Why UKIP are in big trouble for the 2015 General Election

nigel-farage

 

Just recently the BBC have been giving UKIP massive coverage, you would think that it is the second coming. Nigel Farage seems to be on every programme possible and recent fairly average election results were described repeatedly as an “earthquake” by the BBCs multitudinous news and current affairs pundits. One can only assume that the BBC see UKIP as a tool to split the Conservative vote and consequently get Ed Miliband in p0wer in the next General Election.

There have been many political parties that have burst onto the scene since the war, only to fade away, sometimes completely. The Social Democratic Party, the Greens, the Referendum Party and many more. Ultimately they all fail, partly because of first past the post voting (FPTP), partly because the voters are very happy with the existing parties and partly because of the huge difficulties in putting a national political organisation together.

UKIP are effectively a single issue party. They want to pull us out of the EU with no referendum. From all the fuss you would think that this was a popular issue, but it isn’t, all the polls show that the majority of British voters want to stay in the EU. UKIP founder, Alan Sked, says the party is: “anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual and racist”.

Now to the local council elections of 2014. The BBC’s “earthquake”. UKIP won 17% of the vote, which is a 5% DOWNWARDS swing. They ended up controlling zero councils. The Conservatives had a 4% UPWARDS swing, utterly amazing in mid term. Yet the BBC were reporting the opposite.

One big problem for UKIP is that their councillors are undisciplined, so very often get kicked out of the party. Or they see the light and leave UKIP. From their councillors who won seats in 2013 they have already lost around 10%. The mainstream media seem loath to report this.

Next we come to the 2014 EU elections. These were huge for UKIP because they are not FPTP and because it represents their single issue, their reason for existing. So you would expect 100% of UKIP voters to turn out. Whilst the other parties won’t bother because the EU parliament is a powerless waste of time and money. So, hardly surprisingly, UKIP got 27.5% of the vote. But the turnout was just 34%. So UKIP got 9% of the available vote. Not very good. This gives them 24 European Parliament seats out of well over 700. So it gives them no effective power base.

But once again they have a huge problem. Their MEP intake of 2009 was a disaster area. UKIP managed to “lose” 6 out of the 13 who were elected, say 40%. Godfrey Bloom and Nikki Sinclaire being perhaps the most notorious. This makes them hardly credible as a political party.

So let’s look at who is voting for this shambles:

  • Grumpy old white men and sometimes their wives. These are mostly ex Conservatives, they tend to be bigoted and want to turn the clock back to 1950. These are the traditional core UKIP vote so policies were geared towards them. Right wing and bigoted. Unfortunately there are a couple of problems with this voting demographic, firstly it isn’t big enough to break through and secondly they are dying out. So UKIP need to select a new target audience.
  • “Working class” socialists. These people have been disenfranchised by Labour’s current leadership. The Labour front bench are mostly rich, educated people who have never had a proper job and who lead upper middle class lifestyles. The working class voters tend to be poorly educated so they cannot see through the UKIP lies such as the 26 million Romanians and Bulgarians coming here, taking all our jobs and many other ridiculous scare stories. In the recent local elections it was working class constituencies that had the biggest swing to UKIP. The best educated constituencies rejected UKIP. So UKIP see their main chance of success to go after the working class. The swing seats they are targeting next year are all Labour. Listen to UKIP with your brain engaged and you hear a socialist party.
  • Outright racists and bigots. BNP got 943,000 votes for EU in 2009, in 2015 they got 179,000. So they have lost hundreds of thousand of voters, and lets face it the main party these will be attracted to is UKIP. Likewise for many ex National Front supporters.
  • Libdems. These guys have always been the outsiders, the party of protest. Principled people away from the mainstream. But now their leaders have sold out and become mainstream, ditching their policies, promises and principles on the way. Seduced by a whiff of power. And this is not what their voters wanted, so the party has haemorrhaged support on an epic scale and are in real danger of imploding. Meanwhile their voters have a new protest party in UKIP.
  • HS2 objectors. This utterly ridiculous project is headed to be the biggest failure in British history and there are hundreds of thousands of people who feel strongly about this. For very many it is a far bigger issue than the EU. And UKIP oppose it. This must have been worth a lot of votes.
  • General malcontents, protesters, activists and young people looking for a cause. There are quite a lot of these and they spout UKIP dogma and lies on the social media as if it is the holy grail. They engage no critical faculties and mostly seem incapable of doing so. UKIP is like a religion to them and the UKIP youth has grown very rapidly on their fanaticism.

Most people reading this will see the huge flaw in this voter base. Keeping them all happy. Farage has a number of tactics for this:

  • Don’t have policies. Farage has already disowned the UKIP’s 2010 manifesto in an attempt to distance himself from policies that may offend potential groups of voters, even though he signed it. This is cynical politics at its worst. The UKIP EU 2015 manifesto contained nothing. Surely nobody could have voted UKIP on the basis of it.
  • Only announce broad populist policies. So far (since Farage ditched all their existing policies) this means exiting EU with no referendum, tax cuts for the poor, tax cuts for the rich and no HS2.
  • Have different policies for different constituencies. Even if they are completely opposite. So recently UKIP was strongly supporting the benefits system in a working class constituency. In Newark the Conservative candidate is a lot more successful than the UKIP candidate so UKIP have gone for class warfare and the politics of envy. Old school hard left Labour tactics.
  • Just attack the other parties. Farage does a huge amount of this calling them Westminster establishment, amongst other things. Firstly Westminster is exactly what he is trying to be and secondly he is establishment through and through.

So now lets look at why UKIP are in big trouble:

  • They occupy the moral low ground. Their councillors, MEPs and candidates have made very many racist, homophobic, sexist and bigoted statements. This is the heart of the party and decent people will not vote for it, no matter how much Farage tries to hide the reality.
  • UKIP contain many natural enemies who really dislike each other. This will cause massive dissatisfaction and desertion.
  • The policy con trick cannot last. Eventually even MSM journalists must eventually realise what is going on.
  • General elections are about voting for a leader and for economic management. Cameron is a brilliant leader and is incredibly popular, even amongst Labour voters. Osborne is an economic genius who has dragged Great Britain out of the huge hole dug by Gordon Brown. It would be very foolish indeed not to vote for them.
  • Most British people are pro EU. It is not the main issue in British politics. There are far more important things on people’s minds.
  • The best possible EU policy for Britain is to renegotiate to make it less powerful and more of a free trade area, then to have a referendum on this. Exactly what only Cameron can and will do.
  • UKIPs many lies. So far when journalists take Farage up on these he blusters and calls it “smears”, when in fact he is being exposed to the truth. Eventually journalists will get wise to this. Also Farage is not in Parliament so cannot be forensically interrogated, as Cameron is at PMQs.
  • Lack of a power base. UKIP MEPs are on a gravy train but have no power. UKIP have zero MPs and control zero councils. Even the Greens have far more real power.
  • For EU sceptics the realisation that the most powerful political force on their side is the 100+ EU sceptic Conservative MPs. Formidable compared to UKIPs zero MPs.

So you can see that UKIP is a very fragile house of cards based on lies, opportunism, deceit, bluster, bigotry, racism and cynicism. It is deeply un British and most people who have voted for it will end up being ashamed of themselves.

 

 

 

 

2 Comments


  1. “Most British people are pro EU. It is not the main issue in British politics. There are far more important things on people’s minds.”

    Yeah how did that go?

    Reply

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