Cameron, ‘two-for’ deals, Ukip – and the post
The prime minister on the Today programme this morning was very keen to underline that Alex Salmond cannot offer voters in the Scottish referendum a “two-for” deal: vote yes for independence and topple a Tory PM at the same time.
Mr Cameron is acutely aware of the toxicity of the Tory brand in Scotland. Guaranteeing his own downfall as a consequence of a yes vote in September would be a gift to the yes camp and one he doesn’t want to give. Nonetheless, there are moments in life when even a PM is not in command of his destiny. There’s still a pretty good chance Mr Cameron would have to go in the wake of a yes vote. What he tried to kill off this morning was any automaticity to the link.
Farage tanned and tired
I didn’t manage to blog yesterday after my brief trip to Manston in Kent to catch up with Nigel Farage on the campaign trail. It’s in a seat, South Thanet, he may yet contest in the general election. He’s looking tanned though I detected a bit of tiredness – maybe it was the heat.
He blamed his LBC remarks last week about people who understandably don’t want Romanians next door on tiredness. The FT reported earlier in the month that he worries he’ll have a heart attack soon. For now, he’s still giving a heart attack to the British political system.
The Ukip leader thinks talking about Romanians is not doing him any harm with his voter base. This story wasn’t in the Ukip grid for this campaign – yes, they have one, a big advance for them on previous elections. It’s a grid that so far has seen a much slicker Ukip operation that’s brought in more postal votes than ever before, banked soon after the initial lavish poster campaign.
Even if the turning on Ukip you have seen in elements of the press – most notably the Sun – has had an impact over time, it could well be too late to impact majorly on these elections when more and more voters choose to vote by post and therefore earlier in the campaign. This has enormous implications for the general election campaign which the parties are processing, and means – sorry – you’ll get even more campaigning even earlier in the cycle!
I put it to Nigel Farage that other political leaders don’t have to go around explaining with full page ads in the Daily Telegraph that they’re not racist. Doesn’t it tell us something about his politics that he does?
Certainly not, says Nigel Farage. He’s simply talking about the taboo subjects other political leaders don’t want to touch.
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