I think many Tories (you know, the ones who entered politics out of some sense of duty, the desire to change the country for the better etc. - [ia.k.a. Tories who haven't a hope of ever getting near the cabinet, much less the position of PM[/i) are or would be happy about some form of pact with UKIP. But opportunistic chameleons like Cameron, Osborne (and you could lump Tony Blair into this category, too) etc., who believe purely in the ideology of "Whatever it takes to get elected" could quite easily adapt without any crisis of conscience.

And let's be honest - whilst many in the electorate harbor doubts over UKIP's credibility, they aren't tainted with the same kind of stigma as the BNP. You put the Tory multi-million pound spin machine to work on them and it won't be long before many begin to see them as laundered.

The sad thing is "UK independence" is a thoroughly laudable goal. If you are aware of the pernicious, anti-trade, anti-free market, anti-social effects of not just European intrusion into domestic politics but worldwide through the aegis of "investor rights", the right of "national treatment" afforded to global corporations, the IMF, WTO, World Bank etc. who could possibly be opposed to greater independence? UKIP's crime is in cynically exploiting people's very real socio-economic frustrations and pointing the finger of blame everywhere but the right direction. And why do they do this? Because they are just as committed to maintaining the same class-based, keep-the-worker-in-his-place status quo all the other parties aspire to.

She would love the idea of Eugenics as practised by the Nazis. She looks very much at home in front of her Swastika.

Yes the rise of the SDP and the splitting of the vote was a far more significant factor in Thatcher's landslide successes of the 1980s, than the 'Falkands Factor' that is often brought up. In 1979 Thatcher won a majority of 43 with 43.9% of the popular vote. In 1983 she won a majority of 144 despite the Tory share of the vote falling to 42.4% of the vote. The big difference was the SDP-Liberal Alliance polled 25.4% of the vote, only a couple of percent behind Labour on 27.6%. Considering the Liberals in 1979 (before the SDP had formed and joined them) had only 13.8%, whilst Labour had 36.9%, it looks like around 9% of the electorate got displaced from Labour to the SDP.

The big difference between the SDP then, and UKIP now, is the SDP were displacing Labour from the centre (where the electorate is more densely concentrated) and UKIP are displacing the Tory vote from the right. So whilst UKIP will harm the Tories, they don't have as big a chunk to eat away.

The party that really displaced the Tory vote from the centre was New Labour under Tony Blair because he looked and talked like a centrist Tory and he was quite admired by the centre right business community, hence he had the Tories floundering under Major, Hague and Ian Duncan Smith. Whatever you think of Blair and I know a lot on the left distrusted him from the start, he was Kryptonite for the Tories.

Blair represented an entirely different challenge to the Tories (more charismatic than Smith, more agreeable to the general public than Kinnock and certainly more attractive to business than Michael Foot). But he wasn't a nailed-on certainty from the very beginning. Had the Tory radicals got their way and either Michael Howard or Michael Portillo (especially) assumed control instead of Hague and then IDS I suspect Blair would have had a far tougher time. Although I'd still make him the favourite simply because of the residual ill-feeling toward the Tories which lingered for many years.

In many ways Blair was similar to Harold Wilson. He was a northerner (although unlike Wilson he never traded on it). He had an almost supernatural control of the media. He was a moderniser and he was prepared to do battle with and - if necessary - cut away the hardened socialists. That said - for all Wilson's reforms - he always struck me as a man who hadn't altogether given up on the establishing principles of the party. Blair, on the other hand, never once gave me the impression that he believed in any ideology other than expedient flexibility. Wilson I could picture at a workers' rally (even if only to be booed at). But Blair? No.

Blair's ideological sterility WAS his weakness. And it was a big one. However, the Tories seemed unwilling or unable to prise open the opportunity. Who knows, maybe they thought they couldn't run the country any better - and boy was the money just rolling in ...?

I think it had reached the stage where, even allowing for the media bias in the UK, the Tories themselves were Kryptonite for the Tories.

Blair had the great advantage of having scrapped Clause 4 straight away and effectively promising to continue to the neo-liberal agenda.