Hopefully UKIP will do for the tories what the SDP did for Labour in the 80s. If the tories move to the right, Labour have little to do other than remain in the centre ground.

Cameron and Miliband should be more worried about the 65% of the electorate that chose not to vote, rather than those who voted Kipper.

Why is this debate even taking place? Typical mid term protest vote, come the election it'll be business as usual.
Doesn't anyone else remember the BNP having a good mid-term some years back, and it being hailed as the start of the rise of the far right? You remember, the mid terms before they swept into power.

Oh, hang on...

I'll take UKIP seriously when Westminster burns to the ground and the left get blamed for it.

Interesting to note that Labour did not lose one single seat to UKIP, right across the country

That's because Labour doesn't count that many racists and xenophobes amongst its supporters.

You will have noted that Labour's percentage of the vote was down more than even the Tories compared with last time.

Labour WILL NOT win an overall majority in a general election with E Milliband in charge. Not now. Not ever, unless the Tories panic and put someone less user friendly than Cameron in charge.

I don't remember the BNP getting a quarter of the votes or over 140 council seats. That is more than a protest vote IMHO.

The scale has differed, but UKIP have a hel of a long way to go before they can convince anyone - particularly the majority of their vote this time - that they are a serious political force.
As soon as they get the established parties asking questions at a national level about their policies on anything that shows their duomania for what it is, they're going to collapse. There will always be those who think that immigration/Europe is the only issue that matters, but most people are aware that the budget, defence, the NHS and unemployment matter more, and that just going "stop foreigners coming here and get out of Europe (unless it suits us)" isn't going to cut it. They need to portray a much greater depth than they are currently showing.

I agree with most if that but I just think that folks ignore UKIP at their peril and comparing them to what the BNP did previously is missing the point as UKIP is a different animal IMHO.

A little perspective is needed here.

Out of a total of 20,000-ish local election seats, UKIP have managed to secure 142. A whopping 0.7% of the total.

Or looking just at the seats being fought for 12.5% of the total seats the Tories won, 25% of the seats Labour won and 38% of the seats the Lib-Dems won.
They won 5% of all the seats available and got 25% of all the votes.

May I quickly point out that I am no UKIP voter but I just think dismissing them as another BNP is a huge mistake.
They have someone in charge who has a clue, knows his soundbites and has gone after a subject that matters to a fair few members of the population. He mentions the billions we give Europe but just fails to mention what we get back.

As minty said UKIP are getting more press coverage then they should which is far more than the BNP got.
The sheep in this country will watch the news but probably wont watch programs like newsnight or daily politics so they are only getting the positive soundbites.

Like I said a totally different animal to the BNP.

UKIP: fascists who shop at M&S and John Lewis

I'm not racist, I just vote UKIP.

maybe "I'm not racist but..." will be the new "I've never voted Tory before but..." campaign

Yep, which makes then much more dangerous than the BNP, as evidenced by the current media love-in with Nigel Farage and the disturbing lack of media scrutiny UKIP, it's policies, candidates etc have come under.

Typical arrogant view from the tribal politics corner. UKIP won around a quarter of of the vote ahead of the LibDems and close behind the Conservatives and Labour with more than a million votes. To demean this because others have a different view is just studipity.

Yes much of it was a protest vote which is to be expected mid-term but what is also clear is that UKIP took votes from all three other parties. UKIP like Labour are unclear on many areas of policy but they are crystal clear on Europe and immigration and therefore it is reasonable to assume that this was a key factor for a quarter of voters. This doesn't make them right wing or lacking credible thinking skills because they differ from your own closed viewpoint.

What you should be concerning yourself with is at a time when the government is unpopular as they struggle to overcome enormous problems and make difficult decisions that the public do not see the current main opposition (Labour) as a viable alternative. Labour should have had a landslide and will have the major headache particularly if you consider that the conservative protesters will most likely return to the fold come the general election.

Considering Thursday's elections were in what was mainly tory heartland councils, Labour would hardly be expected to pull up too many trees. 80% of the seats contested had a sitting tory MP.

And if you think UKIP are crustal clear on Europe and immigration then you obviously haven't read either their manifesto or Farage's instructions to elected UKIP councillors to ignore the manifesto and concentrate on appeasing local voters

So if you don't think anyone voted for UKIP`s because of their policies on Europe and immigration then was it their economic policy??? You should change your name to codswollop.

Now where did I ever say that barmpot?

Your arrogance once again raises its head - "you don't think like I do so you are incapable"!!

It seems to me people voted for UKIP because of a lack of credibility of any of the major parties and the public are telling them to get their act together.

Mr Nigel is an empty jacket but he is capable of tapping into the general public's concerns about the state of the British political system, something ED,ED and Ms Cooper would do well to note.

The current Tory leadership are the worst kind of Conservatives i.e. rich public schoolboys and to that their complete incompetence and you have a party that should be obliterated at the poles. What do labour have to offer? as yet nobody knows because right now they are not offering anything but tired old tax and spend or borrow a shed load more to build some houses!!

The rise of UKIP is more about discontent with the two main parties and lack of any other credible option.

To say anyone who has voted for UKIP is incapable of rational thought illustrates just how out of touch with reality you are

I'm honestly not bothered how many penguin and polar bear votes they get.


