UKIP Grows at Conservative Party Expense in UK

[JimBowie1958]

Local elections: Ukip and Respect gain ground - Telegraph

The Eurosceptic party averaged about 14 per cent of the vote where its candidates were standing, mainly at the expense of the Conservatives.


The result is likely to be seen as an ultimatum to the Prime Minister that his party is alienating right wing voters and will increase calls for the Coalition to hold an EU referendum.


George Galloway's Respect Party also delivered an upset by following up its shock by-election victory and winning five seats on Bradford Council, including that of the Labour leader.


UKIP’s result is five points higher than a year ago although it has yet to translate it increased share of the votes into significantly more council seats.

Ukip, which wants the UK to leave the European Union, has traditionally performed poorly at local polls and their leader Nigel Farage has made it an objective to boost representation in local government.

Ukip, which fielded a record 700 local election candidates, is attempting to broaden its message beyond its traditional anti-EU platform. It has pledged to cut council tax and build more grammar schools.

I've read that UKIP has been poling around 10% and is rivaling the Liberal Dems for third place.

Part of that Conservative defection to UKIP is Camerons lunacy insisting on gay marriage, something that even the Labor PArty says is unneeded.

LifeSiteNews Mobile | Cameron renews ‘gay marriage’ pledge as party spirals down the drain

LONDON, July 26, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The UK’s Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister is “killing” his own party, and therefore the coalition government, through his “obsession” with gay “marriage” according to political columnist Andrew Pierce of the Daily Mail. Despite the plummeting fortunes of the Conservative Party, and the increasing disaffection of its base, David Cameron announced at a Downing Street reception for homosexualist lobbyists on Tuesday that he remains “absolutely determined” to see the country’s definition of marriage abolished by 2015.

“The promise I can make you is that this coalition government is committed to both changing the law and also working to help change the culture and the Conservative party absolutely backs that. This is something ... I personally feel very passionately about,” Cameron said.

The comments came in spite of recent assurances to MPs and Cabinet members that Conservative MPs would be allowed a free vote in Parliament should legislation make it that far. Cameron is also reported to have told his party that he would not attempt to force the shaky coalition government to go along, and would be campaigning only privately.

The Prime Minister’s plan to force the re-definition of marriage “at any cost” is costing the party plenty according to Pierce. Huge numbers of voters and even senior MPs are abandoning the party as Cameron continues his “updating” project.

Pierce wrote that the numbers do not lie, and Cameron’s whole campaign to “modernise” the party has led it to the brink of political extinction. He quotes figures released by the party showing the number of Conservative members “has fallen below 130,000, a drop of around 60 per cent since he took over in 2005.”

“The bitter and ineluctable truth is that, far from increasing numbers, Mr. Cameron has presided over the sharpest decline in membership in the Conservative party’s history,” writes Pierce.

The “gay marriage” push, he said, has been “the single biggest factor” in the party’s decline, but it has also only been the last straw for angry party supporters. “U-turns over a referendum on Europe, its failure to reform the loathed Human Rights Act and the Tories’ infuriating tendency to give ever more ground to [far-left coalition partners] the wretched Lib Dems have contributed to the decline.”

And there can be no doubt that it is specifically “gay marriage” that is killing the party’s chances with voters. Pierce quotes ComRes polls showing that the issue could cost the party as many as 1.1 million votes and 30 parliamentary seats, with many long-time Tory supporters saying they would either switch to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) or not vote at all. Fifty-six per cent said that it is the plan to re-define marriage that has driven them away from the party.

Party members who through the Blair years watched in horror the near annihilation of the traditional family in Britain are also “enraged” that the Prime Minister has, in another “sop to the Lib Dems,” reneged on campaign promises to increase tax breaks for married couples.

At a “tense” meeting last month Cameron was warned by 20 of the party’s most senior members that the party’s “membership will plunge below the psychologically crucial 100,000 mark if there were no change of heart on same-sex marriage,” Pierce wrote.

Is Cameron the image of Romney if he gets elected then safe in office after re-election?