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
69 Responses to “UKIP have no ground game – Sunday is the day to expose them”
Leicester Longstopper
Due to your one-sided analysis you get no credibility Scobie, hence why all the comments on here are tearing you apart. Claiming that Labour are the messiahs and anything anyone else does is terrible turnspeople off and counters any good points you may occasionally make.
Educate yourself Scobie, by reading my tell-it-how-it-is common sense blog remastered for the 2015 election…
https://leicesterlongstopper.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/13-years-of-hurt-remastered-for-2015/
KentRed
What a lot of organised unpleasant UKIP trolling. Lots of personal attacks on Will Scobie now because he has the biggest swing in the country from the Tories and will win. You’re particularly naughty Tom Fowdy to say they are public meetings as if you live in South Thanet as you claim you will have seen the regular reports in the local paper the Gazette of people being excluded including Gazette journalists.
damon
I heard this guy Don Flynn from the Migrant Rights Network on the radio this morning.
http://www.migrantsrights.org.uk/about/team/don-flynn
He said that net immigration rates of 300,000 a year was maybe just the new reality and something that we should both welcome and then make provision to accommodate.
Fair enough, it’s a point of view. They’re a charity and get funding from other charities it seems.
They’re about as opposite from Ukip as you could probably get.
What I find most objectional about this whole subject (of Ukip) is how everyone lies and spins.
Ukip do it, and so do Migration Rights Network, Owen Jones, and the likes of all the party leaders on the political debating panel the other night who called Farage a hater etc and said he should be ashamed.
I would guess that most Brits don’t welcome a 300,000 net immigration gain every year.
JoeDM
It was a typical left-wing dominated BBC audience that we see week in week out on Question Time.
Guest
Your problems reading plain English are not my problem. Take more ESOL lessons.