Anyone who thinks that UKIP are a more credible option than, say, the Green Party pretty much proves Mintball's point.

UKIP are the party for not-too-bright xenophobes. No amount of 'protest vote' nonsense is going to change that.

As the anecdote I posted earlier illustrated, it's not rational thinking - it's gut politics. And anyone with a brain cell would not have any respect for so wing that works on the basis of: 'oh, I'll completely duck a point and just come out with a bit of dumbs hit rhetoric instead'.

And as has been pointed out, it's largely disenchanted Conservative right wingers switching - so hardly likely to be considering the entire spectrum of political options on a ballot paper.

Going back to Standee's point: two things.

First: I'm not sure that anyone really knows that the middle ground is any more. That could arguably be because of 30-odd years of neo-liberalism, which for many, doesn't fit within the old political certainties. Labour moved to the right to become electable, ditching, for instance, Clause 4 on public ownership, which, in effect, said that it was no longer a socialist party; the Conservatives moved to the right to try to become electable - and failed - and then have moved to some socially liberal positions in an effort to distance themselves from being 'the nasty party'.

One of the elements behind UKIP's current position is serious anger about equal marriage. I think that's actually an ideal illustration of a number of things - not least how far many in society, from across the mainstream political spectrum, have moved on social issues in just a generation. Which itself also suggests that 'the middle ground' has shifted, certainly on social attitudes.

I think that this is also born out by the point I raised a while back, that someone had done research showing just how many politicians, from across the mainstream spectrum, had done exactly the same course at exactly the same institution, reflecting a very limited range of political, philosophical and economic ideas across that same spectrum. It's part of the reason that there is actually little to differentiate between the main parties on the big issues at present - which inevitably offers opportunities (whether taken or not) by parties further to either side of the spectrum.

But there's another factor at play too. And that is the media.

I can't remember, off the top of my head, who it was, the other day, who wrote a piece asserting that, if the 1970s had seen the question being asked 'who really runs the country' as one about the power of the trades unions, then the same question today produces a different answer, in big finance and the bulk of the mainstream media. And for the latter, blaming 'Europe' for everything Is a delightfully useful and effective tactic - and I would not, for a moment, suggest that the EU is anything other than, at best, a deeply flawed political institution, but part of the problem the is the way that Europe and the political institutions of the EU have become conflated.

In conjunction with that, and perhaps in part because of widespread disillusionment with the state of domestic politics in 'the middle', we have seen an increasing militaristic culture growing over the last decade, and with that goes increased patriotism/nationalism, cultures that themselves are also added to by issues around a variety of subjects including immigration and perceptions of a culture under attack, multiculturalism v integration and so on. Again, there are legitimate questions, but the way in which the most successful newspapers in the UK present these is rather more one-sided - and again, it distracts from what is happening economically, which is a continued neo-liberal agenda, pursed with ever greater rigour as the last 30 years have passed.

In summary, I think that the point about a middle ground is a good one, but the shifting sands of domestic mainstay politics, and the influences of the mass of the media, mean it's far from a simple one, and certainly is not a question of there being some sort of old-fashioned left cabal running the roost.

), we are no longer a democracy, the same type of people with the same type of background going to the same Universities, people comment on how much Cameron et al are worth, but is Milliband skint, or his chums?

we need a Guido Fawlkes, but nobody cares enough anymore to try.

I'm not xenophobic and i'm an atheist but don't judge my friends for not being English atheists, my circle of close friends are (Egyptian Christian, Iraqi muslim x2, Dominican Republic x2 one christian one atheist, Polish Christian x 4, English atheist x4 one gay, English christian x2)

These are the people i spend regular time with, i also vote UKIP.
It's not a race thing or i'm afraid of foreigners, i'm against open borders, i'm against more people coming in than our services (education, welfare, health) can cope with.
I'm all for controlled immigration based on a points system.

On the gay issue and i have a close friend who is gay and i've jointly done a lot of work for gay charities with him around London, to speak to i know a lot of gay people and their views on gay marriage are not as clear cut as the media likes to make out.
Some believe in marriage, most are happy with the recognition of civil partnerships and don't want association with groups that don't tolerate gay people like the church.
This leads me to Nigel's view on gay marriage which you twisted to fit your own agenda Minty.
He believes that an organisation that doesn't support it shouldn't have legislation forced upon it for the sake of being PC. He's not against gay people or marriage of gay people, if the church supported gay marriage Farage would also support it.
Now MY view on the church is it's all bollards anyway and why would you want to associate yourself with it, it's the reason i had a humanist wedding, but i, like him don't believe you should force them to do something against their principles even though i do think their principles are wrong because what next, will i be forced to do something i disagree with (paying tax aside)?

I find it offensive that the usual leftwingers on here have to resort to childish name calling and insults just because people have a different view.
In fact i think it's the childish name calling of the Lib/Lab/Con leaderships that have forced people into the arms of UKIP.
All they do is insult each other, prime ministers questions is worse than a school yard AND they come across as insincere career politicians only concerned with their own ambition rather than their electorate.

If UKIP are 'found out' so be it, if they are useless so be it i'll look elsewhere but i don't know until it happens and right now i know the big3 are already useless, the reason why i won't vote for them.