Instead of accepting that they've lost the trust and respect of the electorate they keep banging on about "Europe", navel gazing about how they can "win back" people who voted for UKIP and forming an electoral pact with UKIP for the next election.
It's because UKIP hasn't been banging on about the EU that voters have stopped thinking of us as a one trick pony. We have the largest manifesto of any of the mainstream parties (probably of the "other" parties too) - we don't need to keep banging on about the EU when we're leading the debate on immigration and the economy.
Talk of "winning back" UKIP voters is an example of the arrogance that runs deep within the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party doesn't have a right to any vote and that includes a UKIP vote but they always talk about UKIP taking their votes and now it's how they can "win back" their voters. It also ignores the fact that UKIP has been attracting votes from Labour, the Lib Dems, minority parties and from people who haven't voted for years, if ever.
Finally, all talk of an electoral pact is wishful thinking. Lots of senior Tories are falling over themselves to tell Cameron to form a pact with UKIP but they're forgetting one important thing: we don't want a pact with the Tories. The Lib Dems have shown us what happens when they form a pact with the Tories - not only does it turn off voters, it turns off their own members. An electoral pact with the Tories might give the Tories a boost but it would fatally damage UKIP and one thing we are certainly not here to do is to make the Tories or any other party more electable!
With time the Tories may come to realise where they've gone wrong and when they do they'll realise that it's already too late to do anything about it. UKIP has already delivered a fatal blow to the Lib Dems, given a bloody nose to the Tories and Labour will be next.
Stuart Parr is a 
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