Lord Pearson makes his mark

Chris

It's not in the least bit intriguing. It's just another reminder of what a bunch of loons UKIP are. They should have elected the transvestite - at least that would have given the rest of us a few more laughs.

Simon

If the Tories had responded in any way it would be a story. Far from being tactless it was the only sensible course of action. The deal would have leaked out and the media would have run riot. You dont need a phd in political strategy to work that one out!

Simon

Incidentially, when can we expect an edorsement from UKIP from Peter? Surely your natural home.

Richard Manns

So ends UKIP's threat to the Tories; one wonders if Lord Pearson is sabotaging UKIP with this policy shift, but one must not presume malice when stupidity will suffice.

And, to think, I'd have voted UKIP until now if I were living in Buckinghamshire.

Holly ......

Lord Mark Pearson?
Strange

Snowman

Hurrah, that should help to boost support for UKIP sky high. The man's in touch with the country, no doubt about it. In the immortal words of Basil Fawlty 'we should have him stuffed'.

David Parker

Jimmy Goldsmith made a similar offer to John Major, whereby the Referendum Party would not stand against the Conservatives in the '97 election, in return for the promise of a referendum. Whilst the RP did not come close to winning any seats, they took over 800,000 votes, most of them probably from the Conservatives. Major would have lost that election in any event, but there is a lesson for Cameron to learn here.

I don't know the exact wording of the offer made by Lord Pearson, but it would probably have been sufficient for Cameron to have agreed to hold such a referendum before the end of his first term of office, which would have given him four years in which to demonstrate the success or failure of his own EU policies.

By accepting Pearson's offer Cameron could have been almost certain of achieving the substantial working majority, which will be essential for any government to be able to tackle the crisis facing this country. Whilst polls, at this point, can be extremely misleading, there is certainly now an outside possibility of a hung parliament. One can only wonder why Cameron is prepared to take this unecessary risk.

Watt Tyler

I suppose after 50 years of being taught it, lots of Britons like Chris think that self-sacrifice for the sake of an important principle is a trait of the lunatic.

This is why we are a crappy little country, with crappy people in it.

Tendryakov

I'm afraid that image is important in this imperfect world, and though I don't mind a bloke with rather plummy RP English who looks over his specs in an old chap type of way, a large part of the potential electorate will be less inclined to vote UKIP, regardless of what they say.

JohnPage

Lord Pearson has been given an historic opportunity. He can establish UKIP as a broader party in one stroke, just by saying that global warming itself is - ahem - unproven, and AGW even more so.

Therefore government should not be lavishing taxpayers' money on it, especially when we all know state spending is going to have to be cut back.

In one swoop he could grab headlines in a way that the limited Farage never managed, and tap into the frustration of a lot of voters that their scepticism about 'global warming' has no voice in political debate.

DavidDP

Why should the Tories have responded? They can see a pointless policy when they see one, as a referendum post-ratification undoubtedly is.
More intriguing is the comment that UKIP hope to force a hung Parliament. This will ensure a coalition between Labour and the LibDems, likely the most pro-EU government in UK history. Joining the Euro could even be on the cards.

What do UKIP really want, hmm?

Holly ......

Maybe Cameron does not want to win.
What has he got to lose by losing?
Leadership of the Conservative party?
He can survive as David Cameron win or lose.
How are the Conservatives to change anyone's mind or get any positive message across with the press coverage and comments on here.
If I was Cameron I would resign....No one likes what he is offering so what is the point of him wasting his time on us?
Exactly I hear you scream!
Lets have some old hat Tory Knob in charge that will take us down the path of rightousness....yeah like there is one!
That would really scare Labour and the voter.
Where are those 'real Tories'? Oh yeah I forgot....in the Tory party.....somewhere.

But at least they are there.

Edmund Jerk

Watt, the cause may be a great one: independence from the EU, but you can't deny that they are loons.

We're a 'crappy country' because we talk ourselves into being a 'crappy country'. If it isn't the declinism of the reactionary right - it's the 'we're no longer a great power, so we should become Belgium' stance of the centre-left.

A pox on both your houses!

Ross J Warren

Whilst there are a few UKIP types that I personally like, goodness we see enough of them. They do seem to be something of a headless chicken. This new leader might well be their last. D.C. is not going to offer an In/Out referendum, but even so UKIP should disband as the only purpose they seem to serve seems to be making a nascence of themselves at legitimate conservative internet sites. No party can exist for very long with a single policy. In fact UKIP are not a party they are a pressure group, set up to pressure the Conservative party, despite the fact that Labour are the party in power and have stitched us all up as tight as possible. David has proven to be far stronger than UKIP. He did not even need a stone to bring down their last leader who has gotten it into his head to challenge the speaker, such a bad decision is par for the course with a party, which has some excellent activists but lacks any over plan other than constant whinnying.

