…when he’s making a mistake, said Napoleon, allegedly, and he did know a thing or two about attacking and defeating enemies. Well, he did until Waterloo, and we all know how that one ended!
Also, as any who have ever played with the oval or round ball knows full well: if the opponent leaves a gap, one uses it and scores.
Here are three different reports which, taken together, show us a lovely gap through which we can attack and score in our campaign.
First we have the extraordinary spectacle of London Labour “Big Beasts” releasing a statement demanding from Miliband to turn hard left, because the election win of the Greek hard left party Syriza shows clearly, doesn’t it, that this is the way to victory. It doesn’t matter that the situation in Greece couldn’t be more different from that here in the UK.
It is about re-awakening the old socialist dreams, dreamt by the Islington champagne socialists.
Then we have moans coming out of Miliband’s election headquarters that he is running a campaign ‘in his comfort zone’, with the added little twist mentioned in this report that he now cannot remember ever having said that Labour will ‘weaponise’ the NHS in this campaign.
Finally, coming from Brussels, we hear that the EU Commission is bent on ordering us to replace all signals and signs on the Railway Network with metric signs.
It gets better!
According to this report the new training manuals which such huge, costly operation would cost, the Railway training manuals will have to be re-written, on the order of a French-based quango, the ‘European Railway Agency’.
These different reports show a nice, clear gap in the London Labour campaign through which we can attack and score.
In the first place, the reports about a lacklustre Miliband and the demand for a sharp left turn indicate that all is far from well in that campaign – there is disunity, disorder, and dare I say it: malaise. One can’t help getting the impression that perhaps Miliband doesn’t really want to win any longer?
In the second place, we have been given the instrument to pry traditional old Labour voters from the London Labour headquarters. The late Rob Crowe, Railway Union Leader, was actively questioning our remaining in the EU. Now the Train Drivers Union’s boss is querying this latest EU madness, on grounds of safety and cost.
It is no secret that Miliband wants us to stay in the EU – something not all of his Union supporters agree with. While making a sharp left turn might appeal to them, they seem to slowly realise that no such turn would make up for the mayhem created by ever more EU commission interferences, especially in areas where they have a vital interest.
Add the lacklustre campaign, the unease Miliband shows, the critiques coming from his headquarters, and here is the gap we can exploit:
The unions will lose their influence because the way they work will be dictated by Brussels, not Westminster, and there will be no exit, not even the chimera of an exit offered by Cameron with his fabled referendum.
Thus, we have another stick with which to beat the Westminster elites, of both parties, which now should resonate even more with Old Labour traditional voters: the London Labour elite would go against the views of their powerful Trade Unions, and create mayhem on our railways and worse, because they want to keep us in the EU.
Ask on the doorsteps: Do you want to keep us safe on our railways, as railway union bosses want? Then we must leave the EU, and that’s not what London Labour offers.
You can write your own sentence as to what next you’ll say on that doorstep…
Another fascinating read for your ‘back-burner‘ when you‘ve got a minute. ;-o
Google catholic herald will-ukip-get-a-foot-in-the-door
I think it should be linked from UPIK Daily perhaps?
It’s about ‘our man’ Steven Woolfe and the Catholic Church.
Thanks – I see the author, Ed West, is now deputy editor of that site/paper.
He used to write blogs at the DT when Damian Thompson was the blog site editor, and a pretty d*mn good blog site it was!
Am now off to read it.
Plus, there’s today’s report that most people (65%) are ‘very satisfied’ or ‘quite satisfied’ with the NHS, blowing a hole right through Milly’s main campaign moanfest.
That may be so Panmelia, but did anybody get Frank Field yesterday pointing out there is a big problem with the NHS/Care in Community that long term is virtually unsolveable.
His point was that “the money was put in”, but there has been no apparent increase in output.
In2009/10 when I joined UKIP, I`m sure I posted on the long mourned “Old Forum” that I was prepared to scrap the Health Service and Start again afresh.
Nigel may have been wrong with the US model, but there are better ones than ours I understand.
We are not doing ourselves any favours or our case with the voters by joining in this fettish that it is “safe in our hands”
My response to most of what the EU direct us to do is –
‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’
Yes good answer, but will the chap/(ess) on the doorstep be asking the question at all?
Having read the above article and being a dedicated UKIPper, I have a vague understanding of the circumstances
I will take a bet one in a hundred you meet on the doorstep will not have an opinion, never mind be aware of the subject at all.
UKIP as I have been saying, for a long while have got to “educate before they can really penetrate”
Please tell me it is already happening, I`m not hearing it!!!!
We have to tell the public WHY the EU is bad for them, detail,chapter and verse
“We have to tell the public WHY the EU is bad for them, detail, chapter and verse.”
Well Roger to do that, we would be on the doorstep all week! (and weak).
I think you will find that after forty odd years everything is affected in some way by the EU. Not all bad by the way. There is always a need for common standards in industry, like pallet sizes, packaging etc. What we don’t need is interference in every aspect of our lives! You can’t touch, own or do anything today that the EU has not had its ‘grubby fingers’ on. The public know very little of this because it has been deliberately kept from them by politicians, government, MSM and especially the Brussels Broadcasting Company.
So is that a good enough reason for not doing it.?
Obviously I am very far from the centre of UKIP affairs and I`ve no idea if this thread “goes upstairs” but I believe there is some sort of pamphlet published detailing 100 policies – as a foreword to each I would have thought an explanation of the reason for our adopting the policies would be a brief explanation of how the grubby hands of the EU had given rise to the need for these policies.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don`t tell me nobody can show “cause and effect”
Just as an afterthought, there is an excoriating leader in the Daily Telegraph today
Allister Heath
Westminster`s conspiracy of silence is becoming deafening.
Health and Housing our political classes wilfully downplay the scale of the problem
That goes for UKIP too as he sees UKIP as just another component in the conspiracy.
I agree our effort to carry on throwing money at it, is just echoing the other failed parties
I think you may be referring to “100 reasons for voting UKIP” which was distributed a day or so ago when it was 100 days to go to the Election. Top of the list of course was “UKIP is the only party that will get the UK out of the EU”. Judging by the results in last May’s EU election, most people have got the message that the EU is bad for us. It needs reinforcing for this election, but most voters turn their attention to other issues such as the economy in a GE. That’s OK: we can talk about how much better off we will be when we don’t have to pay billions to the wasteful EU. UKIP is not going to form the next government, but we can hope for enough MPs to exert leverage in a hung Parliament. Then progress can begin and the real truth told.
Let me answer to both your posts.
It is actually not really complicated, telling people why we must get out of the EU a.s.a.p.
There are always, now nearly daily, news of yet another outrageous EU policy affecting us.
I’ve found that using the latest EU horror as a conversation opener always gets people interested.
They don’t want to hear about the in and outs of legislation, but they do get it when you for example point out that all railway speed signs should be changed to kilometres, because Brussels says so.
To borrow or pinch an old advice: KISS! That’s ‘keep it simple’. I’m sure you’ve been told that a chatty approach, as if they were indeed your nice next door neighbours or the chap standing next to you in a pub, really works well.
After all, our USP, or ‘Unique Selling Point’ is that we all, from Nigel Farage down, are not political nerds, but people like themselves. So that’s how we also should behave when canvassing and doorstepping.
I would reserve for politicians Kiss= “keep it simple, stupid” something career politicians don’t understand. Because no matter what they implement, the law of unintended consequences will always bite them on the arris, ergo they are Stupid.
(Latest example as we know will come to pass, if drunk women not responsible for their actions…how can drunk drivers be?)
For us on the doorstep, it is as you say, simply straight talking.