Devizes MP Claire Perry has been accused of slavishly following everything David Cameron says by Wiltshire’s UKIP chairman Neil Hamilton in the wake of the Tory party’s Eastleigh by-election humiliation.
Mr Hamilton and Mrs Perry surprisingly found themselves sitting side by side on the BBC TV Question Time programme, which went on air after the polls had closed in Eastleigh but before the Lib-Dem triumph was known with the Tories forced into third place by UKIP.
And Mrs Perry found herself admonished by Question Time chairman David Dimbleby for continually interrupting other political members of the panel. He added the jibe that, while she might be well known to House of Commons Speaker John Bercow, he was the Question Time chairman in charge of the programme.
Today (Friday), Mr Hamilton, who didn’t get to bed until 6.30 am following the boost in UKIP’s vote to 28 per cent, its highest ever, told Marlborough News Online: “Eastleigh is a watershed for UKIP. This election was a peasants’ revolt.”
“We are no longer also-rans. If the Tories had not split our vote we would have romped home last night. But for the Liberals’ fantastic local organisation — they hold all of Eastleigh’s council seats — which got the lion’s share of the 10,000 postal votes, we would have won.”
“UKIP’s vote was not a protest. It was a positive vote for taking control of our country back and ending the Lib/Lab/Con policy of open-door immigration from eastern Europe at a time of rising economic difficulty.”
Referring to the Question Time programme, he said: “Claire Perry slavishly supports everything David Cameron wants. When he says ‘Jump’, she just says ‘How high?’”
“As David Dimbleby discovered on Question Time she doesn’t listen. She just talks over you. We don’t need lectures from MPs. They should listen and respond to real people’s hopes and fears – which UKIP does.”
Mr Hamilton, a former Tory MP, campaigned in Eastleigh for the UKIP candidate, Diane James, also a former Tory, who polled 11,571votes to find herself 1,771 votes behind the Lib-Dem winner Mike Thornton, Eastleigh’s new MP replacing resigned Cabinet minister Chris Huhne.
“If David Cameron thinks UKIP’s success is just ‘mid-term blues’, he is even more out of touch with reality than I thought,” he declared. “People are fed up to the back teeth of him and his condescending metropolitan liberal elite friends.” “They are more interested in gesture politics on irrelevances like gay marriage than bread and butter issues affecting real people.”
UKIP is now seeking to increase its membership and improve its branch organisation as a new political force, now due to contest local government elections in June and next year’s EU elections.
Mr Hamilton added: “As chairman of UKIP Wiltshire, I say l say ‘Save the £53 million a day we send to Brussels, end open-door immigration, end Euro madness, fight political correctness, stop wasting money on overseas aid and boost our defences. Come and join us.’
“Eastleigh shows we take votes from all the old parties and are breaking through to win.
“We shall be fighting as many Wiltshire Council seats in May as we can but we need more active supporters, especially in the Devizes constituency.”
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It’s time for more women to make their voices heard – Claire Perry More women need to make their voices heard and to become involved in politics and other institutions, Tory MP Claire Perry told the BBC Question Time audience in Eastleigh. She was answering a question as to whether the British political system was a safe place for women to work, a reference to the allegations against Lib-Dem former chief of staff Lord Rennard. And she declared that if the accusations had been made against a woman, then the focus would have bee on her appearance and age, and subsequently agreeing with a point made by Labour MP Angela Eagle that the media were to blame for casting woman as Blair’s Babes and Cameron’s Cuties. “This chap is not a looker, let’s be clear, and nobody has mentioned that,” said Mrs Perry. “I completely agree with Angela that this is an endemic problem in all institutions that don’t have enough women in them. “Ladies, please, I don’t care what political party you are part of, what level of politics you get into, just get involved because if our voices aren’t there, then nobody else is speaking up for us. “I think the problem is we don’t have women coming through the political system, of all ages, of all types, and that is where we have to do something. “Yes, it is safe to go into politics. I’d rather be a female MP in Britain than I would be in Italy of Afghanistan, but we could do a lot, lot better than we are doing now.” On other questions, Mrs Perry admitted; “I completely accept that politics is broken. All these people (the other panellists) have been in Parliament a much longer time than me. “What we need is people to come in who are committed to transparency, who absolutely want to fix Britain. If you look at what’s happened between our two parties (Tories and Lib-Dems), who have come together in the national interest, things are improving. And it’s tough, tough medicine.” But Mrs Perry familiar mantra that the deficit had been cut by a quarter and that unemployment was down with a million new jobs created in the private sector were shot down by others taking part in the programme. Angela Eagle pointed out that while creating jobs, many of them part-time, the Tory cuts had resulted in 520,000 redundancies, and Neil Hamilton revealed that government spending had increased from £670 billion in 2010 to £737 billion this year, the deficit of £190 billion three years ago reduced by only £60 billion. “These are colossal sums,” he said. “We cannot go on burning money in this way.” Mrs Perry apologised to Eastleigh residents for the amount of “rubbish” put through their doors during the by-election, adding: “You must be very happy that the caravan is moving on.” “We overwhelmed the electorate with information. There were some great leaflets out there, one said, ‘I’ve made my mind up, just go away!’ I thought that was excellent.” “The lesson we should take away is that if we’re trying to talk about the big important stiff like fixing Britain, we have to keep making it relevant.” “No-one here tonight is going to go home and say, ‘Hurrah, the deficit is down by a quarter. Isn’t the government doing well.’ You are going to go home and think about filling up your car tomorrow and what is going to happen to fuel duty in the Budget.” “We have to keep getting out of Westminster, getting to our constituencies, and just being normal — listening to what people are saying.” |
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