YOUR recent correspondents (Letters, December 30) are obviously worried about the increasing number of people joining and voting for UKIP. Their mistake is to assume UKIP is taking all its votes from the Conservatives. This is untrue. In the European election UKIP topped the poll in ten Labour seats, nine Lib/Dem seats and only two Conservative seats. The Conservatives tell us, they are against Regionlisation; the truth is that they introduced it. I have a booklet entitled ?The South West a Region of the European Union?; the date of this publication was 1995 when the Conservatives were in power. Michael Howard last May threatened candidates standing for the European Parliament with de-selection unless they agreed to join the most federal of all groups in the EU parliament. The Conservative Party is part of the problem, not the solution. Perhaps Mr Eberlie can tell us about the Regional Assembly (unelected quango) on which he sits in Exeter. Last year this unelected assembly had a budget of £4-million. The EU plan is to replace our counties with regions. Devon/Cornwall etc will cease to exist. The sign as one approaches Exeter now reads, ?Exeter the Regional Capital?. It is only UKIP MEPs who are alerting the people of this country to what is planned for their future. If people were to vote in the General Election in the same way as in the European election, UKIP would gain eleven MPs in Devon and Cornwall. The odds of the Conservatives winning the next General Election are 7-2 against and some MP?s admit that the party has not changed enough to win the election. Why not support UKIP who say, ?Without compromise, condition or interference the British people, in their own land, shall be self governing?. George Mudge Chairman UKIP S W Devon CHRIS Park (Letters, December 30) is flogging a dead horse in suggesting that the Tory Party will undertake ?substantial renegotiation? of the EU treaties, if ever his party is returned to power. Geoffrey Cox may well hold to the view that the EU Constitution is to be opposed, but he might care to check with Michael Howard as to his leader?s personal position on this issue. There is clear evidence, as reported in the Sunday Telegraph of November 3 2003, that Howard made an agreement with the ?Clarkeites? before his coronation was confirmed, thus by-passing the party members, such as Messrs Park and Cox, presumably. That agreement contained an assurance that if/when the Tories were elected and the EU Constitution was already in place, Howard would do nothing to remove it. This is entirely consistent with his speech in Berlin on February 12 2004 when he declared: ?I am determined that the UK will remain a positive and influential member of the EU?, and his subsequent actions to align his MEPs with the arch-federalist EPP group in the EU Parliament, to vote for the EU-inspired ID card fiasco and not to oppose the dreaded Civil Contingencies Bill. But then, this former Director of the European Movement, from whence the Britain in Europe organisation takes its lead, and who signed the UK up to the Europol regime when he was Home Secretary, is only being consistent and true to his beliefs. If Messrs Park and Cox are foolish enough to believe that this man can, with some supremely subtle renegotiation, ?turn the destiny of our country?, when he has already committed us in the way shown, then I can only express thanks that others are less gullible and that UKIP is around to tell the electorate the truth. Howard cannot be trusted on this ?most important current issue of all?, as so correctly termed by Mr Park. Graham Booth UKIP MEP
