Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
For a UKIP/Tory coalition to be viable, UKIP has to actually win seats. The chances are that it will do well enough to steal votes in most constituencies but not well enough to win more than a handful at best. I know it's becoming a cliche but the way the electoral maths stack up, a vote for UKIP is more likely to result in a Labour plurality in the Commons, if not an outright majority, and the one thing you can be sure of, with Ed Millipede as PM, with or without a Lib Dem coalition, is no renegotiation and no referendum.
Our general elections are designed for a two party system and when people cast their votes for fringe parties based on a narrow range of issues, the outcomes are rarely what anyone intended. Only two men stand any chance of being Prime Minister after next May. The best course of action is to decide which of them best represents your views and outlook, and then vote for the local prospective MP who will support them.
There will be an in/out referendum in 2017 if there is a Tory majority in the commons next January. Cameron has been forced into that position because of UKIP. It was to achieve that, that I have voted UKIP where possible in elections since 2010. But now, the safest way of securing that referendum is not to play Russian roulette with our electoral system, it is simply to vote Tory.
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I agree. For the purposes of ensuring a referendum, voting UKIP ought to be only a consideration in those seats which they can win without defeating a Tory. We may not trust Cameron entirely but we can say with certainty that either voting red or yellow will ensure we don't get one. This is why I believe there could well be a UKIP-Tory pact before the election and Cameron could well cite the extraordinary intransigence of the EU as the reason for any apparent u turn on a deal with UKIP.