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LETTERS: Paul Minter
Michelle Buxton has been announced by the Brexit Party as their candidate for the next General election. I really don’t think this will worry Conservative MP Hew Merriman, perhaps a very little bit.
Mr Merriman has a majority of well over 20,000. Yes it is Conservative voters, perhaps even members, who are likely to vote for the Brexit Party. But the Brexit Party has one huge problem. Although it’s supporters agree on Leaving Europe, they are drawn from all sorts of people, who disagree on everything else. To fight a General election you need a detailed manifesto with positions on all major issues, and commentators are puzzled how the party will do this without self destructing.
So the first problem for the Brexit Party is how many candidates, even MEPs, will leave the party, once it decides its manifesto. Secondly how many voters will not want the Brexit Party having MPs in parliament, serving for years, when they have no idea where they stand on every other issue, when they can support an established party and be fairly safe the candidate will roughly follow that party’s direction of decades.
Hew Merriman and the local Conservative party can rest peacefully at the present time. However their eyes should be focussed on the other local parties that already work together on Rother council. Were the Rother Alliance (Labour, Liberal Democrat’s, Green, and Independent) to work with the Brexit Party then there would be something to worry about.
This has been my focus over the last few months in letters to the local paper. A candidate needs to stand on the middle ground, leaning slightly to the Conservative right, but uniting all parties to be elected to the Bexhill and Battle Seat. At the moment Conservative members / voters like myself, despite not being happy, have remained loyal in both the local and European election.
Today my loyalty remains to the Conservative Party locally and nationally, so Mr Merriman has my vote if he remains the candidate obviously. But I am watching closely to see if the Rother Alliance can take that last step and back a middle ground Conservative candidate. If Conservative voters and members are better represented by someone else.
Paul Minter
Bexhill
