When opposing Conservatives, UKIP candidates are frequently confronted with the charge that they are in some way stealing votes from the former, by espousing policies which are basically the same. Of course we know this to be utter rubbish, and there are many issues upon which the parties differ, but it is worth highlighting a few major ones.
The Tories have long traded on their image as being the patriotic party but this is merely a chimera. The truth is that those Conservative leaders who have deserved that accolade have been largely regarded by their party as mavericks and have achieved their success despite, rather than because of the party leadership. The prime example of this must be that great man Churchill, who saved not only the UK, but Western civilisation as a whole, but who was not the choice of those many Tory MPs who had supported that idiot Chamberlain and then wished to see the appeaser Halifax as PM. Four decades later Mrs Thatcher reached the pinnacle but was never accepted by what she described as the 'wets', as we saw when she was stabbed in the back by the Europhiles. For them their preferred leader was always that charlatan Heath, who did more than any other politician to hand away the democratic rights of the British people to Brussels. The present incumbent of No 10 is clearly from that section of the party, dominated by the privileged patricians who are only interested in personal advancement, and who follow policies which are so often against the interests of the nation and the people.
The first of these is defence. In their arrogance the Conservatives have decided that there are no votes in defence and do not even include the issue as one of those to be included in their questionnaires to the public. In an increasingly dangerous world they have connived at undermining our essential defences, reducing the once all powerful Royal Navy to nineteen (!) warships, failing to arrange for the aircraft necessary to be used by the new carriers, deliberately destroyed the reconnoissance aircraft needed to protect our airspace, neglected the submarines required to protect our own shores and propose reducing the British Army to a number less than the crowd at a Wembley Cup Final. If we should again be threatened by a major foreign power we would be unable to resist without the first use of nuclear weapons and one wonders just how long we will retain those.
The second policy is of course membership of the European Union. No party has done more than the Conservatives to involve us with that vile project and yet no party, other than UKIP, claims to be more Eurosceptic. This assertion is just a barefaced lie, as is evidenced by the track record of Heath, Major and Cameron in office and the only belated conversion of Mrs Thatcher to the Eurorealist cause. Day after day we hear of the interference in our affairs by the unelected bureaucrats of Brussels and the iniquities of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy are clear to any intelligent person. That we also face the replacement of our Common Law by the Napoleonic Corpus Juris and the undermining of our existence as a democratic, sovereign state is also obvious. The claim by the Tories that they will achieve reform of the EU is laughable as the latter has never deviated from the course set by its founders, to create a single European state, run by an elite, and they will just ignore the pathetic attempts by Cameron to pretend otherwise.
A more minor, but nevertheless important policy area, is that of education. The destruction of the Grammar schools begun with such relish by Crossman and Williams was continued under Thatcher and her successors and has almost succeeded in closing off the avenue by which bright working class children could gain a good education and hope to proceed to a worthwhile career. The social mobility these schools encouraged has been suppressed and only those educated at expensive public schools can enjoy the advantages of the best education available. The miserable failure of the Tories to even support the new Grammar school proposed for Sevenoaks illustrates just how much in thrall they are to the fashionable opinions of the metropolitan liberal elite.
One could go on and on for, as the above clearly demonstrates, the Tories are not the party they pretend to be and do not deserve the votes of the electorate. If these destructive policies are to be reversed, given that the other main parties are as much part of the liberal consensus as the Tories, then the only way forward is to vote UKIP.