With the five point swing towards UKIP at the local elections, taking their share of the vote up to 13%, largely at the expense of the Conservative Party, many Tories are quite understandably looking towards the 2014 European elections with great trepidation. The last time we contested the European elections in 2009 the climate was radically different, we were the reasonably popular opposition party possessing what seemed like a credible strategy on Europe which commanded the confidence of the majority of the Party, and the Labour Party was very much the marked party, the party to punish. Seemingly, at this point in time, if the European elections were to be held tomorrow, the Tories would be in trouble. The Conservative Party, along with the Liberals are the governing parties to punish, it is also more divided on Europe since John Major's leadership, and is likely to get hurt badly by an increasingly buoyant UKIP who are seeking to capitalise on the significant degree of euro scepticism within the country. At the last election in 2009 UKIP gained 16.5% of the vote (13 seats), while the Tories got 27.7% of the vote (25 seats). The chances are that if things stay the way they are at the moment, both parties will poll around 20% of the vote; in fact, UKIP may event top the election. This is a real concern for the Conservative Party, having lost many hundreds of decent, hard-working councillors' at the local elections, it's likely that come 2014, when the euro sceptic factor is likely to be burning more strongly than even 2012, we could lose a number of hardworking, decent MEP's. Moreover, our hope of influencing change within the EU from the inside, through our dominant position within the European Conservatives and Reformists group is likely to be dealt a significant blow.
Given this predicament, the question the Party needs to be asking itself is how it can counteract this threat, what strategy do the Tories have in place to deal with UKIP head-on, because they are going to need to do this. In politics the need to have a strategy to deal with your principal opponent is taken as a given, in 2014 UKIP will most likely be our principal opponent; we need a real strategy for dealing with them. The Conservative Party should do this in two ways. Firstly, it needs to point out the real potential of the European Conservatives' and Reformists Group to reform the EU from the inside, and how voting Conservative in May 2014 would further the potential for this group to change the direction of the European project. When respected statesman from ex-communist states such as Vaclav Havel speak about the European Union, people listen, with their direct experience of un-competitive and supranational practices under communism, and the dominance of the Soviet Union, who better to argue for a new EU, with a respect for nationhood, cooperation, and free enterprise at its heart. Furthermore, the degree of influence that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have upon the development of the Europe project is only likely to increase, not many countries have weathered the economic storm as well as the Poles. At the moment this group has 52 MEP's the goal should be to increase this number.
Secondly, as a party, we need to coalesce around a pro-referendum, anti-integrationist, but anti -exit position on Europe. Building on this we need to attack UKIP for possessing such a short sighted and contradictory position on Europe, believing that we could somehow quietly leave the EU without their being any economic problems as a result. Believing that the euro elite would be more than happy to sign a free trade arrangement with us having left, like with the Norwegians and Swiss, "because it's in their economic self-interest" is clearly nonsense. It's all well and good when notable advocates of an outright exit such as David Campbell Bannerman point out that Britain has a £34.9million trade deficit with the EU. Meaning that they would always support a free trade arrangement with us because they would lose more jobs than us is they didn't. But the key unanswered question is at what point does Campbell Bannerman think that euro elite are going to suddenly become economically literate, and think about our exit in such a rational way, after all, I thought the reason why UKIP wanted us out of the EU was because it was driven by ideologues who's economics was driven by politics rather than by what's economically sound, hence the Euro. What I really want to know, is as what point and why do UKIP think that the euro elite, or those in charge of opting for a free trade arrangement with the UK would start viewing their major decisions through economic lenses and not political ones? To both questions, UKIP appear to have no answers, and here lies the deep contradiction at the heart of their strategy. A British exit from the EU, and our resulting relationship with the EU having left, would be at least as ideologically loaded as the Euro project, being driven by the political motivations of those behind the European project far more than economic common sense.