Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan has sounded the bugle for UKIP to withdraw their candidate in Eastleigh. He wants them to, surprise, surprise, encourage their supporters instead to vote for Conservative candidate Maria Hutchings.
In fact, Hannan has no fewer than seven reasons why the UKIP faithful should be forced to abandon their right to vote for who they actually want to vote for and instead vote for who Daniel Hannan wants them to vote for. Among them are how “impressed” voters would be with how UKIP were putting “country before party” and how voting Tory would give poor UKIP supporters a home when the EU referendum is won and their party becomes “redundant”.
I disagree with Hannan. I don’t have seven or even several reasons why UKIP should not withdraw their candidate. Just one. It’s perhaps an old fashioned idea: people should be able to vote for who they want to vote for.
UKIP is not a carbon copy of the Conservative Party. It is a distinct movement with a number of policies very different from the Tories’. Voters should be given the option of backing different flavours of right-wing policies not forced to choose one-size-fits-all.
Of course, Hannan does have a point, which naturally goes unacknowledged in his piece. The unspoken reason why he is even flying a kite for this anti-democratic nonsense is because under first-past-the-post there is a risk that the right-wing vote will be split. If current polls are to be believed, the UKIP vote could make the difference between Hutchings winning and losing.
Here is where Hannan needs to examine the attitude of his own party to democracy. Just under two years ago, there was a campaign and a referendum on the adoption of the Alternative Vote electoral system. This would have completely obviated the problem causing such a headache for the Tories in Eastleigh. It would have allowed UKIP supporters to vote for UKIP first and the Tories second, safe in the knowledge that their vote would not be wasted. They would still have been able to express their first preference for UKIP, whilst ensuring that if their candidate did not end up in the top two their vote would be transferred to Hutchings.
Instead of recognising the democratic legitimacy of this approach, however, Hannan’s colleagues pulled out all of the stops to trash it. The bogeyman of “the BNP” was raised (even though the party did not back AV), we were told it would cost £250m (it wouldn’t have) and that soldiers would go without bullet proof vests and sick babies would not get the equipment they needed. None of these things were true.
What is true, however, is that in the absence of AV our democracy is damaged when politicians call for parties to withdraw in their favour or that voters should vote “tactically”. UKIP should not heed Hannan’s call and the voters of Eastleigh should vote however they like. The Tories have made their bed. They now need to lie in it.
Mark Thompson is a political blogger and commentator who edits the award-winning Mark Thompson’s Blog and is on Twitter @MarkReckons.
Content from our partners
Related
