aggi wrote:I'm sure UKIP had a little impact but this has been bubbling for much longer than Farage has been around losing elections. I'm sure we all remember Major's bastards.
Agree.
(IMO) UKip had a relatively small impact on Cameron's thinking when he suddenly, apparently without discussing with senior Tory figures, shoved it into the 2016 manifesto. It was a selfish, ill-judged and arrogant gamble intended to secure his own role as a pro-EU Tory leader, and (by winning) effectively healing the deep wound that had been festering in the Tory Party for the best part of 40 years. A clear win for remain, (which tbh was generally anticipated) would have meant that "ERG types" in his party would effectively be silenced, and a narrow win would have given him a mandate to lead a campaign for reform within the EU. He never gave any consideration to the possibility of losing, and had no future plan following a "leave" victory. [It also presumably never occurred to him that if remain had won then it would have strengthened UKip, since with a pro-EU Tory Party all the "brexiteers" both in the Parliamentary Party and throughout the country would have had to gravitate towards UKip, as the only anti-EU party]
Unfortunately for the country he led a totally inept campaign against a background of years of austerity and public dissatisfaction with mainstream politics, thus giving a generally uninformed electorate (and I include all remainers in this as well) the opportunity to give the establishment a damn good kicking.
Any fear he had about UKip was misplaced, since if he'd worked it out, UKip were just as likely to pinch votes from Labour, and in any case with the FPTP system, it's unlikely that UKip would have gained more than a handful of seats. (Maybe a dozen if things went really well for them).
Anyway, senior Tory figures warned him that it would be a terrible mistake, pointing out that the UK rarely has referenda in the UK because they are incompatible with our Parliamentary Sovereignty, and that it would be highly divisive. They were correct.
But Dave was so arrogant that he went ahead and just took remain votes for granted. In doing so, not only did he fail to unite his party and the country, he's almost broken both.
(As people may have noted from previous posts, I'm not a fan of his, and irrespective of how we get ourselves out of this mess, and who is able to bring us back together,* history will not judge him in a good light.)
*It could well be that we will never be united again. Depending on which direction Parliament eventually turns, it's a real possibility that we will see a break-up of the UK in the next 5 years.