UKIP achieves the reverse of its stated objective

At the 2001 General Election the Conservative PPC for North Devon, Clive Allen, signed the South Molton Declaration in the market place of South Molton. Mr. Allen was the first PPC to sign publicly. A number of passers by, having discovered the reason for the assembly, expressed their approval by pledging to vote for Mr. Allen and a surprising number went further and said that they would join or rejoin the Conservative Party. The South Molton Declaration approached UKIP and told them that unlike most Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrats Clive Allen could be trusted on the vital question of the Sovereignty of the British people. UKIP should therefore not put up a candidate in the North Devon Constituency – otherwise the eurofanatic Nick Harvey (whose deliberate misleading of his electors on the sovereignty question was the cause of the "South Molton Declaration") would be returned to Parliament. But we were rebuffed.

UKIP refused to stand down and as a direct result a candidate who would have voted to assert the Sovereignty of the British people was defeated and the anti-sovereignty Liberal Democrat went to represent the people of North Devon in Parliament. UKIP took considerably more votes than Allen needed to win!

The overall constitutional aim of the SMD (now the BDI) is to allow the British people to make their own laws and sack their own law makers (that is Democracy!). But this electoral tool is also designed to prevent good democratic candidates wiping each other out – as happened in the above case in North Devon!