The results aren’t all in yet, but it’s obvious what’s happening: Ukip are the moral victors in yesterday’s local elections. A party that was just two men on a golf cart ten years ago has placed second in South Shields and won county seats across the country. A few early observations:RTWT.
1. The Lib Dems are at risk of becoming politically irrelevant. In South Shields they came seventh, a pathetic result for a governing party.
2. Ukip have helped to smash the BNP. By providing a non-racist Right-wing alternative, they reduced the BNP’s result in the Spalding East and Moulton ward in Lincolnshire from 20.5 per cent in 2009 to just 3.9 per cent today.
3. Labour did well but its gains were only modest. It held South Shields (the kind of seat that a donkey in a red rosette could win) but on a lower majority. Miliband is not popular in southern England and that will prove a problem in 2015.
4. Dan Hannan’s dream of a Ukip/Conservative coalition might actually happen in Lincolnshire and Gloucestershire – a fascinating laboratory for any future pact.
But the big story is the rise and rise of a tiny party once derided by its critics as full of fruitcakes and closet racists. It probably won’t gain any parliamentary seats in 2015: the electoral system is stacked against it and while Ukip’s support is broad, it isn’t deep enough in individual constituencies to win anything. This doesn’t seem to trouble Nigel Farage who says that he sees his party as playing the same role that the SDP played in the 1980s – driving the political agenda in his preferred direction.
Plus, "Ed Miliband needs to fear Ukip, too: Right-wing populism is in the ascendant."
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