What did Eastleigh say and teach us?

Six week after Cameron’s famous IN/OUT EU speech and the Conservatives fielding their most right-wing candidate, Maria Hutchings, the Tories dropped to third place and Ukip jumped to second in the Eastleigh by-election. If that is not a clear message I don’t know what is!

Media talk and hype about Conservatives needing or moving the party further right is simply madness. But thankfully, it seems the Guardian Angels of politics are looking out for the Tories. They (the Angles) stopped sending small subtle hints and basically spelled it out in big bright letters – Stop your madness and focus on the job at hand. The warning is very clear – matching Ukip is a trap, a one way street to the graveyard of politics – and will bury the Conservatives forever. In other words be careful and stop the madness!

Chris Grayling yesterday is said to say: “A future Conservative government could scrap the Human Rights Act”. That is nothing new. David Cameron has been saying it since he was elected leader of the party in 2005 and in 2010 it was a party manifesto promise. This is just the kind of thing the media propagates to confuse issues and keep the ‘Tories Lurching to the Right’ talk possible when the party leader has categorically ruled out any change of direction. The Sunday papers also had buried somewhere something on immigration cap – again the Conservatives have always, always said they will cap and control the number of people entering the UK – reducing it from hundreds of thousands to tenth of thousands – again nothing new here either.

So in a weekend when the party had a very bruising kick in Hampshire our discipline and unity were/are formidable. The lesson was clear and simple – don’t take the bait, stay the course and remain united – voters don’t like fragmented disillusioned parties that jump from bandwagon to bandwagon

My personal feeling on all of this – let Ukip be Ukip and don’t allow what happened in Eastleigh to drag the Tories to their level. We are the bigger party, the better party and should continue to act it. I know it’s un-British to say it but sometimes it needs and ought to be said.