Thread: The 2010 Election Deal that UKIP threw away .....

The 2010 Election Deal that UKIP threw away

Ever since I have been involved in small party politics, every so often people have said to me, "Your party has got some good ideas, but why don't you get together with the other small parties to give a credible option for the voters in the General Election".

The Alliance for Democracy was an attempt to do exactly this. In 2010 several organisations had the same thought, notably Paul Judge from the Jury Team and the Popular Alliance Party.

Organisation to get an Alliance together, occurred in September 2009, both the Popular Alliance and the English Democrats took the lead in organising the first meeting.

There was a good turn out for the first meeting, with the English Democrats, Christian Party, Jury Team, and Popular Alliance, UK First, Veritas and Alan Wood from UKIP.

Negotiations and discussions took place, and indeed a great deal of agreement was made.

However, after a number of meetings it became clear that the Popular Alliance, Veritas and UK First, neither were willing to invest money in the concept, nor were able to field more then 1 or 2 candidates each.

This therefore left 3 Parties in the Alliance for Democracy - English Democrats, Christian Party and Jury team (With the Independents Federation joining later)

The Christian Party were keen to maintain their own identity so they took Associate status, even though there was core policy agreement between the three parties.

However at the end of March 2010, Lord Pearson announced that UKIP would be working with other serious Euro-Sceptic Parties in the 2010 General Election.

Sir Paul Judge, immediately contacted Lord Pearson, as they already had a relationship, and a breakfast meeting was organised on Wednesday 24 March 2010.

Lord Pearson, James Prior from UKIP, Sir Paul Judge, Robin Tilbrook, George Hargreaves were all present, and at this stage an agreement in principle for UKIP to join the Alliance for Democracy was reached.

The atmosphere was very positive and Lord Pearson explained that he wished to put the Country before his party.

Following the initial meeting to co-operate in principle, a second meeting was arranged the following day, where the detail would be arranged.

However this time the UKIP "heavies" form the Eastern Counties and South West turned up with Lord Pearson and James Prior. These UKIPpers, had got the strategy to simply destroy the deal.

Strangely these heavies explained that they did not want to win any UKIP seats, they simply wanted to gain more popular votes.

However Lord Pearson, had a break out meeting, where he explained that he wanted to make the deal happen, so all parties sat down and worked out on a seat by seat basis where each of the parties could stand.

UKIP - would stand in 412 Seats (England, Scotland & Wales)
English Democrats would stand in 110 Seats (England)
Christian Party would stand in 110 Seats (London, Scotland & Wales)

Sir Paul Judge in order to facilitate the deal made the generous offer to potentially stand down from the General Election.

Giving 632 Seats to Cover England Scotland & Wales.

The details for an historic deal were set; UKIP simply had to put the deal through their NEC to make it happen.

Alas the UKIP NEC rejected the deal - no reason was given to the Alliance for Democracy.

Mysterious UKIP candidates were then parachuted in to where the English Democrats had previously been declared as standing without competition from UKIP - resulting in 97 conflicts with the English Democrats in the 107 seats where English Democrats were standing.

The question is, did UKIP really want to shift their power base from Brussels to Westminster - those UKIP NEC Members depend on the EU for their salaries via their MEP paymasters ?

Steven Uncles
National Operations & Campaign Director
& South East Area Chairman

English Democrats
Alliance for Democracy
Not Right Not Left Just English!