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[/audioplayer]How odd that David Cameron is still threatening us with ‘Vote Ukip, get Labour’, even after the Heywood and Middleton by-election, which Ukip nearly won with thousands of Labour defections. But if the Conservatives do lose the next election by a Ukip-sized margin then Cameron has only himself to blame — for the second time in a row. I know because I tried to stop it happening in 2010 when I was leading Ukip.
Soon after Ukip came second in the 2009 EU elections, David Willoughby de Broke and I went to see Tom Strathclyde, then Tory leader in the Lords. We said Ukip would stand aside at the 2010 election if given a binding promise of an EU in/out referendum.
Tom, an old friend, was enthusiastic. ‘This is just what we need,’ he said. ‘I’m having a one-to-one with David for an hour on Thursday. I’ll pass this on and come back to you.’ Silence ensued. Unluckily for Tom I bumped into him at the peers’ entrance the following Monday. He walked straight past me. I said, ‘Thomas, I’m speaking to you, what happened on Thursday?’ He turned half round and said, ‘It’s all too bloody awful. I can’t talk to you,’ and off he went. Which was worrying because the general election was only 11 months away. We needed any agreement as early as possible because we were appointing candidates. We had to identify the seats which we could deliver to the Conservatives, and we had to get a great many activists on side.
Three months later Nigel Farage stood down as Ukip’s leader to stand against John Bercow, and I took his place, largely to keep it open for him.
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