Weekend Video Fun

I'm away this weekend so I thought I would leave my readers with two entertaining political YouTube videos.

The first is Nigel Farage UKIP MEP who makes his feelings very clear.




The second video has been all over the bloggersphere. Chris Bryant Labour MP puts Kay Burley on SkyNews right when she asks some silly questions.

UKIP gatecrash main party church hustings in Bracknell

UKIP according to the Bracknell News gate crashed the hustings at the Easthampstead Baptist Church on Tuesday, April 27. The Bracknell Standard has 'UKIP picket over hustings ban'. The 2nd headline was what actually happened. You have to give it to the local UKIP activists they really know how to get a story in the papers.

During the week before I also spoke to UKIP PPC Murray Barter who was handing out leaflets at Bracknell train station, he is enjoying the campaign and why shouldn't he it looks like alot of fun. UKIP have some very clever ways of getting their voice heard when only using a small team. Just have a look at the equipment UKIP are getting out of there car. A very impressive collection of pound signs.

I popped into the hustings for a short time and a number of UKIP supporters were in attendance along with the BNP candidate Mark Burke who was also in the audience. I was surprised to find out that Mark was once a Conservative member as I personally imagine BNP being a right wing socialist party which is some distance away from the Tories.


The event was well run, well attended and candidates all preformed well I thought.


So hats of to UKIP and take note, just because a party is not at an event does not stop them from becoming the story and stealing the limelight.


Below is a picture of a UKIP activist Jeff Newbold at Bracknell  railway station.

By-Election shows that UKIP don't only take votes from the Tories‏

The local election in Owlsmoor has thown up a chance to see where the UKIP voters would go if UKIP don't stand or perhaps where they have taken there vote from. Given that UKIP did not stand in the Borough election but did stand in the Town.

It is always assumed that UKIP votes simply take from the Tory vote. Well I'm not so sure this is the case.

UKIP received 12% of the vote which is quite a large figure of the overall vote almost putting labour into 4th place.

I would add some caveats to this, firstly this is a local election so people may know some of the candidates or may indeed vote differently to a general election because of the candidates etc. Secondly some people could of changed their vote from Labour or Tory or Lib Dem from Town or Borough, but lets for this example assume that this goes both ways and irons itself out.


Labour vote appears to me unchanged percentage wise losing only 2 votes from UKIP. the Greens are next losing 16 votes or 2% next its the Lib dems with 37 votes or 4% and the Tories the most at 55 votes or 6%.

This also means that of UKIP vote of 112 people given no UKIP choice in Owlsmoor, 14% choose Greens, 2% choose Labour, 33% choose Lib Dems and 49% choose Tories and 2% don't vote.

Does this not demonstrates that infact the Lib Dems and the Greens are also effected greatly by having a UKIP stand in an election. This is something worth remembering when working out those marginal seats.

To compare this to the 2003 Borough elections were;

Party 2003 Vote 2010 Vote
Conservative 64% 54%
Liberal Democrats 19% 25%
Labour 17% 13%
Greens 0% 7%

EU Referendum IN or OUT Not Happy

Today on the Daily Politics BBC2 show ex Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said "When the issue of whether or not there should be a referendum on Lisbon came up then we said it would be much more sensible to have a referendum on 'in or out' but the Lisbon Treaty is now history."

Nick Clegg confirmed that we would keep this pledge during the Liberal Democrat annual conference (I remember I was there). But now the position is not clear. Was Sir Menzies Campbell simply wrong or are the Liberal Democrats withdrawing the EU In/Out referendum.
Apparently this was one of the reasons why UK Independence Party thought a hung parliament would be a good thing as a coalition could of led to a chance for a referendum according to Lord Pearson.

Today on BBC 5 Live Nick Clegg said "The only way to sort out the debate about EU membership was to have a referendum in this country as to whether we stay in or stay out. What we can’t do is to be a member of a club and complain about it from the sidelines." So what is going on? I hope the Liberal Democrat stance is clarified soon.

I don't believe this is a vote winner especially after the conservatives withdrew their cast iron promise. This is a policy we should keep and if the Liberal Democrats don't then I for one wont be very happy about it!

Mark Reckons has blogged on this very point and I could not agree with him more see Lib Dems should not ditch the in/out referendum pledge

How Rude Cybersquatter Website Address Update

It appears that a John Pepin currently owns www.libdem.org.uk, which is currently directed to the UKIP Website.

It also appear that John Peterson owns the web site domain http://www.labourparty.org.uk/ which is currently directed to a web site called don’t vote Labour.

These domains are owned in the hope that the parties pay a sum of money to claim the domains. See this link here on Cybersquatters.

Oddly enough it also appears that no Conservative website name has been registered other than the ones already used by the UK Conservative party or other Conservative parties.

Perhaps I should Cybersquat http://www.myconservatrives.org.uk/ with http://www.libdems.org.uk/ in the hope of getting some money from them.

Mark Pack of Lib Dem Voice has noticed that this web site has been owned for quite some time and has pointed to a numer of web sites.

Richard Gadsden has commented that "political parties do not have rights in respect of their names comparable to those held by companies or trademark holders" which would make it hard to use nominet's dispute process to reclaim the Lib Dem name.

Thanks to Steve whose blog site is http://greengabbles.wordpress.com/ and Twitter account is http://twitter.com/stevegabb for the heads-up on this article.

UKIP HOW RUDE! Thats not your website

It appears that UKIP or someone has registered the http://www.libdem.org.uk/ as the UKIP Website.

Type this into your browser and see what result you get. If you use www.libdems.org.uk you will have the official Liberal Democrat web site. Take the 's' out and your be transported to UKIP. Interesting?

How rude!

Can we Learn From UKIP Activists

I have a lot of UKIP readers who bombard me whenever I do any posts on their favourite subject the EU. I again expect them to bombard me with their comments in reply to this post too, we will wait and see.

UKIP have around 16,000 members. By way of contrast the Conservative Party had around 290,000 members the Labour party had 176,891, the Liberal Democrats 73,000 and the BNP had 10,000 members, I could not find any info on the Greens.

I just wanted to highlight just how active the UKIP members are. The main parties have allot of members but a fair percentage of them are not active. I don't have a problem with this as all parties need as many members that they can get be them active or not because hey provide a support thought funding and discussion. But I have met quite a few UKIP members now. In maidenhead for example I can confirm that all UKIP members of that party are active (spoke to them in maidenhead town centre while they were campaigning).

I think the other parties can learn something from UKIP here. UKIP are a one-issue party (they do of course have other policies) But that one issue for its member’s spurs them onto feel so strong on the EU question that they cant help but be active. The other parties are not inspiring their members into action.

Other issues that of course cause people to not want to be so active is the expense scandal, no one want to get told that they are a crook or you’re all the same and as bad as one another etc etc.

I’m not expecting UKIP to wins seats in the next election (well apart from Nigel Farage) but we should also not underestimate their activist because they are driven on by a very strong belief. A belief that the other parties need to get back in their members as say Blair did in 1997 or as Paddy Ashdown did in the 1990's.

UKIP are currently running a leadership contest the contestants can be viewed here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8368751.stm

These figures are taken from around 2007 for the big two parties 2004 for the Liberal Democrats and 2009 for UKIP. However I think it’s well known that the membership of all the main parties has been declining (in 1997 Labour had 405,000 members).

UPDATE: Green Party had 7441 members as of 2008, thanks to 'This is Bracknell' for the info.

An EU Referendum Would Split the Tory Party‏

Conservative MEP's Daniel Hannan and Roger Helmer quit their frontbench posts to concentrate on campaigning for a referendum on Europe after David Cameron said it was pointless to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty now it has been signed.

The comments by a French government minister who branded the Tories' new European policy "pathetic" may even help them in the short term polls given how some people feel about the French.

I think the Tories are really making a mess of Europe given their new grouping in the EU parliament and the effect of this on there relations with the bigger European governments etc.
The Conservatives now have no strength in Europe to get any of their wishes through, like a having the power for a Sovereignty Act or to repatriate powers from the EU. I very much doubt the EU would consider another treaty within the first conservative term in office after the Lisbon Treaty and therefore won’t have any form of referendum.

I think Daniel Hannan and Roger Helmer are right to resign and campaign for a referendum to give the people a say as the Liberal Democrats would do. I also imagine that UKIP Leader Nigel Farage is trying his best to get Daniel to join his party as this really would be a great move for UKIP, if they could carry it off. I’m sure they would love too grab Daniel. Daniel Hannan also has a massive ground swell of support within the conservative party.

But the real problem for the Conservative party is that they could almost never hold a referendum on an in/out question on Europe. If they ever did, the leadership I guess would campaign to be in Europe but many of the grass roots would campaign to be out of Europe. In fact if this happened I could imagine UKIP gaining more activists from the Tory party during such a campaign then ever before. The same may also be true to a lesser extent of the Labour Party.

I actually think there are only two options if you really have given up on the European project and that's vote Lib Dem for a referendum or go the whole hog and vote UKIP.

Daniel Hannan Blog can be read here

Charlotte Gore makes a point that the Tories should stay quite on Europe here