2019 Presidental Election, Part 1
For the last few weeks May had a small but strong lead, now the two candidates were neck and neck
“YouGov has released their last poll before the official purdah election period in this morning’s Times. The topline figures are Miliband 26% (+1) May 25%(-4), Farage 15% (+4) Cable 13%(nc), Bartley 8% (+1) Batten 7%(-1), Allen 6% (-1). Fieldwork was Wednesday and Thursday and changes are since the start of March. May's score of 25% is the first time YouGov has shown her dropping below 30% since winning the primary. It is hard to avoid the obvious conclusion that she is shedding support to more right wing candidates like Batten and Farage. As ever, one should be cautious about reading too much into any single poll, but this is pretty much in line with other recent polling. A BMG poll last week put Miliband 2 points ahead and the Conservatives down at 26%. A Survation poll this week produced a four-point Miliband lead. Kantar’s latest poll produced a three-point Miliband lead (and a startling 9 point drop in May's support). Across the board May’s support seems to be falling away.” - YouGov Presidential Poll, CB Polling Report (2019)
Farage’s decision to launch his new party and campaign days before the purdah deadline period was a stroke of genius, despite only existing for a few days, his campaign was repeatedly polling in the mid ten percent. The most obvious loser was Theresa May, who went from a narrow lead of 3-4 points to falling neck and neck with Miliband. Whilst Miliband did have competition from Cable, Allen and Bartley, the Farage effect had been particularly damaging for May, some polls even showed Farage within the margin of error of entering the final round. May’s team had to work out how to stem the bleeding and get their candidate back in the fight.
The election was in real danger of becoming a three-way race
May’s team decided to make a political pivot. Until now, they had been running a fairly conventional Conservative campaign, pledging to cut taxes, get the deficit under control and deliver a referendum on Europe, but now with Farage on stage siphoning May’s statist Conserative voters, especially in the North and Midlands, May decided it was time for a more authoritarian approach. At a speech outside Manchester Arena, where less than two years before dozens had been killed, May pledged to make combating terror the centre of her campaign, promising to give police the “powers they need to keep us safe” and to “crack down” on radical Islamists. This included a vast array of new police surveillance powers on the internet.
“Let’s get one thing straight: Theresa May is strong and stable. She is firm and unwavering in her stance to deliver her fantasy of regulating the internet and making it her own political playground. May introduced the Investigatory Powers Act, aptly nicknamed the snooper’s charter, during her time in the Senate. Now she's the nominee she has not changed her attack-dog stance on internet surveillance. If she wins in May, May will continue on her warpath to decrypt the internet and make our data security weak and wobbly. As May stood outside Finsbury Park Mosque on her latest campaign stop she announced that she would establish a new commission for countering extremism, "giving police and security services the powers that they need. What this stance ignores is that many of those culpable for such atrocities were already known to intelligence staff. It is not sweeping mass surveillance we need more of – it is police officers. We need the resources to keep an eye on the true dangers, not the innocent millions who will be fished up in the net and caught in the crossfire.” - Theresa May’s crackdown on the internet will let terror in the backdoor, Alex Lee, The Guardian (2019)
Miliband’s campaign meanwhile was stagnant. Whilst Farage hadn’t hit him as hard or as fast as May, the drip of crises from Umunna’s defection to the deadlock in the Senate and the growing national debt meant that Miliband too needed a political makeover. Miliband’s campaign became one of statesman-like unity, attempting to demonstrate the British people as unified against May’s “divisive” campaign. In a gimmick stolen from French presidential candidate Jean Luc-Melenchon. Miliband did a hologram speech. Speaking at a rally from his old secondary school in Camden, Miliband was beamed in hologram form giving a speech in Doncaster, in his old Senate constituency. Despite mockery of “holo-Ed” he gave a good speech promising “grounded hope” and “transformative politics”, either way, holo-Ed certainly got people talking.
