steve allison

There is much discussion going on at the moment about where UKIP is going. If you gathered 100 UKIP Activists in a room they would all agree the aim of UKIP is to get our Country back (from the EU). However, after that it would all start falling apart.

I had candidates in the General Election telling people thay would vote Conservative if that Party would just get its act together and become properly Euro-sceptic. Why didn't these Candidates just come right out and say they were Torries who only joined UKIP to put pressure on their real party! If that's really what they feel they should have stayed in the Tories and fought it from within!!!

I came to UKIP via the Labour Party, I'm not a Tory and most people I know in UKIP are not Tories, they might have been in the past but now they are UKIP MEMBERS. The more we perpetuate the myth that UKIP is just a back seat Tory Group then the harder it will be to get anywhere.

UKIP has former Tories, former Labour members and even former Liberal Democrats within its ranks. We might all have joined UKIP to get our country back but until we can also show what we would do with our country once we got it back then we will get nowhere. We must be a party but we don't need (and don't have the resourses) to supposrt policy statements in every area.... what we should have are principles (5 Freedoms?) from which people should be able to work out a policy statement on anything...I n the General Election I was asked about UKIP Poliocy on foxhunting..... personally I don't see why anyone would want to do it but I support their freedom to do so, my answer was to say UKIP Supported individaul fredoms but with a social responsibility, so I would give each county a referendum, if rural counties voted to keep fox hunting and urban councils voted to ban it then both groups could get what they wanted. Try it for policy you are unsure about...... apply principles to the question not just follow a party line

Anthony Butcher

I think that the real reason for this is the complete lack of direction from the top. Imagine the Liberal democrats if they had never been given a position on pensions... they would have activists arguing for all kinds of different policies from total privatisation to extra state funding. That's just what happens when you have lots of "thinking" people and no leadership.

Do all the Tories agree with all the Tory policies? No, but they agree with the core philosophy (or did when the Tories had one).

And we do have the resources to make policy in all areas, we just don't have the organisation or the will from the leadership to make it happen. Yet. They are at least discussing it now, which is a major step in the right direction.

Percentage

How can you be so sure there discussing it? Sometimes you give the impression your as much in the dark as the rest of us. :?

Any word back from Messrs Croucher or Knapman yet regarding research etc?

Anthony Butcher

I am. :shock:

No.

Stephen Booth

UKIP has to be a full political party with a comprehensive vision and the ambition to push it forwards and to make it happen.

Start at the local level, council ward by council ward with the local elections and work up from there to County Councils, and the general election.

Pick up on local issues, and build support and trust with the voters that way. Try to deliver on stuff, even if modest, but don't be afraid to have big ambitions because for the UK to leave Europe, is not a small nor is it a simple matter.

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steve allison

I've just come back from a Branch meeting where I gave an update on current issues in UKIP and stressed the key aim of getting local councillors elected in May by starting campaigns NOW.....I also asked the Branch to produce a fund raising plan so that by 2009 they would be in the position to fight the local, westminster and European electins that will all come in thay year. There was less than overwhelming enthusiasm for the 2009 plea, the comment was made that most of the memebers would be too old to worry about it by then.......YOU ARE NEVER TOO OLD......my father was elected as a Borough Councillor for the first time at the age of 72......local council elections are the only game in town (in England) until 2009 so lets get on with fighting every seat we can

BASILDON BOY

Hooray - at least somebody else wants to start a local election campaign now - keep us informed of any successes campaign wise!

A strong local election campaign will lay the foundations for general election/euro election votes!

Britannist

A serious intervention in local wards at the May 2006 local elections would shake the other parties to their very foundations.

In my area, one of the likely Conservative candidates (for the May 2006 London Borough Elections) has already been out in this locality distributing leaflets under the names of the people that will stand.

Labour, Conservative and LD will have planned their strategies on the thinking that they will be the only parties standing in most wards - they might expect the odd Green Party person to put up. What they are not expecting is UKIP candidates popping up all over the place. That alone would mess up their campaign planning. Especially, of course, if UKIP local election candidates affect the outcome (results) in many wards. Labour councillors could be defeated in certain areas and Conservative and LD candidates who thought they were on to a winner could end up being hugely disappointed with their 'main opponents' holding on.

It is also not impossible to imagine someone winning for UKIP somewhere and holding the balance of power on a local authority.

The campaign strategy should be based on local issues and selling UKIP local election candidates on the basis of "It's time for a change - vote for an independent - not for LAB/CONS/LD who are funded by big business and foreign financiers."

BASILDON BOY

The 3 main parties truly fear UKIP standing a raft of candidates and having a strong local election campaign.


At the moment they breath a sigh of relief as they only stand 1 or 2 candidates in any council area.

The other main pareties will truly freak out at UKIP having strong local election campaigns.,

At the moment UKIP in local elections doesn't even register on their radars!

UKIP could quite easily become the new LIbDems in local elections - people are bored with the 3 main parties - hence 70% of people not bothering to vote in local elections!

If we can get things right on a local level - how easy will we find it during general elections? We would have spent the next 4 years building a local powerbase and a reputation for campaigning on local level!

Lest spend the next 3 years scaring the **** out of the 3 main parties by challenging them in the Town Hall.

When we start taking council seats from Lab/LibDem and Tory - then they will start running around like headless chickens!!!

mkpdavies

While not wanting to scare people off from attacking the local side of things (essentital for a real party), I don't think it is people are bored of the 3 main parties.

I think that 70% is lost, as they have no interest in deciding who runs the country, as they believe ALL politicians are the same. That includes UKIP, Green, whoever.

Getting them back INTO phpbb_being interested is going to be extremley tough. Problems in the local area might spark them, or a change in their personal circumstance. In general people are comfortable, fat and content and happy to moan about politicians, but in reality don't actually give a toss.

UKIP (and a few others) put forward non-mainstream alternatives at the general election. Yet even with the postal vote scam, the percentage of people voting only just blipped upwards. Others make tiny amounts of progress, hardly indicative of a public that is sick of the mainstream.

For me, unless something drastic happens (terrorism might be that drastic something), then people will revert to mostly not voting and the ones that do voting for who the papers tell them to.

How do you break that cycle? I don't know. :evil:

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