Christmas – a Christian celebration cemented into our culture for some 2,000 years – is not a time for politics but I see the Conservatives have already started campaigning.
So before the festivities start, it seems appropriate to encourage all those who voted for my party at the last elections and to again thank South Holland for returning the second highest Leave vote in the country.
The best year for UKIP so far comes to an end, after all we finally forced the referendum and won it, despite most Spalding-based Tories hiding under a bush and taking little or no part in the campaign in case it cost them any votes. How did that work out, chaps?
The election of Paul Nuttall brings to an end the relatively minor differences within our party, which were anyway restricted to a few senior individuals and not a patch on the internal disagreements within the Tories (did anyone see that shouting match on BBC Look North between the Tory leader of our county council and the minister responsible for so-called devolution?) or the vast chasm in Labour ranks, so carefully ignored in recent months by the national media.
Nigel was great but he’s gone and we needed to make changes anyway. At last the party now have the new leader most of us wanted in the first place.
As for that “CV”, I’ve heard him speak many times and he was always completely honest about wanting to finish his PhD after achieving his Masters and to playing football for the youth team. This is just the usual attempt to smear someone who frightens the establishments, left and right. They would have preferred a weaker leader.
Nationally, we will be concentrating on Labour seats from now on, they are now interested only in outdated and dangerous dogma freshly re-fermented in fashionable London suburbs. People don’t concern them.
Here, and in other places where UKIP came a respectable second in the general election, we intend to increase pressure on all sitting representatives. Democracy only works properly where there is a strong opposition, without it there is little incentive to change for the better.
Locally, we have fresh Lincolnshire county elections in May and whilst without a landslide I don’t quite see us running Lincolnshire, the best possible way to ensure an improvement in that area of government, ginger up the complacent local Tories, shock the failed Labour party back into the real world and make sure we avoid the Brexit super-lite the establishment is desperate to impose on us, is to vote UKIP.
Coun Paul Foyster
Chairman, UKIP South Holland and The Deepings
