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”
Guest
And then…right…you make up nonsense about a NHS just catching up to where it should be for the still relatively low funding levels for a first-world country, as you ignore the disorganisation the Tories did and the damage it has done to care. As you whine that nurses are paid far too much – after few rises for over a decade. Those inefficient nurses…who are now spending vast amounts of time on paperwork, after vital back-end staff have been abolished. The Tories have caused massive problems with care in the name of “efficiency”, and we NOW have a poor value health system.
Then you make nonsense claims about pensions, when your Tories QE has driven down yields, and the coalition have refused to revise a system giving half the return on a pension pot offered in other EU countries. And ohnoes, Cameron didn’t cost the UK even more money on expensive means testing.
You then rant about the other, when few EU migrants take up UK citizenship, as you whine about allowing local councillors. You then call for law and order policies which are suited to third-world nations, with the sort of policies your ancestors fought against, as you mention a mis-handled case where cash was squandered on something where no clear case even existed, and indeed it was dismissed after the UK government did what it could have done three years earlier, saving the UK taxpayer a bundle – he then left voluntarily, with the assurances in hand.
You then criticise first-world countries for the absurd idea that they could do what is clearly possible for them, you just don’t WANT University education for the 99% in the UK. As you love into the current system, which is a lot MORE expensive for the government, you’re defending higher spending. You then want to waste student’s time, taking out a week of education for propaganda. Then a massively expensive second week’s waste, as you hate on the magical invisible “left-wing”.
The debt students have is more than £44k, of course, for three years (since students need cash to live on while studying), as you ignore the fact that the OU is something which isn’t suited to all students, does not offer degrees in many fields and is almost as expensive – for many students, their repayments would be identical. You then whine about post-grads and research, which brings the UK a lot of cash.
For you, earning less across your working career is “affordable”, when the previous system also didn’t charge up-front and left you personally better off. The UK benefits either way, of course, hence your opposition to degrees. “Only approced subjects”, you whitter, as you ignore how few people go direct in their degree field – your few approved subjects like Right Wing Propaganda and PPE for the 1% would not fill the gaps, business would just go elsewhere, as you deny the UK needs university-level jobs, and that working in minimum wage factories is all the peons should expect – that you see “honour” in making the UK worse off, overall, as long as you can have your servants. Your 1%, elitist, entirely based on cash system…as you talk about your racist thuggery, and PC hate of anyone not far right.
You then call for attacking most of the British, saying that democracy is a threat. That stopping people from kicking heads in, as you want, is “terrorism”. You scream the poor are “lazy scroungers”, as you live off corporate welfare and leech off taxpayers.
You call allowing other parties like the Nazis, right, never mind you’re the one-party man here, as you ignore the higher debt right wing policies have caused. You keep whining that your fascist is opposed, aww, as you stand with the Islamists, joined together in hate. You try and blame normal people for your terrorist views.
And of course you want a statue of yourself, why, who wouldn’t? As you support kicking in women’s heads, and as you make excuses for death threats. Then you demand wages be slashed, as usual, for anyone outside your 1%, and that BBC staffers should be beaten up, as you have not been. As you tell myths about the BBC, who are subservient to the government – you’d make them the Right Wing Propaganda Service, with pictures of the rightly dead leftie of the minute on one channel, and as you make up conspiracies about the UKIP’s coverage.
You then spout off rubbish about benefits, which you know little about – in fact, the coalition havbe for instance wasted far more than the JSA on inneffective punishment programs for the unemployed. And it was Thatcher who swelled the disabled rolls, by millions, but facts. You then praise programs which help rich kids get another house to rent out, as you praise a middle class tax cut, paid for by cuts to the poor – who are worse off.
You then whine because the Tories got too greedy and demanded reforms favour them, and lost it all rather than having cross-party support. As you call for separation and smashing the union, and as you call for slashing incomes rather than voting reform – priorities! (Yes, AV does suck, but PR does not). You then scream hate at the poor again, calling them scroungers.
Powell was, like you, an anti-British fifth columnist who tried to cause blood in the streets. Asylum…even Farrage supports. Poland, we’ve seen lots of people go back there because they didn’t use austerity and hence they’re doing a lot better than we are. But facts, You then blame the Other for the entirely domestic issues we’ve had with wages, thanks to your beloved austerity.
Your frantic, orwillian attempts to dismiss your racism are sad, it’s clear you are just trying to prevent debate and cause purges and pogroms. Your ancestors did fight indeed against people like you, as you make it plain you care about crime only when it’s the Other doing it. As you call for religious hate and bigotry, against Islam and of course Judaism. You have a problem with every last person who isn’t like you, as you make a claim not based on facts – your far right has far more extremists in your faith, and as you make up nonsense policies which never existed – we’re not even in Schengen! No surprise you’re for killing Muslims in London, and excusing the acts of a hate-preaching thug.
It’s always the *other* extremists who for you are the issue, when the differences between you and the worst of the Islamists is your day 1 targets. Day 2, of course, being the Jewish community, for both types of extremist.
