It was written on 2nd February 2010 for the UKIP policy group on “Jobs, Enterprise and the Economy” for the parliamentary election campaign.
To read the text of a summary or the pdf of the whole paper, please click on the link “Produce and Prosper” which will take you to the paper on the Britain Watch website.
Steve Norris repeats the myth that one in 10 of the population is homosexual. This proportion may apply to media circles in London, but in this matter as in so many others, central London is completely untypical of the country as a whole.
The authoritative study of nearly 19,000 randomly selected adults across the country published in Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1994) showed the proportion of male homosexuals was about 1.3 per cent and the proportion of female homosexuals about 0.6 per cent, which together make about one in 100, not one in 10 of the population.
Contrary to Mr Norris’s other mantra, a political party does not need to be “inclusive” of every self-defining minority in order to win a general election. In the past three elections the winning party secured 44 per cent, 42 per cent and 43 per cent of the votes cast, or an average of just 31 per cent of the electorate.
The problem for the Conservative Party is not its supposed lack of “inclusiveness” but its real lack of articulated policies which make sense to the main body of its potential support. On taxation, immigration and asylum seeking, healthcare, roads, most European matters other than the euro, on industry, crime and social security, it is difficult to see what (if anything) the Conservative Party intend to do in these key fields should they be elected next year.
It was based on an address to the Schools’ Industrial Liaison Committee at Oundle School and it was later published by Prosyma Research Ltd as part of a series on Britain’s Future “Independence or Extinction” in 1990 (ISBN 0 9517475 1 7).
To see the text from a pdf file on the Britain Watch website, please click on No Middle Way.
