Nigel Farage says his party is in talks with a number of Conservative associations about a joint endorsement with UKIP. He told the Daily Politics today that ‘there is no doubt that there are Tory associations, and one Labour that I know of, who are saying “look, the law was changed two years ago, there is a provision now, that one candidate can have the endorsement of two political parties, i.e. two logos on the ballot paper”‘. Farage added that ‘there are associations out there that I believe want this’.
Freshly returned to the Tory benches, Nadine Dorries made the case for this in yesterday’s Sun on Sunday. She wrote:
‘In fact, smart Conservative MPs should begin to sound out their local association and begin to have the conversation “there may need to be three of us in this marriage” and moot the possibility of Conservative MPs being elected with a double endorsement, Conservative and UKIP.
‘For existing MPs, this would mean being readopted by their association as a Conservative MP then securing an endorsement from UKIP with the association’s blessing. They could then go into the General Election as a Conservative-UKIP MP. A bit like the Labour Co-operative arrangement.’
She isn’t the only one who thinks that this is a good arrangement. Other Tory MPs on the right of the party are anxious that the leadership doesn’t wait for backbenchers to enter into talks unilaterally with their association about a pact. One I spoke to this morning said:
‘This has got to happen before June 2014, otherwise things will look panicked. The party should wait a few months until all the panic post-local elections has calmed down and then have talks with UKIP.’
Another Tory MP says that while their association is not having formal talks with UKIP, they and their chairman agree with Dorries’ argument.
With interest building on the Tory benches about an endorsement arrangement, you might think the original advocate of a pact would be overjoyed. But Michael Fabricant, who suggested an agreement between the two parties where UKIP wouldn’t fight Conservative candidates in exchange for a promised In/Out referendum, doesn’t think the joint endorsement would work on the ground. He tells Coffee House:
‘I can’t imagine that even if an endorsement would be desirable, and I do not think it is, that UKIP are in any kind of position to offer deals of this kind: their organisation is so decentralised that any deals made by HQ might also be broken at a local level.
‘As for mindless speculation about Conservative/UKIP coalitions after the next general election, that’s predicated A) on the Conservatives not having an overall majority which might not happen and B) UKIP winning a single parliamentary seat which they probably will not do.’
The current position at the top is that there will be no pact with UKIP. But a reluctance to engage with the idea will mean that worried Tory MPs start to consider talks without the blessing of the party leadership. When that starts to happen, it will be another example of the party running ahead of those at the top. And it will also be a huge dilemma: will this lead to the MP in question being disciplined? If it doesn’t, it will mean that yet again Tory backbenchers have forged their party’s policy simply by virtue of thinking further ahead than the leadership.
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