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Westminster Corner

Sunday, 28th February 2010

In  his third newsletter, UKIP Leader Lord Pearson looks at a by-election in Buckingham South and Lord Monckton's controversial press conference.

THOUGH UKIP’s election campaign will not be launched officially until the spring conference in Milton Keynes on March 19, many things are happening already as we prepare ourselves for what will be the most important election in the party’s history.

The next by-election in which we have a candidate is on March 11 for a place on the town council in Buckingham South Ward. Our candidate is Alfred May, a resident of Buckingham. His opponent is an Independent, Eliza Caroline O'Donaghue, who lives in Linden Village, Buckingham. There are no other candidates. The importance of all local by-elections in Buckingham are self-evident. As far as the media will be concerned in the General Election one of the biggest battles will be between Nigel Farage and the Speaker, John Bercow in that constituency. We need to prepare the ground well.

We had a very successful meeting of the Regional Organizers on February 24, which both James Pryor and I addressed. It is gratifying to see that people are volunteering to help and giving donations to UKIP. We are grateful to them all but I have to repeat that all PPCs and volunteers will need to remember very clearly all the rules laid down by the Electoral Commission.

Ever more PPCs have signed up on the Electoral Address site. Let me urge those few who have not yet done so to follow their colleagues’ example. It is very important that constituents should be able to find their candidates and have information about them. Here is the link to the site: http://candidates.ukip.org

Communication will be the key in this election. We shall be sending out briefing notes, copies of Press Releases, Leaflet designs, A4 size posters, Policy documents and other campaigning material. From March 15 we shall be sending out at least one e-mail with information a day but often more.

As the election approaches there will be quite a few. Could all candidates make sure that the Campaign Office has their up-to-date and most frequently used e-mail address. We shall also be creating a PPCs’ online forum on which candidates will be able to post messages, share campaign techniques and generally 'chat' to one another.

We are in the final stages of putting together our key campaigning messages. Once they have been decided, the campaign office will produce leaflets, flyers, posters that follow these themes. The messages will be repeated on our billboards, advertising, press releases and briefing notes. 

The mainstream media will not give us sufficient time – it will be up to us to get our message out to the electorate through all the usual channels, including and especially the internet. A number of PPCs have set up their own blogs. This is to be welcomed. Those who have not done it yet are encouraged to do so. It is a painless experience though blogs do have to be kept up. Once the campaign starts in all seriousness there will be no shortage of material.

On Wednesday of this week I chaired a media conference in Greycoat Place at which Lord Monckton of Brenchley explained UKIP’s policy on climate change. The science, he reiterated forcefully, is not settled. Lord Monckton has been saying that for some time but now admissions are coming from the climate change establishment that their data is inaccurate, not properly reviewed and does not mean what it was supposed to mean according to them.

For example, there has been no significant warming for about a decade and a half now; in fact, for the last eight years there has been noticeable cooling. How significant that is we do not yet know but, as Lord Monckton said, we need to look at measurements not build computer models that are good as playthings but not for much else.

UKIP’s policy is quite clear: we cannot go on spending enormous amounts of money on projects that are based on unproven and suspect data; we cannot risk our economy and the economy of the West because the political classes insist on it; we cannot allow the developing countries to lose their economic momentum for the sake of an ideology.

UKIP, therefore, proposes to set up a Royal Commission on “global warming” science and economics, under a High Court Judge, with advocates on either side of the case, to examine and cross-examine them and their evidence with all the rigour of a court of law.

In the meantime we intend to repeal the Climate Change Act and close the Climate Change Department; halt all UK contributions to the IPCC and to the UN Framework Convention; halt all UK contributions to any EU climate-change policy, including carbon trading; freeze all grant aid for scientific research into “global warming”.

The proponents of “global warming” who base their arguments on computer modelling must not have any more of the taxpayers’ money until they have answered satisfactorily the questions and objections raised by those who have been looking at measurements, a much more certain way of analyzing scientific developments.

Malcolm Pearson
February 26, 2010

PS Some of you may have seen references in the media (especially if you happen to read the Guardian) to me saying that climate change was “crap” and, indeed, that was in the original title of the invitation to Lord Monckton’s press conference, sent out to the media.

In case any of you were shocked by that I shall repeat what I said when I opened the press conference: this is an acronym, much used by climate-realists in the United States: Carbon Really Ain’t Pollution or CRAP. Tempting to use it here, isn’t it?

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