Dog Whistle Politics
Dan Hodges names Chukka Umana as one of the few Labour politicians to stand up to UKIP, but this ignores Tony Blair's intervention back in May 2014 when he urged Labour to go on the offensive against Nigel Farage &Co.
Yet the opposite seems to be happening if the Rochester and Strood by-election is anything to go by, where, according to Hodges, Labour is sending a none too subtle 'dog whistle' message to its supporters to back UKIP on the basis of that old political adage that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'.
Ed Miliband is trying to hitch a ride to Downing Street – from Nigel Farage
Labour is now praying that Ukip will save its political skin
"Well as you were going there, Nigel"
By Dan Hodges - The Telegraph
In February 1974, Enoch Powell won the general election – for the Labour Party.
Outraged at Edward Heath’s stance on Europe, and his precipitous demand to the British people to choose “Who governs Britain”, Powell resigned his seat, delivered two passionate speeches attacking his former party, and backed Labour. At the time Powell was close to the height of his national popularity, and his intervention was explosive and decisive. It was later estimated he single-handedly swung 2 million votes to Labour. Harold Wilson became prime minister of a minority government, and went on to win the subsequent election in October with a majority of three.
Who governed Britain? Back then, Enoch Powell did.
The reason I recite this brief history lesson is because this morning, the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire has written a piece revealing that Ed Miliband is about to ditch his catastrophic “35 per cent strategy” and replace it with a new masterplan: The Powell Strategy.
According to Maguire, Miliband and his aides are now praying that Ukip win the Rochester and Stroud by-election. In public, Labour "maintains the fiction that it’s going all-out to win in Kent when risibly the towel was thrown in before the campaign started", he writes. “Talking in private to Miliband’s inner circle and key shadow cabinet members I learned a leader braced for defeat calculates a Ukip triumph would be best for Labour.”
The rationale is simple. According to one of Miliband’s senior advisers: “We detest both Cameron and Farage but it is Cameron we want out of Downing Street. The Conservative Party will go into total meltdown if Cameron loses again. We recognise the long-term threat of inflating Farage, of course we do. But if you ask me what result helps Labour in May it is, undoubtedly, a UKIP win.”
And on the surface, who can fault the logic? A win for latest Tory turncoat Mark Reckless would be terrible for Cameron. It would probably precipitate further defections. Maybe even a leadership challenge.
It would also give another hefty shove to the Ukip bandwagon, and Miliband is calculating that whatever’s good for Nigel Farage is bad for the Tories. He’s been bolstered in that view by his polling adviser Greg Beales, who has told him that Ukip take votes from the Conservatives by a 2:1 to ratio in Labour’s favour.
So yes, on the surface, talking up Ukip is the smart way for Labour to go in the build up to a by-election they can’t otherwise win. But let me dip below the surface a little, and explain why Miliband’s attempt to smuggle himself up Downing Street in the back of Nigel Farage’s bin lorry is, in reality, boneheaded, desperate, cowardly and shameful.
The reason why the story has appeared is that Labour doesn’t want a repeat of Newark. That by-election, you’ll recall, came straight after the European elections, a campaign where Ukip’s overt racism disgusted a lot of voters, especially Labour and Lib Dem voters. It was in Newark we saw the first evidence of a proactive “stop-Ukip vote”, with a number of Labour and Lib Dem supporters switching to the Tories to keep Ukip out.
Hence the briefing to the Daily Mirror. Labour is trying to send the signal to Labour supporters: “We’d rather you voted Ukip than Tory. It’ better for you, in the long run.”
Unfortunately, Ed Miliband’s aides have made the same mistake they always make when they start briefing people like this. They forget those briefings haven’t been delivered in some special invisible ink.
We can all read them. And at Tory HQ they’re reading this one with delight. What is Cameron’s key message for dealing with Ukip? “Vote Farage, get Miliband.” What are Ed Miliband’s office now briefing? “Vote Farage, get Miliband.”
The Powell Strategy speaks volumes about how Labour’s own leadership team now views the political landscape. They know that without Nigel Farage they haven’t got a prayer. And fair play to them. At least they’re finally acknowledging how bankrupt their grand One Nation political vision has become. But I wouldn’t necessarily be telling that to the Mirror.
Think of where Ed Miliband began – with the dream of constructing a great new progressive consensus. And see where he is today. Trying to press-gang Labour voters into the service of the People’s Army.
Ed Miliband has one genuine decision to make. He can attack Ukip head on. Or he can tack right, and try and neutralise them. But this is Ed Miliband we’re talking about. So as ever, he’s chosen to do neither.
Trying to out-Ukip Ukip is a mug’s game – as David Cameron is finding to his cost. In reality, there’s only really one sensible option. But Miliband isn’t interested in choosing the sensible option. Or even choosing the daft option. Making decisions isn’t why Ed Miliband came into politics. Decisions mean taking responsibility. And taking responsibility certainly isn’t why Ed Miliband came into politics either.
But let’s forget all that. Let’s pretend tipping a nod and a wink to Labour supporters to be Reckless in Rochester was the smart politics. The ambitious politics. The brave politics.
It wouldn’t matter. Because you don’t play games with a party like Ukip.
Last week Miliband’s own shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna gave his view of Nigel Farage’s party. “Vile, abhorrent and un-British”, was his description.
And he’s right. This is a party that has just done a deal with a party lead by a holocaust denier for EU cash. That last week was raising funds via “the Calypso song”. Whose own leader casually claims people should be scared a Romanian might move next door. Whose party is currently using impressions of abused children as part of its campaign strategy in Rotherham. Whose senior candidates tell women they should bear some responsibility for date rape. Whose councillors think gay people cause floods.