Hologram campaiging had been used by politicians around the world, from Narendra Modi to Jean Luc-Melenchon
Meanwhile on the fringe right of British politics, Gerrard Batten was desperately trying to piece UKIP back together. With the help of far-right “For Britain” MP Anne-Marie Waters, Batten was just about able to get over the nomination line and make a bid for President. Several UKIP MPs defected to the Brexit Alliance days after nominating Batten and some had accused Farage of “lending” Batten MPs by holding off their defections, in order to make himself seem moderate. However it had happened, Batten was on the ballot, leading an identitarian campaign aimed at the worst parts of British culture. Batten made islamophobia the main thrust of his campaign pledging to take on the “death cult” and to push back against the “islamification of Britain”. Protecting by paramilitaries from the EDL, FLA and Britian First, Batten would travel to largely Muslim enighbourhoods and hold rallies outside mosques.It was not pretty, but Batten kept himself in the news.
“It comes to something when a chap styling himself as Sargon of Akkad is running to become Premier of South West England. You can imagine the bemused Belgian TV reporters trying to make sense of that guy, like something out of Monty Python but with added hate. Real name Carl Benjamin, Sargs is the Ukip candidate – a “free speech merchant” according to his leader, Gerard Batten. Much the same can be said about the rest of the Brexit Party campaign: challenging and defeating people even more unhinged than they are. So thanks, I suppose. You may think Nigel Farage a nasty piece of work, and you’d be right, but he has finished off his old mates in Ukip. UKIP is now even more dangerous than his new mob, which is now a one-issue pressure group. Thus we have Farage to thank for making sure that Mark Meechan, better known as Count Dankula and “Nazi pug yob”, probably won't be Premier of Scotland. He will not be in the Scottish parliament bar with his party trick, how he taught his girlfriend’s pet pug to give the Nazi salute.” - Nigel Farage’s success is good news for one reason. He has killed off those who are even loonier than him, Sean O’Grady, The Independent (2019)
UKIP was now reduced to a rump of hard-right voters
Despite a very strong start, as Farage’s campaign went on he began to struggle, May was slowly but surely clawing back her voters, and Batten’s campaign refused to die, taking a small chunk of voters that Farage thought rightly belonged to him. Things would get even worse for Farage when the Manchester Evening News revealed his campaign manager, Kevin Moore, had been a former BNP candidate back in 2008. Farage was forced to fire Moore after the press discovered he had stood as a BNP candidate for the East Midlands Parliament. Moore published many articles on his online blog promoting the parties politics and its leader. In a post from July 2010, Moore criticised then-President Michael Howard's decision not to allow Nick Griffin to attend a tea party at Buckingham Palace as an 'attack on democracy.' Another post stated that more than £300million of taxpayers' money was being spent on housing asylum seekers. Moore wrote: "When you read this please bear in mind about the 1 million homeless brits sleeping on the streets. Please feel free to not only voice your opinion but let all those in Whitehall and government how disgraced you are!"
All of Farage’s work trying to distance the Brexit Alliance from UKIP and the remnants of the far-right all came falling down with the Moore revelation. Whilst Moore was promptly sacked from Farage’s top team the damage was already done. Worse for Farage, Moore was sacked hours before the BBC’s Presidential Debate in Sheffield, meaning it was likely to be one of it’s top stories. As candidates and aides began to arrive in Sheffield for the Commonwealth’s first ever seven-way Presidential debate, Farage knew he was going in with a target on his back.
"Nigel Farage is a political force in his own right - a creator of parties, not a cog within them. That rare subspecies of politician seen by voters as distinctive. He took UKIP from the political fringe to centre stage by stitching together a coalition of angry voters from across normal party lines. In the process, he cornered the Tories into promising an EU referendum. His Brexit Alliance is topping the polls for the European Parliament election and easily breaking double digits in the polls. The idea of Brexit is his baby, if anyone is the father. Part of his fury at the political establishment is because they never acknowledged the scale of his achievement. "You can make a convincing case that Nigel Farage is the most influential politician of the modern era," says Professor Matthew Goodwin. "He is responsible for mainstreaming Euroscepticism - and it's all the more impressive because he never reached high office.” - Nigel Farage: The Populist - BBC News (2019)
Farage had performed miracles before, could he do it again?
“To what extent did May’s strategy evolve over the 2019 Presidental Election” (30 Marks) - A-Level Politics Exam
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