UKIP may be rising, but the cracks are starting to show
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s the current political class haemorrhages votes, UKIP is lapping them up, taking huge gains in the council and EU elections.
This week they even gained their first MP, with Douglas Carswell winning a by-election following his defection from the Tories, and were close to securing a second in Heywood and Middleton. According to opinion polls, 1 in 5 Tory voters and 1 in 7 Labour voters will vote UKIP. How can a party in such a far-right position actually attract both Labour and Tory voters?
They have a lot to thank Nigel Farage for; the charismatic leader appeals to emotions and has an answer for everything. Always fast to react and with “blokey” wit, he has no policy to defend and this gives him flexibility. When I quizzed my parent’s friends (who are tempted to vote UKIP) they said he seems like a great guy to share a pint with. He even took voters on a pub-crawl this week in Clacton, so clearly this is a common opinion.
Nobody expected UKIP to get so far. Hats off to Farage.
He’s carried a protest party who won an occasional European seat in some remote part of the country to become a serious political force.
Activism in the ranks is rife and turnout for canvassing (particularly in Labour’s London strongholds) is huge. Not surprisingly then the money is flying in. Arron Banks, an ex-Tory donor, recently gave the party £1m and he’s not even their largest donor. The feeling at the party conference in a packed out Doncaster racecourse was one of excitement: the party will keep on moving up and could potentially be the kingmakers in the next general election.
However, the cracks are starting to show. There are two main wings in the party: libertarian headed by Nigel Farage and the deep conservatives.
Although each seem happy in each other’s company at the moment, the union is a troubled one.
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Photo: flickr/european_parliament
Comments (8)
Wow. You totally have no idea, do you?
All parties contain a range of views, indeed all groups of human being do, so what’s new ? The unity of a party depends upon the skill of the leaders in managing that healthy range of views. This article just represents another weak, doomed to fail attempt, to spike Ukip’s guns.
We also get the standard condescending use of the phrase “protest party”, as if we were a bunch of immature, protesting college kids. Ukip believes in the people of this country who need to be set free from the undemocratic, bossy and wasteful EU. Then we will be able to build a better place for everyone British. We will even invite a sensible number of foreigners in to join us, but only if we need them, and they agree to live by our rules and culture.
Sooner or later these blind journalists, who all move like a shoal of unthinking fishes, will have to learn to write well balanced, truthful articles; not the biased, boring smokescreens to hide the wrongdoings of the anti-British establishment, an establishment that is being exposed more and more, day by day, for the failures that they truly are. Vote Ukip !
The Conservative Party over the last few decades and centuries have accommodated Thatcherite Capitalists, One Nation Conservatives, Tolkien-style Traditionalist Tories and a variety of others under their shared Party umbrella, and have held up pretty well.
Similarly, Labour isn’t just a party of the Guardian reading Liberal Left, it is also the party of the economically left-wing but socially consevative white working class (though these voters are now increasingly looking to UKIP as Labour transform themselves into a London party for the Metropolitan, Middle Class elite).
As long as they stay true to their beliefs UKIP will do just fine.
He’s carried a protest party who won an occasional European seat in some remote part of the country to become a serious political force.
The above sentence says everything about the writer he dismisses UKIP as a protest vote says the occasional European seat even though they were the biggest party and best of all talks about anywhere outside of London as a remote part of the country.
I’m guessing hes a 20yr old student with such a limited viewpoint.
Bless. Went to a public meeting recently, the turnout was amazing. UKIP have a goal to reach, and the alliances will stay until those goals have been smashed. 7
Looks like the media dont understand conviction politics. The SNP for example, they may have lost the referendum but they havent lost the war.
ahhh, this is one of those pointless articles with no substance, which is only used to justify the headline, which people will see when they do searches. someone (or something) is getting desperate methinks!
What a stupid article!
The vacuous last paragraph shoved in to ‘justify’ the click-bait headline.
The only Cracks that are beginning to show are the ones you are collectively talking out of, the ones that you have all been sat on for a very long time – until you’ve realised that the world is changing (against the progressives of the last half century) and there’s no longer anything that a student’s gestation period in closeted quarters can do about it. Except talk against it, that is.