UKIP Campaign Manager: If I had a time machine, I would stop us standing in Moray
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UKIP standing at the general election in Moray means there will be five options on the ballot paper for local voters.
Rob Scorer, from Lossiemouth, was announced as the Euro-sceptic party’s Moray candidate last week.
Mr Scorer, who stood in 2015, is up against Fiona Campbell Trevor, of the Liberal Democrats; Labour’s Jo Kirby; the SNP’s Laura Mitchell and Conservative Douglas Ross.
UKIP have stepped aside in many marginals. However, they decided to run in Moray.
The party’s UK campaign manager Freddy Vachha told the Northern Scot of the party's UK-wide strategy. He said: “There are knife-edge seats – those ones we have protected and made sure no candidates stand.
“We don’t want to stand in the way of pro-Brexit parties.”
However, when the party was choosing where to stand, data was predicting a four per cent Conservative win in Moray – with polls now showing 0.1 per cent between the Tories and SNP, even before UKIP are taken into account.
Asked if UKIP could inadvertently help take the seat away from Douglas Ross, Mr Vachha said: “Our projection was 46 per cent for the Conservatives and 42 per cent for the SNP, in the absence of the Brexit Party.
"However, Moray has become a marginal in opinion polls.
“If I had a time machine I would block UKIP standing in Moray.
“We hope our candidate wins but back in the real universe we hope the Conservative makes it through.
"It was our Scottish team that decided to stand and I think they will be saying 'oops' if the Conservatives lose the seat."
Mr Scorer received 1936 votes, 3.9 per cent of the vote, in 2015 but didn’t stand in 2017.
He said: “I’m not a huge fan of tactical voting.
“That’s exactly how the Conservatives got in last time and they gave us Theresa May, probably the most useless PM ever.”
Moray had the highest Brexit vote in Scotland – with 49.9 per cent voting to leave the EU. A total of 21.9 per cent also voted Brexit Party in the European election in May.
Mr Scorer added: “There is a taste for it. There is people who are interested in voting for us."
