As the dust starts to settle after the local elections in England (and 1 Council in Wales), the talk has all been about UKIP.
Before Thursday, they didn't control a Council, or even share an administration with another party. The elections gave them another 139 councillors. But they still dont control a Council or share an administration with another party.
Nigel Farage has been on TV saying that he will work with the Conservatives, but not with David Cameron as their leader.
So Nigel Farage now thinks he is the Kingmaker for the Conservatives!
Admittedly, the last few sets of elections have centred on the poor showing by my own party, the Liberal Democrats. This time, the loss was just 124 councillors and the experts had predicted far more. To be honest, I had. As a Wiltshire boy, I still follow what goes on in my old home County and see that the Lib Dems actually increased their numbers by 5 to 27. I would imagine that this could have been aided (in part) by UKIP standing and thus affecting the Conservative vote in some wards, under the first past the post electoral system, that the Conservatives love and support.
We all know that in between General Elections, the party (or parties) in Goverment get a kicking in local elections and this was true on Thursday. The Conservatives lost another 335 councillors and the Lib Dems 124, as I said above. Labour should have raced away and got far more than the 291 additional councillors and the 2 Councils they took control off (Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire). So it was not exactly a ringing endorsement of Ed Milliband and Labour. The results showed that whilst Labour made gains in the north, it did not materialise in the south, other than the traditional urban areas.
So the 2015 General Election does not bode well for Labour. Mind you, it doesn't bode well for the Conservatives either and the Lib Dems can probably breathe a sigh of relief that the vote generally held up in the South and in seats where their nearest contender is a Conservative, the signs would indicate that those seats could be retained.
So what is the effect of UKIP on British politics, in my opinion?
Well, the economy still is slowly grinding along and I can understand why people voted as they did, but at General Elections we know that people vote seriously as its the country at stake.
I looked at the votes in Cambridgeshire as I knew the Fens are fairly well, having helped out in a by-election there, about 4 years ago. There are 11 County Council seats. Up to Thursday, all 11 were Conservative. By Friday, the Conservatives were down to 6 and UKIP had 5. I looked at the results for Wisbech. This is where my paternal grandmother was born in 1897. On my recent visits there, all the talk was of the Eastern European workers in the area. You could walk the town centre and listen to people talking. Very few were speaking English. Locals call the town Wisbechistan and I would read the local papers and the court cases had names of people that I assumed were of Eastern European origin.
Wisbech is not too far from the town/constituency of Boston, where UKIP also did well. I can understand why UKIP did well in these areas, but I am not a UKIP supporter in any shape or form.
We have European Parliament elections in a year's time and I cannot tell you the names of the Welsh representatives, even though I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable on politics.
No doubt UKIP will do even better in 2014 and it will be up to all the major political parties to wake up.
There are calls for the Conservatives to move to the right. But we all know that General Elections are won in the centre, so it will require a steady hand. But it must surely be time that our political parties actually tell us what a withdrawal from the EU would mean. People are taken in by UKIP and whatever they read in the Dail Mail, Express or Sun and think that we can leave the EU or get rid of the immigrants and all our problems will be solved. My view is that we must be in Europe, but also be pushing for reforms to make it more democratic and accountable, but also to bring it back to what it was there for. To promote trade. Somehow, politicians have centralised too much power in Europe and some of that has to come back to our shores. In 1975, Britain voted to remain in the European Economic Community, but no one has voted for closer political union. The problems with the Euro must surely be a warning that one size does not fit all.
The next 12 - 24 months will certainly be interesting. Will UKIP continue to advance, or will we finally be told the overwhelming reasons why we must remain as part of Europe. The true story doesn't get told. Just the rubbish in the tabloids and UKIP benefits from that.
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