And this is the party Ed Miliband and his aides are tipping a nod and a wink to Labour supporters to vote for in Rochester. The party Ed Miliband hopes will win.
This is how low Miliband and his team have now sunk. Scrabbling around, praying Ukip will save their own sorry political skins.
Forget the “35 per cent strategy”. Miliband’s now got his “Powell Strategy”. Tell us Ed, how much blood can you see foaming in the river Medway?
Labour and UKIP (28 May 2014)
Former Labour leader Tony Blair has stepped into the Euro elections post mortem by urging his party to 'stand firm' in the face of UKIP's runaway success in topping the poll in England and Wales.
Now I agree with much of what Tony Blair says in relation to Europe - the big issues are about peace, economic prosperity and a culture of resolving political differences without resorting to violence or going to war.
The UKIP 'solution' of throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not a serious response to the overdue demands for reforming the European Union (EU) and a rebalancing of powers between EU institutions and its member states.
But there are two issues where I think that Tony Blair's analysis falls short - the first is that for many years the political establishment has denied UK voters a say over Europe and the absence of a public plebiscite has built up huge resentment which can now only be resolved by a decisive In/Out referendum.
Secondly, there is a widespread public perception that immigration has been allowed to spiral out of control in parts of England and that there is a real integration problem in specific areas, which is the responsibility of Labour and Tory governments going all the way back to the 1970s.
So while I'm all in favour of standing up to UKIP and exposing the fact that withdrawing from Europe isn't a miracle cure to any of the country's problems, I imagine this will be a whole lot more convincing if both Labour and the Tories at least accepted that they have taken people for granted up until now.
Tony Blair urges Labour to take on Ukip over immigration and EU
Former leader says Ed Miliband will not gain anything if he tries to follow 'nasty and unpleasant' party led by Nigel Farage
By Patrick Wintour - The Guardian
Tony Blair says an anti-immigration platform would confuse Labour supporters. Photograph: Matt Rourke/Associated Press
Tony Blair has urged the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, and the rest of the mainstream political class to take on and confront Ukip, saying it would only confuse Labour's own supporters if it now ran on an anti-immigration platform.
He also urged Miliband to stay put on the issue of an in/out EU referendum, saying that yielding to the pressure of Ukip had not done the Conservative party any good to date.
Behind the Ukip facade was something pretty nasty and unpleasant, Blair told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
The former Labour leader said: "For the Labour party, if it tries to follow Ukip either on its anti-European platform or, even worse frankly, on its anti-immigrant platform, all that will happen is that it will confuse its own supporters and will not draw any greater support."
Miliband has repeatedly apologised for Labour's lenient approach to immigration in the past, saying it had not understood enough about the downsides of globalisation for working-class communities.
But Blair said: "I would very strongly support the position we took both on immigration and Europe. I fought the 2005 election on a campaign against immigration from the then Conservative leader. I have always said, of course you have got to have proper controls on immigration, you to have to deal with those parts of the immigrant community that are rejecting the idea of integrating into the mainstream, but to allow that then to trend into anti-immigrant feeling is a huge mistake for the country."
He added: "People in Ukip always say other the politicians don't get it; I do get it and I get them. You look a little bit beneath that Ukip facade and you see something, in my view, pretty nasty and unpleasant".
With some in Labour urging the party to respond to the Ukip rise with a tougher anti-immigration stance or a commitment to an in/out referendum, Blair said: "The way to deal with Ukip is to stand up to them and take them on. What they are putting before people is a set of solutions that anybody who analyses where Britain has to be in the 21st century knows their solutions are regressive, reactionary and make Britain's problems worse, not better.
"Attitudes that are closed-minded, anti-immigrant, anti-EU, stop the world I want to get off, those attitudes don't result in economic prosperity or power and influence in the world."
He said London was a great capital city precisely because it had a mix of different people and had gained from the energy and ingenuity of immigrants. "By all means have rules and controls, but the idea that the problems of Britain are due to immigration is a backward and regressive step, and we should contend every inch of that argument."
Blair praised the way in which Nick Clegg had shown leadership in confronting the anti-EU mood in the country.
"To be fair to Nick Clegg – I don't want to damage him by saying this – over the past few years he has shown a quite a lot of leadership and courage as a leader.
"The problem for the Lib Dems is nothing to do with Europe. The problem they have is very simple: they fought the 2010 election on a platform quite significantly to the left of the Labour party and ended up in a Conservative government with a platform that is significantly to the right of Labour.
"If you voted for the Lib Dems in 2010 because you liked their total opposition to tuition fees you are going to be somewhat disappointed when you vote for a government that ends up tripling them. That is the problem the Lib Dems have and there is not really a cure for that."
In response to suggestions that support for mainstream parties was eroding, Blair said: "I still think there is a progressive majority in the country. It is up to us whether we put it forward.
He said the rationale for Europe was stronger than it had ever been. While the rationale for his father's generation had been about peace after decades of war, for today's generation it was about sharing power collectively.
Once seen as a candidate for the European Council presidency, Blair said: "Europe has got to get away from this notion that the whole purpose of Europe is to diminish the nation state, and recognise that Europe works best when nation states come together to cooperate when they need the collective weight of Europe to prevail."
He added: "For a country like Britain, if you want to exercise weight, influence and power in the world you have got to do it through alliances, and the obvious alliance for us is the one on the doorstep, the biggest political union and commercial market in the world, and that is the European Union."
But he said he recognised the desire for EU reform. "Europe should get out of doing some of the things it does not need to do. That is where the principle of subsidiarity is so important. Some of the rules and regulations coming out of Brussels could be handled at national level."
He said EU leaders would regain support if they showed they were "gripping the big issues and getting out of the things that irritate people".
