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Why the Tories have picked the wrong man to take on Farage
New Statesman ^ | August 15, 2014 | George Eaton

Posted on 08/16/2014 8:40:35 AM PDT by SunkenCiv

Rather than choosing a former Ukip leader as their candidate in South Thanet, the party should have selected a liberal figure capable of winning tactical votes.

With a whimper, rather than a bang, Nigel Farage has confirmed that he is standing for selection as Ukip's candidate in South Thanet.

Farage finished fourth when he stood in the Tory-held seat in 2005, and only managed third place when he ran in John Bercow's Buckingham constituency in 2010, but he is right to believe he can improve on both of these performances. A recent Lord Ashcroft poll put Ukip in first place in South Thanet and the party won seven out of eight seats on the county council last May, leaving the Tories without a single representative.

Aware that Farage was likely to stand in the constituency, the Tories acted pre-emptively by selecting former Ukip leader and deputy leader Craig Mackinlay as their PPC (sitting MP Laura Sandys is standing down). The logic is clear: by choosing a robust eurosceptic as their candidate, the Tories hope to prevent right-leaning voters from defecting to the purple army.

But the strategy is a questionable one. To win the seat, where they currently hold a 7,617 majority, the Tories would have been wiser to select a liberal candidate capable of winning tactical votes from Labour and Lib Dem supporters.

In the recent Newark by-election, a significant number of centre-left voters held their noses and voted Conservative on the grounds that it was the best means of stopping Farage's party. One compared it to backing Jacques Chirac against Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 French presidential election.

(Excerpt) Read more at newstatesman.com ...


TOPICS: United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: europeanunion; euroskeptics; nigelfarage; ukip; unitedkingdom
New Statesman

1 posted on 08/16/2014 8:40:35 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...

Get this — the locals went almost full UKIP, so the op-ed writer claims the Tories should have picked someone to give them crossover from the left and so-called centre.


2 posted on 08/16/2014 8:41:44 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3145841/posts?page=4#4


3 posted on 08/16/2014 8:46:15 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: SunkenCiv
Get this — the locals went almost full UKIP, so the op-ed writer claims the Tories should have picked someone to give them crossover from the left and so-called centre.

Why not run a full-on Red?

4 posted on 08/16/2014 8:49:57 AM PDT by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Farage is great, I wish him much success.


5 posted on 08/16/2014 10:08:03 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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6 posted on 08/16/2014 10:13:27 AM PDT by RedMDer (May we always be happy and may our enemies always know it. - Sarah Palin, 10-18-2010)
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To: FreedomPoster

I don’t like him at all, but I concur, and wish him much success. :’)


7 posted on 08/16/2014 10:54:26 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: SunkenCiv

Bizarre. The only way the Tories will survive is returning to center, which is actually where the UKIP are (considering that the media have been moving the goalposts over time). It worked for John Howard in Australia. It will work for them. They’ll just have to get a handle on not having nice things said about them by some segments of society who somehow have selected themselves the conscience of the world, even if their delusions would otherwise bar them from being that.


8 posted on 08/16/2014 3:17:50 PM PDT by OldNewYork
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To: OldNewYork

/bingo


9 posted on 08/16/2014 3:23:48 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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