For those who don’t know, UKIP is a far right, anti-immigration and anti-Europe party in Britain. It made large gains in the local county elections we have just had. The results do not reflect the country as a whole very well, since the elections were not in all regions, and the regions that did have elections are mostly rural and conservative leaning. Nevertheless…
Is the continuing rise of UKIP now inevitable?
Does it make Scottish independence significantly more likely?
Will it cause the Tories to move to the right? If so, (and if it becomes apparent before the next general election campaign) how will the Lib Dems in the coalition respond? Might they grow some backbone and split?
Is the fate of the Lib Dems now sealed?
Will the conservative vote be split by UKIP, leading to a Labour win at the next general election?
(The pundit consensus seems to be that Labour is most likely to win the next general election anyway, but I am not sure I see it, given that Ed Miliband seems such an uncharismatic leader.)
UKIP is anti-EU and anti-immigrant. I’m not sure what you mean by “far right”, beyond that. They don’t seem to have any other policies worthy of the name.
I don’t think that these results are particularly significant. It’s just a midterm election. Governments always do badly in them. Regarding the EU, the Conservatives will probably find a satisfactory way of making a referendum seem more imminent, while not actually committing to it. What we are seeing right now is just the pro-referendum camp trying to haggle the date forward a bit. But I would guess that it would still be after the next election, if it ever happens.
I don’t think it has any bearing on the Scottish referendum.
The Lib Dems will do badly at the next general election, and then recover to about where they were before.
To clarify, I mean that they don’t seem to have any other policies worthy of the name “policy”. I do not mean that they don’t have any other right-wing policies.
(I could not have meant that, since I don’t believe that “right-wing” actually means anything.)
It’s similar to the Greens doing well when Labour is in power. The Daily Mail will undoubtedly pee in its knickers, but nothing substantial will happen.
Definitely pro. They’re the most pro-EU party I’d say since the Tories have many Eurosceptic traditionalist types while Labour has some fringe, leftist folks who dislike the EU.
I believe they have talked about drastically curtailing employee rights and the welfare state. That certainly falls within what I mean by “far right”.
Well that is the thing. BNP support (such as it ever was) has collapsed because most of their supporters have switched to UKIP, but UKIP has a much softer (less overtly Naziish) image that is clearly capable of attracting lots of other voters too. I realize that what has happened at these local elections is just a protest vote, but it is significant both as to what direction the protest vote is going in, and the fact that UKIP now has quite a lot of councilors and will have grounds for being treated as a “serious” party. There are also rumors that Rupert Murdoch is considering putting the support of The Sun (and perhaps to some extent even The Times) behind UKIP. That could surely be a real game changer. Never underestimate the political power of tits!
I am not convinced the Lib Dems can bounce back, either. Before this coalition, their supporters could freely fantasize about how nice they would be in power, and what a great moderating effect they would have on any coalition they might get to be part of. (And about how, once they got a little bit of power, they would get PR passed and then hold the balance of power for ever.) That dream has now been shattered by political realities, and I doubt they can ever get the feeling back. Coalition, their holy grail for decades, has turned out to be no fun at all for them. (Of course, their vote won’t go to UKIP. It will presumably be divided between Labour, the Tories, and the Greens. It could mean, however, that UKIP becomes the “third party”, and will thereby be taken a lot more seriously by the media, quite apart from anything Murdoch might do.)
No. Although, as an anti-Tory, it’s gratifying to see the Tory vote spilt for once.
I don’t think so.
I don’t think the UKIP are really any more right-wing than the Tories, they have after all gone and hired a think tank to dream up some policies for them, it’s just that they have one difference from the Tories, their populist hatred of the EU.
As for the LibDems, their approach will be to grasp their ankles ever more tightly until we put them out of their misery.
Fingers crossed.
Toes also crossed. Double-crossed, in fact, just like all those fools who voted for the LibDems last time around.
Wonk-boy would be a pleasing change of pace after the sickening doughy one and his little yellow wife.
Unlikely, since a lot of the arguments on which pre-Blair Labour campaigned have been emphatically lost or are no longer relevant. The idea that major industries should be owned by the state seems pretty crazy now (well, except certain banks ;)), but it was a serious question back then. The matter of how, or indeed whether, to defend ourselves against potential attack from the Soviet Union kind of faded a bit when the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Low, I think. The groups that oppose the neo-liberal consensus from the left are small, riven by factionalism, and they all hate each other anyway. Business as usual really.
Have a look at the politics boards on Urban75 for a taste of this.
There are still substantial UK government owned entities though, like RBS and Lloyds Bank (recent acquisitions!) and the Post Office. Scottish Water remained in public hands when the other water boards were sold off, and is now an asset of the Scottish Government.
About the UKIP I cannot speak, being on the opposite side of the Pond. But on a side question raised in the OP, let me observe this:
Consider a political party. It or its pre-merger predecessor:
[ul][li]Has been continuously represented in Commons by at least five members since the mid-1800s[/li][li]During a 60-year period won about half of general elections with a mjaority or plurality enabling it to form a Government[/li][li]Regularly draws between 10% and 20% of the vote nationally, and has since it stopped being in competition for forming Governments[/li][li]In the last election it took almost 10% of Commons seats – the most it has held since 1929.[/ul][/li]These are clearly the marks of a moribund party not long for this world. :dubious:
