As a relative observer in this round of elections - ill health and professional study commitments have limited my availability - I have watched with a degree of bemusement as UKIP have emerged as the key theme.
I am bemused because, apart from a desire to blame Europe for most things and claim that common sense is their driver, it is very hard to tell what UKIP would do if they were running Suffolk County Council. And yet if today's ComRes opinion poll is to be believed, better than one in five of those intending to vote will support them. Given that Liberal Democrats have done quite well in a three-cornered national contest with 25%, 22% in a four-cornered contest spells success far beyond the expectations of UKIP activists previously.
And whilst we'll see how accurate that particular poll turns out to be, it does perhaps lead one to fret about the health of our local democracy.
It was always said that the British National Party performed best in traditional Labour areas where the other major parties were weak/non-existent - Barking and Dagenham, parts of South Yorkshire, for example. The most effective way to defeat them was local campaigning, combined with a relevant message. However, given that the appeal of the BNP was always limited by the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of their core philosophy, and the fact that their leaders were slightly scary and intimidating, their threat was a limited one.
UKIP, on the other hand, offer a more reputable challenge. Saying, as the BNP do, that "we don't like coloured people", is generally accepted as being offensive. Saying that "we don't like Europe", is fairly mainstream - the European Union is hardly popular, and newspapers such as the Mail, Express and Telegraph are unrestrained in their attacks upon it. And when Nigel Farage talks about 'common sense politics', it resonates with a disenchanted public. It is after all, common sense...
How to defeat them in a fair contest? Well, the answer is exactly the same as it is when dealing with the BNP, but there is a catch. They are much more acceptable to public opinion, there are many more of them, and they have a passion that, whilst it will burn out as disillusion sets in, will carry their activists quite a long way in the meantime. Meanwhile, the old political parties are slowly dying, losing members and activists, relying increasingly on the air war and on technology, a trend that shows no signs of reversal, making genuinely local campaigning that much more difficult.
If you probe beneath the veneer of truism, trying to work out what your UKIP candidate will do if elected is quite difficult. What is his/her stance on highway maintenance? On public transport subsidy? On libraries? If they're in favour of more spending on X, does that mean less on Y or a rise in council tax? And on what basis do they make any such commitments?
For there is no philosophical core against which you can measure their utterances, no policy core that might indicate a direction of travel, no key statement which implies how they would relate to their electors. And, if you're a thinking elector, wanting the best for you and your community, you do want some clues to aid you in reaching a decision on how to complete your ballot paper.
So, hopefully, you'll have met, or heard from, all of the serious candidates in your county division before you vote, i.e. those trying to win. I don't exclude UKIP from that group - their candidates genuinely wish to serve their community, just as the other candidates do. Judge them by their words and, where they have served before, by their actions.
Of course, you may just want to give the Government, or even the Official Opposition, a good kicking. But do bear this in mind, if all you want to do is "send a message", you'll have four years to reflect on whether or not it was a good idea. And you'd be amazed how much damage can be done to your county in that time...
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