David Lindsay

However sterling (so to speak) may be the work that Lord Pearson does on learning disabilities and as Chairman of the Deerstalking Committee of the Countryside Alliance, the fact remains that he is a close friend and ally of Margaret Thatcher, with all that that entails, although presumably they never discuss the Single European Act.

But half of the UKIP vote for Strasbourg, based on its geographical distribution, must be Old Labour or (especially in the West Country) Old Liberal rather than Old Tory. Add together the Tory and UKIP votes in Wales, London, the South West, either of the Midland regions, or any of the Northern regions, and you get an absurdly high figure for the number of natural Tories living there.

Those voters stand in the tradition of the Attlee Government, which refused to join the European Coal and Steel Community on the grounds that it was “the blueprint for a federal state” which “the Durham miners would never wear”. In that tradition, Gaitskell rejected European federalism as “the end of a thousand years of history” and liable to destroy the Commonwealth.

Most Labour MPs voted against Heath’s Treaty of Rome. The Parliamentary Labour Party voted unanimously opposed Thatcher’s Single European Act. 66 Labour MPs voted against Maastricht, including, in Bryan Gould, the only resignation from either front bench in order to do so. Every Labour MP, without exception, voted against the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies annually between 1979 and 1997.

Half of the French Socialist Party successfully opposed the EU Constitution. And the No2EU – Yes To Democracy list at the 2009 European Elections included in London Peter Shore’s erstwhile agent.

Some of us would wish to vote for such candidates. Whom we are therefore going to have to be.

Watt Tyler

“What is clear is that UKIP is not going to disband, and would not disband until our country’s independence was secured. We might have stood back in this one election to work to that end. In this way we are like the vast majority of the people of Britain. We do not trust the political class any more than they do."

Malcolm Pearson
Saturday, 28th November 2009

The way that the Conservative support on this blog try to smear UKIP or misdirect their potential supporters is reminisent of the tactics of NuLabor. It reminds me that voting Conservative is to vote for more of the same

Watt Tyler

Edmund

Sorry matey, I don't know why UKIP are loons. All I know is that their leadership has demonstrated that they posses values which are good an' true. Meanwhile both Brown and Cameron try to stage photo-ops at memorial events. I have come to the conclusion that Cameron just offers more of the same in terms of style and no substance that Blair conned us with. I am distressed at the Lisbon fudge, news that this RedTory tool will be advising policy smacks of ejecting principle in the same way Blair did, and the final nail in the coffin of supposi-toryism is the refusal to address Climategate (in the same way that the home-grown jihad is not being acknowledged).

Bob Dixon

Then I am left with the BNP.

David Lindsay

With absolutely no understanding even of his own base, no more than half of which is so much as ancestrally Tory, Lord Pearson sounds the death knell for UKIP.

Just as Plaid Cymru has only ever been a pressure group for lavish central government spending on, and other privileges for, the Welsh language; just as the SNP is now only a pressure group for ever-higher central government spending in Scotland; and just as even Sinn Fein is now nothing more than a pressure group for the maintenance of a highly localised theme park of Gaelic-Irish Republicanism at the British taxpayer’s expense; so UKIP has become nothing more than a pressure group for the party of the Treaty of Rome, the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, and 18 continuous years of three line whips in favour of the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, to renounce the whole of its own history on the Eurofederalist issue, including the Prime Minister to whose historically baseless cult the remnant activist body and core vote are utterly devoted.

Those of us who stand in the tradition of most of those MPs who voted against the Treaty of Rome, the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, and the annual renewals of the CAP and CFP (whatever happened to those yearly votes?), are now going to have to make our own arrangements. We include half of those who have hitherto voted for UKIP at European Elections, the Elections at which UKIP has hitherto done best.

Snowman

Richard Manns @ 12.06 sums it up delightfully. Would the ranks and file of the UKIP outfit accept senile stupidity as the reason?

Andy Leeds

Lord Pearson should decide what his ultimate goal is. If it is to rebalance our relationship with the EU then he should not stand in the way of the election of a Conservative Government, because such a government will have a profoundly Eurosceptic parliamentary party. If, on the other hand, he merely wants to be a big man then he should do what he is now doing: helping the discredited and dishonourable Labour Party who now love the EU with a passion. UKIP should not stand in any seat where the prospective Tory candidate is a Eurosceptic and in such seats it should tell its members to work like blazes for that Tory. It should make it its goal to destroy the Labour Party and wound the LibDems.

