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”
Leon Wolfeson
Keep talking nonsense about the BBC, ignoring the studies and facts.
Guest
No, UKIP don’t admit their opposition to trade, as you “guess” that closing the borders and being poorer is what most people want.
Gerschwin
Nah. National Socialism was put to bed 1945 and again 1989, those days are over now thank God, but be on your guard Leon – plenty of socialists still knocking about. Next time Israel defends itself see them crawl out the woodwork to condemn it.
Guest
Ah yes, the destruction of allowing a functioning economy, the pain of not hating the Other.
You do indeed take pride in spitting in the face of the British, as you talk about your refusal to consider other points of view could ever be valid, placing yourself aside from democracy and trampling on the Honour of those of your Ancestors who fought against people with your far right views.
You attack Universities and education, ignoring the fact our graduation rate is unremarkable (and falling) for a first-world country, as you speak for your “bunch of eurosceptic Tory loons”. Then you rage at the non-jobs of nurses and teachers, of course, Universal schooling and the NHS, can’t be allowed, as you call workers with basic rights “bullies”, demanding those rights be voided.
Then you deny we have a fiat currency, as you wonder why people vote for parties which don’t treat them as the enemy. As you once again note the UK does not need anyone other, in your world, than the 1% to be University educated.
You then make excuses for austerity and the emergency block on recovery, of course, as you insult 85% of the population and demand they can’t reason. Then you spin conspiracy theories about left-wing media, then you note you only care about crime when the Other is doing it, excusing all crimes from people who are White and with your views, of course.
Then you show your ignorance of marginal tax rates and the fact that only the top of wages were being taxed at that rate – and per the OECD, we are low tax. The coalition, meanwhile, have legalised massive parts of what was once illegal to hide your income.
THEN you claim that the damage done to the economy was necessary, as.you oppose democracy and demand that people keep paying for your Banking, to the next generation, rather than you pay tax.
You claim your repeated strikes on the poor haven’t happened. That the deaths you evidently glory in have not occurred, as you claim regressive taxes are magically not regressive, as you claim your rich getting richer and a dangerous bubble in the city is a “recovery”, and as you frantically defend the – modern – zero hour contracts and deny the rise in underemployment. It’s entirely fair to ask how you expect people to live on those contracts, when you’re attacking the same people on them for being poor – and if they EVER refuse to work any hours, not only does the company not have to give them hours again, but they can deny them all benefits for 3+ months by reporting them wilfully unemployed.
Then there’s your whittering about the debt, when we’re deflating. As such, the problem is we’re not spending enough and the economy is at risk of collapse because of cuts. Then you whine about pensions existing, can’t be allowed, as you try and deny the facts of a global crisis, where only Greece has had a worse response and recovery than we have.
Then you bring up middle-class tax cuts and highlight the fact that workers are worse off after inflation, and axed important NI credits for millions, seeking to do so further and ensure over a third of workers, at current trends, will *never* be able to retire. Holland’s problem was waffling, not a few rich people decamping and leaving their businesses. Boris welcomed a bunch of leeches who are costing the UK and driving up housing prices.
Then you bring up the expensive means-testing the Tories are doing, costing more than is saved, for a token gesture against the rich rather than i.e. simply adjusting tax rates to reclaim the benefit – cheap, effective, simply. Then you talk about how slashing council budgets, which has cost many poor people a lot of cash, “helps” them.
Then you defend Gove’s attack on education, managing the hard feat of being worse than the Tories, as you support excluding many pupils and moving schools task even further from education, as you whine about trade and say the 99% are too well off, that there’s too many schools, too few people without places. Then you demand less teachers, too.
You then, without evidence, demand longer hours, payment bonuses for sucking up to the headmaster, smashing the value of degree programs with your thoughtless plans which will not benefit pupils, and would require massive reductions in student numbers at all levels…which you’d do in part by denying the majority of students qualifications needed for any jobs significantly above the minimum wage.
You then make up nonsense about teachers, ignoring their heavy workloads, and claim that your long hours watching the stock market is “work”. 40 hours is a maximum tested over and over for maximum productivity, you’re trying to further depress the UK’s already low productivity!
damon
Who said anything about closing borders? Not me. I just find the spin of people like Migration Rights Network, Owen Jones and Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru to be quite stupid and dishonest. They’re actually the haters, because they hate so many ordinary people.