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”
Mary Ann
They don’t, they only pretend to, unfortunately you can fool some of the people all of the time. No holiday pay, no maternity pay, and a right wing government to decided our human rights, no thanks.
JAMES MCGIBBON
Left wing governments have a great record on human rights, eg USSR, China blah blah etc etc. Do you expect an employer to pay for you to go on holiday and have children. What happened to personal responsibility. Do you want your employer to be god, cradle to the grave! Yes you do.
JAMES MCGIBBON
I have to agree with Farage on University expenditure. He is right about training youngsters to have skills that are needed in trades that get hands dirty. Why waste so much money on elitism for university graduates who offer nothing in return but wind. What has the great Scottish socialist big Tam given back to the working class. Has he dug a hole! and repaired a drain or anything. Naw just wind.
Leon Wolfeson
Compared to your right-wing goverments…oh right.
As you attack basic rights, as usual. Yes, you refuse to take personal responsibility for anything, demanding the benefits of society without paying in or allowing workers right’s.
YOU want the employer to be the tyranical god who controls worker’s lives, not allowing them any freedoms.
Guest
Of course you hate most Universities, and want only training for low-pay factories. That education is “wasted” on the 99%, that the financial return from high-skill industry has no place in your UK.
Keep being a windbag, PPE man. Your kids would still get funding, after all.