WI: Enoch Powell stands for UKIP

[Mustard]

An interesting footnote of British politics is that, during the party's early days, the leadership of UKIP maintained a correspondence with the then-retired Enoch Powell. These letters were published by The Telegraph several years ago (see here), and one letter featured an offer for Powell to stand as the UKIP candidate for South-West Surrey (Virginia Bottomley's seat) at the 1997 GE.

Now, for a number of reasons, Powell declined this offer, but what if he accepted it? Say, as a POD, Powell never suffers from Parkinson's Disease and is able to maintain a more active profile into the 1990s. What would the impact of this be?

 

[Mike D]

Realistically not very much - even without any kind of debilitating condition like Parkinson's he's going to be 85 in 1997, he's hardly going to be physically or mentally sharp enough to run an effective election campaign, especially not in a constituency where his hypothetical party was so far behind (the Tories and Lib Dems got over 25,000 and 22,000 votes respectively in 1997, UKIP got 400).

 

[Shads]

He’s not going to win. The referendum party was the flavour of the month for eurosceptics in 1997. He could retain his deposit on pure star power however. Given he was already well into his 80s in 1997 he wouldn’t serve as much more than a prominent critique of Europe. Though given his anti American tendencies it would be interesting to have seen his take on the Blair Clinton and especially Blair Bush relationships