Saturday 30 May 2009

Vote UKIP in the European Elections?

The European Elections are on June 4th. Even before the expenses scandal I was confused as to whom I would vote for. I have always been quite eurosceptic in my views, but have voted Tory the last couple of times on the basis that I know this is a party close to my own views.



However, I wonder how much of a message is sent to the leadership by the big share UKIP get in the Euro elections? And not just the Tories either, the Lib Dims and Liebour must see the loss of votes to the single issue and consider their own positions.


Now this year we have Libertas too and is a pan-European approach to reform the right way to go? It could be, but then maybe this is too long a project and the UK simply needs to re-negotiate now.


All advice welcome.

CU

22 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

Nah, just vote UKIP, the least-bad party by a country mile, and have done with it.

Tim Worstall said...

Quite. UKIP. ie, Vote for Meeeee!

(UKIP on the London list)

JPT said...

UKIP are bigger fiddlers than all the others (allegedly)!

Simon Fawthrop said...

The problem is that if UKIP does well it will be passed off by the big three as an anti politics vote and therefore not to be taken seriously.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I would be saying that they engineered the expenses crisis for that very reason.

My vote postal already cast for UKIP.

Chris said...

UKIP has the clearest manifesto on this. I'm voting UKIP until the Comservatives come out with a commitment to a referendum on Lison without caveats.

Charon QC said...

Did a podcast on Friday with Gawain Towler, UKIP candidate for South West. Interesting guy... fairly direct and blunt.

You may want to hear what he said.

http://www.insitelawmagazine.com/charonpodcast137.htm

Richard Elliot said...

Won't a big show for UKIP at the Euros, cause mumblings/issues/divisions/bad press for the Tories?

People's views may be more aligned to UKIP on a single issue election like the Euros, but we all want to see a next Tory government.

James said...

Vote Libertas they seem to have an actual plan rather than the UKip style 'protest'.

Raedwald said...

Yep, UKIP for the Euros and Tory for the GE. It would be nice to see Tim get a seat - but 4th on the list ...

Anonymous said...

I appreciate UKIP generally causing trouble in the EP. They had my vote - until I saw a UKIP billboard promising to "stop unlimited immigration".

If anyone thinks that 1) there is such a thing as unlimited immigration and 2) that this country will survive without a massive influx of immigrants, they need to get their heads examined.

DocRichard said...

Here is some objective advice: OpenEurope is a think tank calling for reform of European institutions. It has published an important league table of MEP performance here: http://www.openeurope.org.uk

MEPs have been ranked using two main categories:
‘Transparency, openness and democracy’ and ‘Fighting waste and misuse of EU funds’. http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/rankingguide.pdf/

I have gone through the data for UK Greens, Con, Lab, LibDem and UKIP and summated their scores. The lower the score the better. I noted their position on the ranking, summated those position scores and divided by the number of MEPs found.

Here are the results :

Greens - 51

LibDem - 116

Conservatives 152

Labour 205

Ukip 343


This survey is vitally important for the electorate. People are understandably angry with the three Westminster parties, and at the moment, due to deficient information, UKIP is the main beneficiary of the disaffection, polling 10-16% at the moment. This research shows that voting UKIP in protest at MP expenses scandals is to jump from the Westminster frying pan into the Brussels fire.

CityUnslicker said...

I am bakc at last from the beach. How sad really. Thanks for all your input here. I have not voted for UKIP but am leaning towards doing so this time, as Tim Worstall has offered me a share of his food expenses budget...

no really I might do. The Tories are talinkg a good game but I think the huge UKIP vote will inspire Hauge and Cameron to make some more soldi choices on Europe. At the moment I sense they would back away.

Richard Elliot - I don't think at the moment there is an alternative to a Conservative GE win. No one is going to vote for the idiot Brown.

CityUnslicker said...

Charon QC - good podcast, I would encourage everyone else to listen to it.

Demetrius said...

It's a mess, so what is the least worst option? I still do not know.

cosmic said...

As far as I can tell, the Tory position in the EU is that integration has gone far enough and powers should be repatriated. Their ideal is a Europe of nation states; that's to say, they're not keen on political integration and want a trading arrangement. They intend to bring this about by reform from within.

It sounds good but they haven't explained how they are going to achieve it. The purpose of all existing treaties is further integration.

If they are going to achieve reform from within, it would mean getting the other 26 members to agree to changes as required by the UK. Is this likely to happen? What happens if the others say no?

Are they going to take unilateral action on the existing treaties? What use is renegotiation without a clear threat of withdrawal? Tory policy is against withdrawal and that suggests they are not serious.

The Tory position on the EU is vague and dishonest and seems like appeasing their Eurosceptic supporters while being careful to offer them nothing concrete.

The EU is going the way it is, towards full political integration and sidelining national parliaments, because that's what it was designed to do.


UKIP have a coherent position - withdrawal and a trading arrangement.

The LibDems have a coherent position which is full integration.

Labour are clearly for further integration.

The Tories have a dishonest position, hinting at reform but amounting to continuing integration.

It has to be UKIP for the EU elections.

Steven_L said...

I don't particularly want to send any of them on the EU gravy train but I'm going to vote Tory.

Anonymous said...

Vote UKIP.

If you're Eurosceptic, it's the right thing to do. Even if you don't want out, if you want to see a firmer commitment on Lisbon from Cameron, you'll only get it by making your position clear.

APL said...

"Now this year we have Libertas too and is a pan-European approach to reform the right way to go?"

Assuming there are enough people in a position to 'implement' reform. Assuming there are enough people in 'Europe' in positions of power and who want to implement reform.

cosmic: "As far as I can tell, the Tory position in the EU is ..."

We are quite worried that the EUroskeptic vote is making the running in the country at large, so in the three weeks up to the European Elections we will make eurosceptic noises.

That should fool the suckers.

David Goodwin said...

Vote Green - see http://euelection.openrightsgroup.org/ they're the only ones with decent policies with regard to copyright reform and net privacy.

hovis said...

It has to be UKIP. They are flawed, their leadership questionable as is organsation. Some members are ignorant troughers but some are truly brilliant.

That said Libertas is either splits the anti EU vote but delivers nothing. Kudos to the guy running it for getting an Irish No referendum vote but with Libertas he's wrong. It aims to reform from within - something promised for the last 30 years by europhiles.

The Tories like Labour are paid up Federalists, no matter that some of their number are skeptics.

JS said...

Don't bother with Libertas. The EU is unreformable.

Wesley Lally said...

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