How UKIP Max'd Out On Their Credit

[steveL]

How Local UKIP Max'd Out On Their Credibility

May 2016 and Hartlepool UKIP were presented with their dream ticket for the local elections. It was just 7 weeks before the National Referendum on the UK's membership of the EU and the TV News Stations and National Press had been full of little else for months.

UKIP's national profile was at its height and had been steadily rising from well before the 2015 General Election.

The party had failed to win a second seat in Westminster in the General Election of 2015 and Tory defector Douglass Carswell remained its only MP but it had accrued a respectable 3.9m votes.

UKIP were on the crest of a once-in-a-lifetime wave.

Locally, the party received an extra boost when local Independent party, PHF made the surprise decision to experiment by not splitting the local anti-Labour vote and to only defend its existing Seaton seat. Particularly, PHF decided not to contend the Foggy Furze seat allowing UKIP to make the most of the national UKIP bubble of support in the country and hopefully oust the current Labour Leadership which was doing so much damage to Hartlepool

To some extent, the plan worked. The effect of consolidating the anti-Labour vote locally combined with UKIP's high national profile increased the UKIP vote to the point were it managed to take 3 new seats - though not Foggy Furze where sadly, UKIP had failed to recognise the importance of the seat and had left their candidate without support.

In Headland & Harbour, UKIP scrapped in by just two votes.

PHF retained their Seaton seat more than 100 votes ahead of UKIP but notably the total Independent vote in Seaton came in nearly 700 votes ahead of UKIP.

Never-the-less, UKIP thought that they were on a roll. There wasn't even the glimmer of recognition that they owed their three new seats not just to their party's increased national profile before the referendum but also to PHF's decision not to split the vote. Just 7 weeks later, a 70% 'out' vote in Hartlepool had them believing that 70% of the local electorate were now UKIP supporters.

After the referendum, Party Leader Nigel Farage quickly resigned declaring that, as far as he was concerned, the job was now done. The UK would now be leaving the EU. UKIP as a national party have since dissolved into a rather unseemly cat-fight for its Leadership.

Locally, the effectiveness of the 5 UKIP Councillors is now being openly questioned. Since the election of their first councillor in 2014, no UKIP Councillor has raised a single local issue in the council chamber or challenged any action of the ruling Labour/Tory Coalition. Their attention now appears to be entirely focussed on winning the constituency seat for UKIP at the next General Election in 2020. What happens within Hartlepool Borough Council appears to be of little interest to UKIP other than the hope that a continuously dysfunctional council may help to harvest more votes for their General Election candidate.

The Future
The 'Dream Ticket' presented to UKIP in May 2015 turned out to be something of a missed opportunity. By failing to recognise the opportunity presented to them to oust the local Labour Leadership the party let the whole of Hartlepool down.

UKIP had concentrated on fielding candidates in all 11 wards and as a result had stretched themselves beyond their capacity. In the words of Seaton Councillor, Tom Hind, ironically himself a Foggy Furze resident, "Candidates were pretty much left to sort their own campaigns out."

Had they taken the opportunity presented to them by PHF and put additional resources into Foggy Furze then they could have well changed local politics in Hartlepool significantly in one move but political naivety, combined with unrealistic ambition got in the way. The party's raised national profile on the run up to the referendum had led to local UKIPPERS believing that they were about to take all 11 ward seats.

UKIP will never be presented with such a 'dream ticket' again - May 2016 was as good as it's ever going to get.

The 600 vote deficit that UKIP faces against the Independents suggests that Tom Hind is unlikely to retain his Seaton seat in 2018 and Shane Moore's 2 vote majority in Headland & Harbour is destined always to look vulnerable.

Nationally, without the enigmatic Farage captaining the ship, UKIP has suddenly become much less newsworthy. It's noticeable just how little coverage the party is now getting and this despite it being in the throws of a Leadership election.

The next local elections in Hartlepool are not due until 2018 and the next General Election will not take place before 2020.

If, as Harold Wilson once said, 'a week is long time in politics', the next few months look like being a period of painful diminishing returns for UKIP.

[fred c]

I wonder if UKIP will mount a serious campaign in the Headland & Harbout by-election in October, to do so requires a more positive participation by their representatives in council meetings.

There are a number of issues that really need to be brought forward, a motion on why HBC would want to rent land to a company that are unaware of the planning laws for one,  or maybe a question as to why the decision to demolish the big tin shed was made...... before the vote was taken.

Just a thought, one thing is for certain, they won't impress the voters if they sit there & stay stumm.