread of parties regarding Europe. If they were all totally Europhile the UKIP would see a big protest vote.
The UKIP can still wield political power though if it keeps good relations with the eurosceptic side of the Conservatives. They won’t be much taken in by Cameron’s silly comments and naturally they need support to build a stronger eurosceptic faction within the party. It’s one of those things that is so important that the differences don’t matter so much. They would rather be out of the EU as well but naturally there is a variety of opinions as to the best way to achieve it. They must be a bit worried that Cameron will just start to fill the party with young europhiles and the older ones, many from the Thatcher era will retire. With the UKIP though they have a bit of an insurance policy. Dr Spink made that point very clear. Indeed I would like to see eurosceptics in all the parties and the Lib Dems have aquired some now as well, so things are looking up all in all.