Watt Tyler

Vote Conservative, get sneaky EU integration, get climate-conned, get government from Brussels - still

Vote UKIP, get out of the EUSSR

In any case, the hand-picked comments that appear on this page do not represent wide-ranging opinion. Go and see the blue blog to see conservative support haemorrhaging

David Lindsay

a Conservative Government, because such a government will have a profoundly Eurosceptic parliamentary party

Rubbish. Cameron has guaranteed that his parliamentary party will be full of people who only joined Labour because of Tony Blair (and I'm not convinced have ever formally left it), people who tried to make it Lib Dem policy to abolish the monarchy, and so on, and on, and on.

Ex-Tory voter

Bob Dixon has nailed it; if UKIP disappears, the only party left to tackle the EU is the BNP. What a choice!

Anne Wotana Kaye

Lord Pearson cannot be worse than what we already have shouldering each other aside for our votes. There is Brown, just a blob of displaced bogie on the landscape, who is no more a socialist than Hitler was. Then there are Clegg and Cameron, two manky mannequins who neither know what they really stand for or for whom, and each trying to be more 'caring' and 'of the people' than the other. Perhaps the most pathetic is Richard Barnbrook of the BNP. Here too, we have the caring, and identification with the people, of Clegg and Cameron, plus the multiculturalism of Brown. Now, even if you have a natural sun tan and are forbidden to eat pork, you can join this rag bag group. Barnbrook continually dresses in a light tan suit, looking as if he just stepped off a banana boat. All he needs is a wide hat, and he can say he came over on the Windrush! With such wretched candidates, Lord Pearson appears sane and what one expects of a politician. Of course he is opportunistic, hypocritical, probably open for the best offer, but aren't all politicians? I say what can we lose by giving him a chance? I don't think he would do worse than any of those I've just mentioned.

Wilhelm

David Linsday

What exactly is your point ?

Are you for the EU or against the EU ?

Which is it , son ?

John Malcolmson

"No party can exist for very long with a single policy."

Ross - I suggest you check out UKIP's manifesto on their website.

TrevorsDen

A referendum now without any point to it and called ostensibly to placate UKIP would have been utterly disastrous.

As it is any referendum could easily have been ignored, boycotted by Labour/ LibDems since it would achieve nothing - thus leaving the conservatives looking stupid.

When will the crazy loonies see sense? Brown Labour and the LibDems renaged in their promises. Cameron and Tories voted against, thats AGAINST or for the terminally thick thats --- A G A I N S T, the treaty. But everyone else all over europe did not.

Geddit Dummos? How unutterably tw@tbrained do you have to be not to get the faintest glimmer of reality over this??

In2minds

Rather like people will vote, at the general election, for David Cameron because he's not Gordon Brown I imagine people will vote for Lord Pearson because he's not Nigel Farage.

Although I see the main problem with UKIP, Farage, slips into the end of the article above. Until Pearson runs his own press office but gets the party to pay for it, like Farage, the new leader walks in a shadow.

George Curtis

The constitution of England, devised in 1688 and still in existence together with its supporting legal system works so well that it is the only one to have endured, for 320 years, without a revolution. It is arguably the greatest practical and intellectual achievement of men in the history of mankind, being the only one to deliver equality in liberty. Even today it is shared only by the English speaking world.

On December 1st 2009 both are placed on Death Row with the consent, and indeed connivance, of the Conservative Party.

I somehow doubt that those who comment here have bothered to buy, still less to read the relevant Treaties and the failed Constitution, let alone endeavour to relate them to the stinking midden that is the Lisbon Treaty.

If you have not made a concerted effort to read and understand what they say, and mean, you are not qualified to make any comment on them at all. If you did, and stand possessed of the brains to understand what you have read, and have some grasp of governance, you wouldn't vote LibLabCon.

Verity

George Curtis - The American Declaration of Independence is right up with our Constitution as one of the greatest documents ever written.

Linda Smith

Posters here seem to have overlooked the point that it was Lord Pearson who was instrumental in getting Geert Wilders invited to speak at the House of Lords:

"Lord Pearson, one of two Ukip peers, has protested that the "political class" is complacent about Islamism and claimed that some of "our people" were "strangers in our own land". The 67-year-old former insurance broker invited the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders in February to screen a controversial film about radical Islam. He has called for a zero net increase in immigration, arguing that the issue was the main concern for many voters.

