Thank you Medway

Medway LibDems and like-minded residents of the Medway Towns remained steadfast and, having cast their votes in accordance with their firmly held beliefs as to what is best (though not perfect) for Britain, have every reason to feel proud.

Despite coming fifth in the votes cast in Medway, those LibDem votes were, together with those cast elsewhere in the South East Region, sufficient to elect Catherine Bearder, the one and only LibDem MEP in the entire country. And for that, Medway LibDems thank you enormously.

Nationally, our party suffered a drubbing, but at least we can say with honesty, we did not compromise our integrity. We nonetheless recognise that much is not right about the EU and it needs to be reformed and made to be less bureaucratic. But these are changes that need to be made from the inside, by sitting at the negotiating table and not screaming unheard from the outside.

Remember, 65% of the electorate did not bother to vote in these elections, so UKIP need not crow too loudly over their EU election victory.

The truth is, beset by the toxic debt created by greed throughout the USA and Europe, many of those who have voted UKIP have demonstrated that they do not like the taste of the medicine to which we are being subjected in order to cure our financial sickness (the economy). This has no doubt been exacerbated by virtue of the failure of the 'political doctors' (our coalition MPs) not explaining in understandable terms the sickness, its causes and the prescribed remedy well enough to their patients (the electorate). So as a form of rebellion, the patients have listened instead to the 'quacks' who reckon they have the remedy, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Under the 'first past the post' domestic electoral system, UKIP will secure very few, if any, parliamentary MPs next year and so they will have no power whatsoever to carry out their wishes of withdrawing the UK from the EU. Kind of suggests a UKIP vote has been a bit of a wasted vote really doesn't it! Only the UK government has the power to deliver such an outcome, and neither Labour; LibDems, Greens or the sensible elements of the Tories want that.

The Tories maintain they will hold an 'IN / OUT' referendum in 2017, but that supposes they will win an outright victory in the 2015 General Election, and right now, the pundits very much doubt that they will. And as far as UKIP's so-called domestic policies are concerned, well they are so far off the wall they are almost from another planet. They are certainly from another time which most people who have experienced some of them from way back when, would most certainly have no wish to go back to.

If UKIP has achieved one thing, it is the realisation that MPs need to speak to the electorate in the language of the common man. Not everyone went to Eton, thank goodness! We need to call a 'spade' a spade and not a 'tools, hand excavating for the use of'. Our message is the right message, but the messenger needs to speak to the people in their language, not to his party activists in party-language. And we cannot hope that the media will ever put our message across, for it is so logically sensible, it is not sensational enough. To use the media adage, "Why let the truth spoil a good story?"

Once again, thank you, all of you who voted LibDem. Thank you for trusting in our desire to do what is right for you and for Britain.