The [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20541136Rotherham by-election result[/url shows a lot more than any mid-term blues for the coalition. Rotherhamgrad may not be the tories happiest hunting ground but trailing behind three minor parties must really hurt and the LimpDems losing their deposit after polling less than an English Democrat and a local vicar standing as an independent is mothing short of an unmitigated disaster.

The people of Rotherham had better watch out though, I've no doubt that Porky Pickles will find some method to hold them to account.

Lib Dem 8th in Rotherham. I wouldn't vote for a middle aged man with a pony tail either

Looks like the tories may be considering a move to the right in order to win back the UKIP ship-jumpers.

[url=http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/transcript-of-what-i-said-on-victoria.htmlClaire Khaw[/url was drummed out of the BNP for being too reactionary, she's recently joined the Conservative & Unionist Party. Fine bedfellows methinks, this pic should make the 2013 official calendar

I thought Woodrow Wyatt was the Voice of Reason anyway. From the opening few lines of that piece, she seems to be the Voice of Batsh[ii[/it Loony Tunery

The most significant thing here is the apparent large rise of UKIP at the expense of the Tories.

UKIP increasing is a good thing IMO.

They are never going to eat into the vote of left leaning middle classes, liberals, greenies, students, trade unionists etc. The only vote UKIP will ever displace is Tory. They don't have a geographical concentration in any one area intense enough to win any seats in first past the post though, unlike Respect or the Greens.

So Nigel Farage's party will just eat away at the Tories.

I wish them every success.

Yep, if I can attempt to suppress my delight at Agent Farage's excellent work for just a minute and look at it from a dispassionate point of view, UKIP is actually becoming a massive problem for the Tories. The Tories major benefit for decades has been the left/centre-left vote has been split between Labour & Lib Dems whereas the centre-right/right vote has been concentrated in the Tory Party. If that starts to split then they are in deep trouble.

I'm confused by this idea that the most reactionary pro-business party in modern times and fascism are unlikely bedfellows.

What is fascism but capitalism with the gloves off? And David Cameron has certainly been without his for some time.

The truth of the matter is we have barely scratched the surface in terms of the spending cuts "required" to put us on a steady fiscal keel and so far the government (in cahoots with the media) has done an effective job of keeping a lid on society and preventing organised protest and civil unrest from "tearing the country apart" (a.k.a. distributing the nation's wealth in a more equitable way). But this is only possible for so long. At some point a large proportion of the country will ultimately realise that their credit reserves have run dry and outgoings exceed income. At this point the turd will hit the fan and you can bet that - just like Thatcher - Cameron will have no hesitation in signing off on increasingly draconian legislature (no doubt with a "heavy heart"icon_wink.gif to retain "stability". It's at this point - just as on Orwell's Animal Farm where the mystified animals are peering through the window unable to identify who is who - the tories and the fascists will be indistinguishable.

I refer to a pertinent quote by Michael Parenti which, although aimed at America, works perfectly well here, too:

[i"If Big Brother comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart-chilling, omniprescent glare as in 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed".[/i

Reminds me of when the SDP split the Labour vote and gave the Tories a large majority. I remember looking at the results in the papers and numerous constituencies the combined Labour + SDP vote was significantly higher than the Tory vote but the Tory got in because of first past the post.

Come general election time I don't think UKIP will do as much damage to the Tory vote as the SDP did to the Labour vote. I think a lot of Tories who might vote UKIP in a by-election will return to the fold if it becomes obvious voting for UKIP will get Labour elected. The UKIP vote might send a few marginals Labour's way but I don't think we will be seeing any safe Tory seats going to Labour in the same way the SDP vote gave strong Labour seats to the Tories.

Very recently there have been two occasions (the child welfare story and the proposed pact) where the Tories have allowed a sliver of commonality with UKIP to appear. Now, you can explain these events away by saying Cameron was making a (heroic) stand against bigoted social services bureaucrats meddling with the lives of decent, honest foster carers who just so happen to be members of UKIP and that the suggestion of collaboration with UKIP came from a political "loose canon" who is so far from Downing Street he takes the trans-Siberian express to parliament. But the fact remains that governments today are so heavily spin-stabilized very little gets out without being scripted. And up till recently the Tories have been very careful to avoid the words "UKIP" and "Tory" appearing on the same page together.

Yes, this could all be an unfortunate co-incidence. But I'm too long in the tooth and cynical not to suspect what would be simply one more in a long and dirty line of political "softening up" exercises stretching back to the dawn of time. Let's just wait and see whether these two distant orbiting masses are drawn together by gravity in the next few months or not.

Don't think [iDave[/i and [iNige[/i are on each others Xmas card list, are they?

Mind, it didn't stop the likes of [iUncle Vince[/i rowing in with the [iBully Boys.[/i

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.