....In his acceptance speech, Lord Pearson said his ambition was for the party to do well enough to force a hung parliament. He said: "Of course, we will be majoring on leaving the European Union. We can't control our borders without that, we can't control immigration and we will save billions."

Couple the above extracts from the linked article on Lord Pearson in the Independent with the one on today's Telegraph front page "Al-Qaeda terrorists are exploiting loose visa and immigration rules to enter Britain, the security forces fear.." and
I reckon there's a lot of people who will not only agree with Pearson but be more comfortable with UKIP than with the BNP.

denis cooper

Of course a retrospective referendum on the Lisbon Treaty would be totally pointless.

How do we know that? Because Cameron said so, and all the loyal Tory sheep started bleating "Pointless! Pointless! Pointless!".

The Lisbon Treaty doesn't even exist any more!

How do we know that? Because Cameron said so, and all the loyal Tory sheep ... well, you get the message.

Funny that I can still see it and read on the EU's own website, along with all the previous treaties which by rights should have ceased to exist once they had come into force and been "incorporated into the law of the European Union".

Funny that the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008 explicitly refers to that treaty which will no longer exist after midnight on November 30th, and orders that it shall be added at the end of "the list of treaties in section 1(2) of the European Communities Act 1972", joining the other presumably now non-existent treaties on that list.

The man's either an ignoramus or a liar, and I don't think he's an ignoramus.

And today we have Mark Francois lowering himself with this:

"As we have said, a made-up referendum after ratification would be pointless."

It's all bloody well "made-up"; the Treaty of Lisbon was and is "made-up"; the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008 to approve it was and is "made-up"; and if Cameron wanted the parliamentary draftsmen could easily make up a Lisbon Treaty (Disapplication) Bill which could be put through Parliament, and which could come into force once the British people had said that's what they wanted, through a "made-up" referendum.

But he doesn't want to do that; he just wants to "let matters rest there".

Jez

They urgently need to get someone to revamp that logo, web-site, and colour scheme.

I expect they'll have an avalanche of younger, intelligent, talented types now wanting 'in', so it probably won't be that long before this happens.

A shame the LibLabCon ended up multi-national corporation representatives, sponsored to hoodwink us all into being replaced with new / exciting third world cultures / religions and for the UK to be swallowed up into an EU superstate.

Brown, Cameron and Clegg deserve even more than their going to get.

In2minds

Jez @ 8.43pm - “They (I assume you mean UKIP?) urgently need to get someone to revamp that logo, web-site, and colour scheme. I expect they'll have an avalanche of younger, intelligent, talented types now wanting 'in', so it probably won't be that long before this happens”.

In the past the 'old guard' drove this type of member out UKIP has a new leader that's all, not a new mindset.

Jez

Linda Smith,

I hadn't forgotten that.

I was even listening to 909fm at 3pm Friday.

I'd have peeped my horn in celebration if it weren't a violation of the highway code.

daniel maris

Lord Pearson can't be all bad. He did invite a democratic politician under threat of death from totalitarians to speak at the House of Lords, despite the potential threat to himself. In other he stood up clearly for free speech. Not something Brown or Cameron have ever done.

But Tendryakov's point is well made. The old fashioned BUPA doctor persona won't win them any votes. Farage, though very ugly, was probably more saleable on the political market.

That said, I shall probably vote for them as a protest against the essential similitude of the two main parties - both committed to the undemocratic EU, welfare dependency, political correctness, and rampant materialism.

peter S

The moment Cameron announced the Tories were staying wedded to Europe to "fight climate change" was the moment the party lost my vote (and my respect). UKIP appear to be making all the right noises about the global warming scam. Regardless of whatever my vote's value turns out to be, I will cast it from conscience and NOT tactics. Now imagine if everyone else did the same.

TomTom

The constitution of England, devised in 1688 and still in existence together with its supporting legal system works so well that it is the only one to have endured, for 320 years, without a revolution.

Rubbish. There was NO constitution in 1688 simply a coup d'etat when John Churchill surrendered the Army to an invading Stadtholder from Holland whose own state had rejected Union with England when proposed by Oliver Cromwell.

The 1689 Settlement gave us 3-Year Parliaments and in 1911 they became 5-Year; we had the right to bear arms as Protestants rescinded by 1920.

The Bill of Rights and Magna Carta are regularly amended by Statute under the 'implied repeal' practices of the Westminster Parliament. You cannot have a Constitution if any subsequent Statute takes precedence over it.