We have a harsher system than Australia, who have twice the immigrants per-capita, turning away people on points who have gone to get O1 “superstar” visa’s in the USA. As you call for importing only where it can undermine wages, to block all international business and to end trade. Your rich leeches can of course come and go at will, though, for the London shopping.
UKIP are taking their usual obstructionist stand, after having refused to do their job at EU level, and being no better at local level. You want to isolate the UK, right, though, so you’ll excuse that. As you make up nonsense claims – they are a party of older voters and the right, not the left – Old Labour voters are going for minor parties, the Greens or not voting.
You then whine about more democracy in the EU, showing your agenda nicely. You make up claims about costs, ignoring benefits and with a made-up figure, Prisoners votes is not, of course, an EU matter but an ECHR one…your ignorance rolls on. You say that the argument against trade and for isolation and economic collapse is “compelling”, right. You can’t of course name people who don’t exist, as you say that hating the British means a Knighting is in order.
You then talk about disease rights, because it’s exactly those programs UKIP oppose, along with leverage for the trade you don’t want. As you deny poverty in India, and lie about other countries contributions. You then fail to note Labour followed their principles, and indeed lead the No campaign, while the Tories waffled in the Scottish separatist debates.
Let’s see…
* Deficit remains high, and the debt massive
* Hours worked flat, wages down
* Many new “self-employed” people on very low incomes, who would previously have been in the same roles employed on much better wages
* Apprenticeships used to evade the minimum wage up, quality apprenticeships down hard.
* 40 new legal laws on ways to avoid tax, which previously were illegal
* Red tape up, with a lot of burdens on people coming off benefits to make a company, and new taxes for those people (i.e. assuming they earn minimum wage from day 1)
* Income down for the vast majority, not least because cost-saving programs have been cut due to ill conceived “tax freezes”
* Crime down by far less than other countries, and rising again due to poverty. Food theft in particular is rising.
* Despite anti-terror successes, demands for major new privacy-busting government databases
* Childcare vouchers well down against childcare costs
* Claims about an existing program being “introduced”, when it was in fact slashed in many ways
* Schools removed from democratic control, many then getting worse
* Claims a Labour policy is a Tory one
* No actual action on reducing energy bills
* Major slashes in public transport, a few roads for the rich and for the rich man’s HS2
* Families broken apart
* Paying students down, skilled professionals leaving at record rates, far fewer business visitors
* Small-minded anti-British nationalism
* NHS budget cut, massive disorganisation costing a major chunk of the care budget
* Less time for patient care, many NHS staff retiring, actual professionals down after temporary staff taken into account. Nurses in particular have lots more paperwork to do.
* Cancer and other healthcare waiting lists rising sharply
* Paying student numbers slashed, harming the economy
* Important bodies slashed, costing billions and usually just shuffling functions around. Quangos of course include the Meat Hygiene Board, Horseflesh man.
* Fuel prices are based, of course, on oil prices which the UK government does not control
* Those evil nurses and teachers!
* People punished for smaller houses not being available, in many cases used rooms for medical purposes charged, cost overall up because of movement to more expensive accommodation the taxpayer then has to pay for.
* The economy further slashed, and the UK lost allies in the EU because of obstructionism
* An anti-business investment pledge, costing us billions
* “Outdated” protections like being paid wages and no torture to be scrapped
* Crime committed by political opponents, only, matters to you
* Man leaves voluntarily, after the government does what it could have done years before, but wasted a lot of taxpayer cash in the meantime
* An action the right are whining about these days
* Claims about the government doing things which they didn’t – in fact, the Muslims at Quilliam de-radicalised the EDL leaders, *despite* the government, and you’re further right than he ever was.
* The BNP’s voters have shifted to UKIP
* The Tories brinkmanship with EVEL has meant that the Scottish public want another referendum
* More claims for things not in the government’s control.
* Massively expensive and wasteful Olympics, a prestige game at the expense of the taxpayer.
* Wasted cash on expensive funerals for a custom which is grotesque given the record of the person.
To you, an emergency block on growth and a depression is a “recovery”. The UK is on it’s knees, and you’re pointing a gun at our heads. Keep saying the trigger must be pulled, or people with *marginally* different policies might get in, as the Reds In Your Head flock!
Guest
And yet, there it is again in your policies, that Zombie rises, as you call on Satan to raise it!
And you see magical socialists, right, as you try and link things which don’t go together – the idiots who condemn Israel are very rarely socialist, genuine socialists are a truly rare species in the UK. More commies condemn Israel than Socialists here, and there ain’t many of them either.
But facts.
Guest
So you’re denying your own post and it’s UKIP lines now. Right.
Gerschwin
‘Fraid socialism and Adolf go hand in hand Leon it’s in the lingo…
Awww… reality.
linda Murray
Led by Own Jones well that says it all , how can Labour fail with this sort representation on the doorstep. Comes over as a pompous little socialist, who would never consider any other perspective than his own. Enjoy the experience South Thanet.