Last week, UKIP won over 140 seats in council elections. That is a lot for a party that hardly had any before that. UKIP's best known policy seems to be that they want to pull the UK out of Europe whether we like it or not.
That doesn't really explain how they did as well as they did last week. Most polls seem to suggest that Europe is not peoples number one priority. Immigration is far higher up that list than Europe.
Labour left a real mess behind after their 13 year open door immigration policy. UKIP have tapped into this. On both issues, the Conservative party have policies that are working in practice.
We have reduced immigration by a third from it's peak in the last year of the Labour government. In Europe, The Prime Minister has set out his position clearly – if he is Prime Minister, there will be an in out referendum in the next Parliament.
That will be the time to have a full and frank debate about our membership. In the mean time the Prime Minister has committed to negotiate a new settlement in the EU so that this can be put to the British people in the referendum.
In the past, people have questioned whether he would veto an EU treaty – he did. They questioned his ability to cut the EU Budget – he did. They questioned his ability to get powers back from the EU – he got us out of the EU bail out mechanism.
In this Parliament, we will look at all options to underline that fact that our commitment to the referendum is absolute.
Local Conservative Cllr Colm Costello for Hobbayne ward, had this to say, "All the Prime Minister can do is set out his position on Europe. If peole want an opportunity to vote on whether or not we have a referendum on our membership of Europe, there is only one party offering that. The Conservative party. A vote for any of the other parties, especially UKIP means we go further in to Europe, as a vote for UKIP lets Labour back in".