Many years ago, Tip O’Neill, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives said that all politics is local.

After the Elections, this is what we now must focus on, and we cannot lose any time over it.

Yes, there are the big issues we will not let rest – from leaving the EU to Electoral Reform -, but allow me to give you just one example why ‘going local’ is now more important than ever, why we must strive to get more and more local councillors elected and take control of local councils during the coming years.

We are all aware of the scandal that is postal voting. After all, we’ve experienced the dire influence in local by elections, from Eastleigh to Heywood and Middleton. We’ve heard of Tower Hamlets, and we can surmise that the truly scandalous result in Rotherham, where Labour got elected again, in spite of the reports into the Child Sex Abuse which has gone on there for over a decade, was probably also due to postal voting.

We’ve heard from various people that their postal ballot papers weren’t sent out in time by a number of local councils, we’ve heard that the name of a UKIP candidate had been left off the Parliamentary ballot, purely by accident, of course, and nobody noticed …

What do these all have in common?

Postal ballots are sent out by local government! When local councils have become the fiefdoms of one party, over decades, there is no control, no scrutiny by the people of their local governments.

This is one, important reason why it is so important for us to become the local party now, which scrutinises local governments up and down the country.

There are of course more reasons why we must focus on local politics in the coming years. For example, EU directives are implemented by local government, down to the flying of that flag which Brussels wants us to use more and more, and we’re still only one star on that flag! How great would it be if we could decide, council by council, not to do so, and tell Brussels to come and force our local council to pay their fines for not doing so?

We’ve often heard that people don’t bother about the EU because they don’t know much about it. Of course they don’t, because the establishment parties running local government don’t tell their voters about it, and how Eu directives have a direct influence on local government. That’s again something which UKIP councillors can and must do.

Or think of the craven, ‘mustn’t offend anybody’ attitude in various local councils of banning Christmas cards celebrating Christmas (remember ‘winterval’?), think of the craven, creeping bowing to religious demands leading to gender segregation in e.g. public swimming pools, in the 21st century! These are local issues, and local UKIP councillors can insist on applying one Law, British Law, equally to all.

I am sure you can find many more examples of what can be done locally, from schools to local health services. The best reason for working hard for us to get control of more local councils is that ordinary people see and recognise their UKIP representatives, and thus will be more likely to vote for them in elections.

We’ve seen in this past election that the London media have in strange unanimity brushed our policies, our Manifesto, under the carpet, and that they did not talk or write about UKIP unless they could smear us.
It is now for us, up and down the country, to work at implementing locally as many of our Manifesto policies as we can, and for that we must fight for every seat in every local council., next year, the year after, on and on.

Just as our MEPs have made such good use of their work in the EU Parliament for our national campaigns, so can all local councillors make good use of locally acquired knowledge for the next national campaigns, and we can share these experiences between councils. That’s what the huge machinery of the two main parties have been doing for decades, after all.

So let us also learn from the enemy, and let’s go local.

The fight isn’t over – it has only started. It still is ‘onwards and upwards’!

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