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Old 10-05-2008, 10:34 PM   #28 (permalink)
Tom Wilde
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By the way, I reckon there is a good reason why UKIP supporters - even the more right wing UKIP supporters - should wish the Liberal Party well. They should want the Liberal Party to flourish on its own terms, without becoming more like UKIP. And Liberal Party supporters should feel the same way about UKIP.

The reason is to do with what happens if we ever manage to win a referendum to take Britain out of the EU.

What happens then? Somebody in another thread pointed out that Britain would still be in the hands of the Labour/Tory/LibDem pro-EU troika. How long before they found some excuse to take us right back into the EU again? Six months? Two years? As the person on the other thread pointed out, we need a proper exit strategy which deals with this problem.

"No probs," say UKIP supporters. "We'll simply campaign until UKIP is the biggest party in parliament, with an overall majority, and then the UKIP government will ensure that Britain really does leave the EU."

But what happens at the following election, or the one after? However popular leaving the EU might have been, no party stays in power for ever, or should even want to. Sooner or later UKIP would lose an election and then power would be back in the hands of one or more of the pro-EU parties.

The challenge we face is therefore even bigger than many here have realised. Simply winning a referendum wouldn't be enough. Even UKIP winning a parliamentary majority wouldn't be enough. The only thing that will be enough to ensure permanent independence is to either convert two or more of the troika parties to an anti-EU stance or to replace the troika parties altogether with a new political spectrum of anti-EU parties. In that case there needs to be a left-wing anti-EU party, and a centrist one as well as a right wing one. That is why UKIP can't do this alone, and that is why SuperiorSteve's suggestion for cooperation between UKIP, the Liberals and the Green Party is in my personal opinion a thoroughly good idea.
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