Toby Young Toby Young

Unite the right! Email Toby Young at conukip@gmail.com

Whatever the leaders think, we can create a Tory-Ukip pact from the bottom up

Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

The most common objection to a Tory-Ukip pact is that neither David Cameron nor Nigel Farage will touch it. So why waste time discussing it?

But a pact doesn’t need to be endorsed by the leaders of either party to work. What I have in mind is something bottom-up rather than top-down. A unite-the-right website set up by members of both parties that tells people who they should vote for in their constituency to keep out Labour and the Lib Dems.

Take Eastleigh, for instance, a seat currently held by the Lib Dems. Ukip came second at the by-election last year, so the advice would be to vote for Diane James in Eastleigh because she’s the candidate best placed to defeat the incumbent.

Sceptics will say this example is misleading. In the majority of constituencies, the advice will be to vote Conservative, either because there’s a sitting Tory MP or because the Conservatives came second in that seat in 2010. Why should Ukip supporters enter into any sort of tactical voting alliance with Conservatives when the impact will be so one-sided?

The first thing to say is that the arrangement won’t be as asymmetrical as some Ukip voters think. The website won’t just base its recommendations of who to vote for in 2015 on the 2010 election result. It will take a number of other factors into account, such as the most recent local elections, the European election in 2014 and the latest opinion poll data.

Who will decide which candidate the website endorses? A committee made up of equal numbers from each party. Yes, there will be arguments, but in most cases it will be pretty clear which candidate is best placed to win the seat. Where the committee can’t agree, the seat will just be declared ‘too close to call’.

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