With their Farage-reliant party structure, the idea of a ground game is alien to UKIP
This Sunday in South Thanet Labour’s campaign against Nigel Farage will be helped by a day of campaigning on the doorsteps led by Owen Jones. Several hundred people are set to come down, and there’s a lot of excitement in advance.
The mass canvass comes after Nigel Farage’s call to arms last weekend, when the UKIP leader became belatedly alert to the fact he would not receive the coronation he had expected in South Thanet.
What was striking about Farage’s plea to supporters was quite how novel it was to his party. Whereas for Labour the custom of campaigners seconding themselves to marginal seats from safe ones is a mainstay of the electoral cycle, for UKIP it generated national headlines.
Indeed, with their tadpole-like, Farage-reliant party structure, the idea of a ground game is in many ways alien to UKIP. This week in Thanet they paid for their second £8,000 wraparound of the local newspaper, and the area is now decked out in expensive purple and yellow advertising. But those who have seen their supporters out and about report a shambolic and often undirected canvassing operation.
Increasingly this is the story in South Thanet, with UKIP (and the Tories, for that matter) pumping vast amounts into big budget marketing and advertising – effectively deploying a high volume, low engagement strategy. Farage’s tinny claim to lead the “people’s army” is hollower than anyone quite appreciates.
With Ukip ploughing the lion’s share of national party resources into two or three seats they believe they can win, the paradox is acute. Farage’s team use Goliath-like resources to plaster every billboard, newspaper and bus with the message that they are the David-esque electoral underdog.
The only way Labour can counter this is by doing what we have been doing for the last two years in South Thanet – and are doing across the country – and continue with a methodical, street-by-street, house-by-house approach that genuinely engages with people. By ramping this up, through mass canvassing events like the Owen Jones one this weekend, this election can become British politics’ great Wizard of Oz moment – a sign of quite how little there is behind the purple curtain.
For more information about Sunday’s event, click here.
Will Scobie is the Labour candidate in South Thanet
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69 Responses to “UKIP have no ground game – Sunday is the day to expose them”
TomFowdy
“But those who have seen their supporters out and about report a shambolic and often undirected canvassing operation”
you’ve clearly omitted the sheer number of successful public meetings Farage has held in the constituency.
You look like a geeky, snooty schoolkid Will, you described us as “toothless thugs” for who we choose to vote for, if I were not UKIP and living in South Thanet, it would be the tories anyday.
littleoddsandpieces
Go on let Farage into government as an MP.
To face a very different kind of politics, if the poor non voter gains the information that voting different could change everything.
LABOUR HAS ALREADY LOST
326 MP minimum threshold to rule UK parliament
Yougov polling predicts:
277 Labour
264 Tories
28 Lib Dems.
So Labour cannot rule.
TORIES HAVE ALREADY WON
Tories are obliged to stay in government, by the rules, in a severe hung parliament that fails for any big party to reach the minimum threshold.
VOTING DIFFERENT SOLE WAY TO KEEP DEMOCRACY
Voting small parties brings in a majority government of over 400 MPs by a group of parties.
By the rules, such a group of parties forming a UK parliament can negotiate equally with each other and not only with Labour.
But as Gandhi observed, people’s politics are their daily bread.
UKIP offers the 75 per cent poor voter nothing.
The parties that offer against anti austerity cuts, that threaten and even kill so many from babes in wombs to grannies, are:
THE PARTIES OF THE POOR OF THE LEFT
Vote National Health Party in England and
vote out Prime Minister Cameron and
Health Minister Jeremy Hunt, and
the Tory MP in the famous for being famous, Stafford.
Bring in about 13 MPs that are anti austerity cuts to NHS
ONLY THE SMALL PARTIES CAN BRING ABOUT DEMOCRACY
Only by voting the small parties can democracy happen.
You need parties on both sides of the benches of the House
of Commons for a democracy to work.
With such a severe hung parliament if you do not vote
different and bring in new MPs, there would only be the Tories in government,
with Labour forever out of power.
SEE HOW
YOU, US POOR WHO MAY NOT HAVE VOTED LAST TIME, CAN NOW CHANGE EVERYTHING IN MAY
BY VOTING DIFFERENT / HOW ENSURE REGISTERED TO VOTE (only have til Monday April
20)
http://www.anastasia-england.me.uk
Vote Class War and vote out Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford
and Wood Green voting area in London.
Bring in about 12 MPs calling for double dole and pension.
Vote TUSC and vote out Miliband, Labour’s Leader.
Vote TUSC and cut 113 Tory, Lib Dem and Labour MPs in
England from UK parliament.
Vote TUSC and bring in a party 100 per cent anti austerity
as ex Labour,
sacked from the Labour party for voting against austerity
cuts and
sacked by Maggie Thatcher all those years back for not doing
austerity cuts.
Vote SNP and cut 1 Tory, 11 Lib Dems and over 40 Labour from
UK parliament.
Vote Plaid Cymru and cut 8 Tories, 3 Lib Dems and around 29
Labour.
Vote Mebyon Kernow and cut 6 Tory and Lib Dems in all of
Cornwall.
Vote Socialist GB and in Brighton, with not just one but
three voting areas outnumber the 1 Green MP in Brighton Pavilions voting area,
by voting different:
Brighton Kemptown – Socialist GB
Brighton and Hove – TUSC
Vote The Left Unity Party and cut 10 MPs from the big
parties
Ban sanctions, end benefits cuts.
RESULT
400 MPs with the bulk anti austerity parties proven by deeds
over the years, with whatever is left of Labour as a fill in which must change
with all these partners.
Mary Ann
You can still say that after Farage’s temper tantrum just because he thought the audience was too left, You are joking, aren’t you?
Gerschwin
You have about as much chance of winning this seat as well… UKIP, so congrats on helping to shore up the Tory vote.
Gerschwin
Nothing you write makes any sense Leon. English not your first lingo? Maybe American-English?