I had an email this morning from a disgruntled UKIP voter who doesn't understand why I am not pushing my anti EU views more strongly and favouring what he sees as an irrelevant policy instead.
My answer is that of course I am anti EU - I've written here before about my views on it's undemocratic political system and it's encroaching power that takes away an individual country's sovreignty and independence. I thought that as anti EU is the very heart and soul of UKIP that it would pretty much go without saying. What I wanted to try and achieve is knowledge that UKIP is no longer a single issue party and has lots of policies on all of the big issues and brave enough to touch others that dare not speak their name.
I must also admit that I haven't seen my electoral address so I have no idea what it says, but if it is based on my UKIP candidate's page, then that would explain why health propaganda, the smoking ban, and denormalistion is high on the agenda. These are all issues which affect personal freedom and civil liberties and are not, in my opinion, issues that any govt should be concened with. Much of it has only come about because of EU directives and this chap explains far better than I could. An oldie, but still a goodie.
I also know that a lot of the new groundswell of support for UKIP has come from disaffected former Labour supporters who feel like I do that there is something terribly un-British, and unfair, about this fascist type of control over simple lifestyle pleasures. It is more of them that I am trying to reach in a bid to stop them turning to the BNP which, I'm told, they doing in droves in L&H.
I believe that in this election, where the result will be very tight, traditional Tories will vote Conservative. Despite being disappointed by the Party's stance on the EU and immigration, they are too scared of voting UKIP for fear of getting in another Labour Govt. That would bring us to our knees and there would be nothing left to save in another five years' time.
The old Labour supporters, the ones that NuLabour abandoned, are the ones who can really make the difference to UKIP this election. Their concerns are debt, housing, uncontrolled immigration and whether or not they will be able to find jobs where they live. Not everyone wants to take advantage of free movement around the EU. They should have the right to work where they live. They also want to be able to go down to their local and have a pint and a smoke without having to feel like the worst kind of leper ever to inhabit the planet.
This issue is the most important to me because if we are not free to live our lives as we want, then what is the point of freedom? We agree that exclusion is bad but then we deny those that feel excluded the right to complain. We know that bullying is bad, and yet we hold up overweight children for public riducle as examples of how not to be. We know that we have a minority problem of people who behave badly when drunk - yet we make it a state of national emergency and penalise the majority by demonising what they tend to do responsibly.
This kind of social engineering - changing behaviour to get people to live the kind of lives that the state wants - is also very bad for the economy. We have seen the devastation to the pub industry. We will see small shops go out of business, and the associated suppliers of other goods, because of the tobacco display ban - the number one selling product this year. We will see small, local vending machine companies go out of business because of the tobacco vending machine ban.
This election is about taking control back from the state. That control is not just about demanding to have our say on Europe, it is about demanding the choice to live our lives as we want.