Thank goodness that’s over! Mark Reckless won the Rochester and Strood by-election after what felt like the longest election count in history: Robert Mugabe has faked national elections in a shorter time. But when the announcement finally came, the result was clear. Ukip first with about seven points over the Tories (as Ukip insiders were saying the day before voting); Labour embarrassed into third place; the Lib Dems garnering a pathetic 349 votes. I sincerely look forward to the day when my children say to me, “Daddy what was a Lib Dem?” And I can reply, “They were what people voted for before Ukip came along.”
The ghost of the Lib Dems might whisper that they were the leopards before the jackals – and Ukip is certainly starting to look like a more plebian third party. In his victory speech, Reckless claimed that the radical “working class tradition” has “found a home in Ukip”. And he’s not far wrong. Britain now has a political class war on its hands and – in perverse British fashion – it’s the Right, not the Left, that started it.
Cast your mind back to 2010. Ukip was a single issue party: anti-EU. Dig beneath the surface and it was composed of disaffected Thatcherite Tories – in favour of a flat tax and broadly libertarian in a way that stood to benefit the upper middle-class. Fast forward to 2014 and they are completely different. One suspects that their core appeal is on the subject of immigration; Europe is a background theme but by no means their standard; and they’ve adopted a populist philosophical position that confounds old golf course stereotypes of this party. Full story...
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The ghost of the Lib Dems might whisper that they were the leopards before the jackals – and Ukip is certainly starting to look like a more plebian third party. In his victory speech, Reckless claimed that the radical “working class tradition” has “found a home in Ukip”. And he’s not far wrong. Britain now has a political class war on its hands and – in perverse British fashion – it’s the Right, not the Left, that started it.
Cast your mind back to 2010. Ukip was a single issue party: anti-EU. Dig beneath the surface and it was composed of disaffected Thatcherite Tories – in favour of a flat tax and broadly libertarian in a way that stood to benefit the upper middle-class. Fast forward to 2014 and they are completely different. One suspects that their core appeal is on the subject of immigration; Europe is a background theme but by no means their standard; and they’ve adopted a populist philosophical position that confounds old golf course stereotypes of this party. Full story...
Related posts:
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- How Brussels elite was stunned by a flurry of right (and left) hooks from...
- Ukip wins European elections with ease to set off political earthquake...
- Nigel Farage: how one man changed British politics...
- Clowns no more, jubilant Ukip are on the march...
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