A grovelling plea to Ukip

Our non-conservative Conservatives (otherwise known as the Tory party) can sense that the gravy train of power may just depart without them on board.

Why-oh-why, they wring their hands, does every poll point at a hung parliament and a likely Labour-SNP coalition? Haven’t the Tories done well for the economy? Doesn’t the public – even Labour public! – find Miliband to be an unfunny joke? So why?!?

It’s so simple, chaps, that even you should be able to understand it. British conservatives feel no kinship with today’s Conservative party.

A thinking person pledges his loyalty not to a particular political party but to particular political principles. He’ll then vote for the party whose professed principles and proposed polices are close to those he favours.

For many decades the Tory party was the only choice for conservatives, even those who had to pinch their nostrils when voting blue. Now there is another option: Ukip, whose manifesto is the only conservative document on offer in this election.

Predictably, many traditional Tory voters are moving the Ukip way, which weakens Tory chances. And, with their characteristic political incompetence, the blue ones don’t have a clue how to respond.

Their first reaction was personal invective. Ukip, screamed Dave, are a party of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. And while we are at it, added Dave’s close ally, Tory activists who really are conservative are “mad, swivel-eyed loons.”

No wonder then that such people began to gravitate towards Ukip, with the party eventually acquiring two MPs and threatening to get more or at least to siphon support away from the Tories.

With the election drawing nearer, Dave et al switched from vinegar to honey, hoping to draw the bee out of the conservatives’ bonnet. “Come home to Papa,” pleaded Dave. “Daddy promises not to abuse you any more. Please, please, don’t split the right.”

But Ukip doesn’t split the right, chaps. It is the right.

With every day falling off the calendar before 7 May, the pleas are becoming more grovelling, but none so grovelling as that by Tim Montgomerie in today’s Times.

It was less than a year ago that Tim called Farage “a lout” and contemptuously referred to his supporters as “the nimbys in Ukip”. Now they are “dear Ukippers”, begged to quit while they are ahead.

According to Tim, being ahead means that Ukip has exerted a telling influence on the Tory side of the political debate, which influence has grown stronger as the election draws nearer.

This same influence was well-nigh negligible when Dave was looking forward to years, rather than possibly weeks, at 10 Downing Street. Wouldn’t it then be possible to suggest that, should he gain another five years at his favourite address, Ukip’s influence is likely to attenuate?

Perish the thought. Dave has had a real change of heart. And Tim himself is a closet Ukipper who agrees with the party on, well, most things. But now it’s time for Ukip supporters to prove they aren’t ‘fruitcakes’ – by abandoning Ukip in favour of the blue brigade.

Logically speaking, and the ability to speak logically isn’t among Tim’s most salient traits, should they remain loyal to their party they will remain fruitcakes. That means that at heart Tim agrees with Dave: Ukippers and disenchanted Tories are fruitcakes.

It also means that he doesn’t even know how to dissemble properly, no matter how hard he tries. In effect he is saying, “You are crazed idiots only able to redeem yourselves by voting Tory.” A sure way of winning friends, that.

At the beginning of his article Tim acknowledges that Dave isn’t a real conservative, which presumably Tim himself is: “In his earliest days in charge of the Conservatives he… talked only about women candidates, civil liberties and climate change.”

However, then Tim undoes all his good work: “Personally, I’ll be on David Cameron’s side if there’s any attempt to reduce foreign aid spending or roll back on gay equality.”

I don’t know how many Tories are abandoning the party because of their opposition to Dave’s perversions mentioned by Tim, and how many do so because of the policies Tim self-admittedly advocates.

I suspect the split is about even – or even that there is no split. A real conservative would flee from this whole lot at an Olympic-calibre speed. The stench emanating from this Tory party can no longer be blocked off by pinching one’s nostrils, and even a gas mask would fail.

To his credit Tim doesn’t even attempt to make a substantive argument. His whole plea is based on voting tactics: a vote for Nigel is a vote for Ed and Nicola.

And should those demons take over, none of the wonderful things Dave is promising will ever be done. No EU referendum, no tax reductions, no right to buy – no nothing. Just doom and gloom.

For once I agree with Tim: a Labour-led government would be disastrous. However, tactically speaking, Ukip support has halved in the last week or so, and the two main parties are still neck and neck in every poll I’ve seen, give or take the expected statistical error.

Hence going against their conscience wouldn’t even score a tactical victory for real conservatives. And even if it did, and the ruling coalition were again blue and yellow rather than red, does anyone seriously think that the new government would deliver, say, an EU referendum and campaign for the Out vote?

Effectively Tim, Dave et al are begging people to abandon their principles for political gain. True enough, this is the stock in trade for today’s politicians, regardless of the colour of their rosette. That is exactly the trouble with today’s politics.

But an average voter can’t be expected to be the same kind of unprincipled spiv as our ‘leaders’. If a decent conservative feels that Ukip is close to his heart, then that’s how he should vote, and tactics be damned. Britain can survive five years of red madness, but she may not survive the absence of real conservatism.

There’s an outside chance, and I’m not holding my breath, that a defeat on 7 May might bring the Tories to their senses. A sure sign of such a welcome shift would be drumming Dave and his ilk out – with Tim bringing up the rear.

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