Is it springtime for Ukip and Margate?
Springtime for Hitler isn’t what any political party wants to hear as they’re open their spring conference. But the song greeted Ukip members early this morning as they arrived for their gathering in Margate.
There was a tank outside the Winter Gardens, too, and a team of scantily-clad actresses dancing away with swastika armbands.
It was all a stunt for a revival production of the Mel Brooks musical The Producers.
And the UK Independence Party needs a bit of a revival itself, though perhaps not of the kind we witnessed outside the Winter Gardens today. Since the excitement of last autumn, when Ukip got its first two MPs elected in by-elections, the party lost a bit of momentum. Since Christmas Ukip has dropped by an average of about 2 per cent in the polls, and Nigel Farage’s own rating has slumped even more, as the Greens and the SNP seems to have caught the media eye as the exciting new insurgents of British politics.
Nigel Farage has been astonishingly absent from the stage these past few weeks. In part this has been a deliberate strategy by Ukip’s new communications director, Paul Lambert (better known as “Gobby”, the former BBC producer who shouted cheeky questions in Downing Street). The idea was to give Farage a bit of a rest, to let him concentrate on internal policy decisions and to promote other Ukip figures instead.
Strange decision
But it was a strange decision to have Nigel Farage visiting Washington yesterday, on the day the government published figures showing net immigration last year was 298,000, three times David Cameron’s promised pledge to get migration down to tens of thousands by the election.
Worse still, at the gathering of American conservatives near Washington, Farage was filmed addressing what seemed to be a very small audience in a huge hall.
And Farage won’t get back to his own conference here in Margate until mid-afternoon today, when he will almost immediately deliver his leader’s speech.
It seems strange when Ukip organisers admit the real purpose of this event is to act as a pre-election rally, not as the platform for big new policy announcements or decisions. Margate was deliberately chosen because east Kent is strong Ukip territory, and Farage himself is standing in the seat next door, Thanet South.
He’ll be buoyed by a poll from Survation (commissioned by Ukip donor Alan Bown), suggesting that Farage has an 11 per cent lead over Labour in the constituency, and is 12 per cent ahead of the incumbent party, the Conservatives.
Political history
The Margate Winter Gardens have a strong political history. It’s a venue where the main parties, Conservative and Labour, regularly held their annual conferences in the 1950s. (How appropriate critics will no doubt say – the 1950s are where Ukip want to take us back to.)
Indeed, it was in Margate in April 1953 that Winston Churchill rallied the Conservative conference, and showed he had recovered after suffering serious illness as prime minister (it later emerged it was a stroke).
Ukip will not be pleased to hear, though, that Churchill urged support for a European army which would include West Germany.
Nigel Farage would be amused to learn, however, that Churchill took a drink at a point during his Margate speech, and told his audience: “I don’t often do that.” People laughed, before the PM added: “I mean, when making a speech.”
This afternoon Nigel Farage, with the help of drink or not, has to rouse his forces like Churchill, and show the country that he, too, is back in business.
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