The outbreak of war in 1914 saved Britain from REvolution after The Curragh Mutiny and the Triple Alliance strikes....just as war was conceived in Germany as a means of letting Nationalism bury Socialism many states thought a rapidly increasing birth rate could be diverted way from social revolution.

The Settlement of 1689 empowered Parliament not the People leaving parliamentarians to modify that Settlement for their own convenience without being troubled by Citizen Rights

daniel maris

We see the benefits of people democracy in Switzerland where the people really do have a voice. They are currently using that voice to say whether they want to see minarets, symbols of an aggressive totalitarian ideology ("minarets are our bayonets" according to the Turkish PM). Such a choice would be unthinkable in the UK.

And yes, now is the time to vote from principle. Ideally the Tory party needs to be broken in two so that the Arabist, Eurofanatic, capitalist wing can go its own way and a genuinely populist movement can hook up with UKIP. Put say 25% of Tory populists with the 5% of UKIP and another 10% garnered from other parties and current non-voters and you have a potential government which can then make a decisive break with the past and create a referendum section to the constitution.

An unexpected defeat in the General Election might be the impetus to a break up.

egh

Well said, Daniel Maris. Good sense, at last. Why anyone would vote for any of the 'magicians' and 'circus clowns' in the Augean Stable is beyond me. Their red-herring deodorant sprays are just another mask for their their filth. They deserve banishment, at best.

As the comments here indicate, some people think in 'tactics' and others in terms of principle. We are not playing a game, though, and to do so plays into the hands of those who invented the game: the-marxist euSSR-lovers. If the so-called 'elite' ~ powers and dominions ~ think the life and death of others is a game, then all the more reason for the rest of us to get out there and oppose them. We need to show that the end (power and money) does not justify their vicious means of destroying us.

May the Lord help Lord Pearson to become a leader who removes the scales from the eyes of the electorate. Or - may He send us a leader who can.

John Richardson

Re - "UKIP are loons...and you canot deny it!"
Con...Harvey Proctor. Lab... Bernie Grant
-------------------------------------------

Seriously though,

I think there are good reasons for cautious optimism if you are a Christion patriot.
The human material that comprises the betrayal of our Country to the NWO is so inadequate (Brown) and so unpleasant (Cameron) that despite themselves; people cannot help but notice.

Mr Maris might be correct about the Con.s not winning. Though incorrect about it being a surprise.
A hung Parliament might break the spell that means either Con/Lab are expected to rule.
Leaving the 'Party Political' fossils twisting in the wind.
Rather like those Cons who attack UKIP on this blog.
Out of fashion and out of time.

Jez

The Fightback is here!

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lFs9MHVBbno/Ss8zShn6snI/AAAAAAAAB64/FDp2JeEIsLo/s400/photo_1254925717595-1-0.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8385069.stm

John White

A trick was missed here. If UKIP had offered to step down from the General Election if the Conservatives promised a referendum on the UK's future relationship with the EU rather than the Lisbon Treaty which was always likely to be ratified and in force by that time, then the Conservatives would have had a decision to make on a referendum such as:

1 Full participation "at the centre of Europe".

2 The Conservative policy of continued membership while attempting to get back some sovereignty from the EU.

3 A similar relationship with the EU as that enjoyed by Switzerland and Norway, essentially trading but with membership of some supranational bodies as would meet the UK's national needs.

Had this been put forward so that a referendum would be held within two years say, of the Conservatives coming to office, I'd suggest they'd find it more difficult to reject out of hand, given the large number of Eurosceptic Conservatives both in parliament and the grassroots.

Jez

The Times tonight spends approximately 2000 words concentrating why a fundamentalist Islamic country (Iran) should not have a Nuclear bomb.

I agree.

But then, in the good old gut-wrenching 'do as i say, not as i do', comes from many of their writers (that you can expect to live in very pretty places, sending their offspring to the finest educational centres of learning, that money can buy) in regard to a media driven collective 'outrage' that Switzerland has taken steps to curb Islamication of- er, Switzerland.

You see, (reading their views on this)- it's all in everyones imagination this Islamification. Bradford?- Doesn't exist. Londistan?- Are you a *racist* or something? Denmark, Holland, France and Germany- there's no issues anywhere, it's all knee jerk prejudice from sh*tty little xenophobic whitey's.

You could not make this up!

Outrageous behaviour *still* from our liberal elite- that we've all (somehow) been terminally lumbered with.

Amadeus Plonquer

Dear Conservative voters,

You kip if you want to.

I'm voting UKIP.

Plonquer (Major)