Sunday 5 May 2013

Fantastic UKIP result. Quo vadis?

The local election results were far better than UKIP's wildest dreams with a 139 seat gain from 2009. Warmest congratulations all round particularly to my  former Yeovil branch that gained 2 seats and just missed a third, Iminster, by 11 votes thanks to an EDL candidate taking 42 votes. I hope the Filipino lady they have found to replace the late Audrey Spencer in our ward also enjoys success in 12 days time.

I thought Farage's use of Ken Clarke's clown comment was brilliant in relating it to how much it put on the UKIP vote. It was an all round excellent set of media performances by Farage which underscored UKIP's success.

It was not a conventional protest vote that UKIP secured rather a rejection of the whole careerist politician system that is now endemic in LibLabCon. People are sick fed up of being ruled by juveniles who have never done a proper job, have lived the life of the political elite since they were 16, have no conception of how ordinary people live and speak their own nerdy polspeak that no one outside Westminster understands.

Farage with his man in the pub, fags and booze image tapped into this mood brilliantly. Camerton's enemies loved it. This morning on the Sunday Politics David Davies could hardly keep the smile of his face. Nobody likes Clegg even the LibDems and he is the other big loser. Milliband does not have to do anything just avoid mistakes to walk into No 10 in May 2015. The left wing press like the Guardian will big up Farage no end to keep the right wing split. Tha'ts why they published the Farage/UKIP front page below on Saturday.


They will continue in this vein but of course the Guardian is only compusory reading in the BBC not in UKIP households.


But where to now for UKIP or as the Romans said Quo Vadis.  On 2ndAugust 216 BC Hannibal inflicted the worst  defeat on a Roman  army at Cannae. Rome had an army of 40000 legionaires plus 40000 auxiliaries and calvalry. On that day 60,000 were killed. Not even WWI battles had so many dead on one day. After the battle, Hannibals calvalry commander Maharabal urged an immediate attack on Rome and when Hannibal refused Maharabal castigated him saying " You know how to win a victory but not how to use a victory".  Hannibal wandered about Italy for the next 10 years. The Roman alliances held and Hannibal retreated to Africa and eventual defeat by Scipio at Zama.

That is the situation Farage is in. What does UKIP do now.The only tactic to emerge so far is to get Farage a place in the leaders debate which may precede the 2015 general election. The BBC will have a big say in that decision but its definitely worth while putting down a marker right now. Personally I doubt there will be a leaders debate this time. Winning in the Europeans in 2014 will achieve nothing other than lining the pockets of Farage sycophants.

There will be a fight back by the establish parties but particulary the ConLibs who lost most. This will be fought in the media on two fronts, policy and people.

The Tories will certainly launch a new immigration policy that they will claim is tougher and protects indigenous hard working families blah, blah, blah. More difficult will be the EU referendum. I expect backbench Tories feeling their diminishing majorities will table a mandate enabling bill this session and challenge Cameron plus his quislings to vote it down. I am not hopeful and I do not expect there will be any meaningful referendum, ever.

More damaging will be the drip, drip, drip of exposures of UKIP's elected councillors misdeeds and mis-sayings. This will be a huge problem for Farage as many of the newly elected seem to have been to the G Bloom school of politics. At the same time the sycophants will be fighting like ferrets in a sack for the top spots on UKIP MEP slates. Marta and Bannerman will also be seeking spots on Tory MEP slates and dishing the dirt on UKIP will go down well with Tory Central Office.

Farage was not the only successful UK party leader on a fags and booze image. In 2005 Charlie Kennedy led the LibDems to their best ever election result, 62 MPs in 2005 and look what happened to him.

Its going to get a whole lot tougher for UKIP. Success brings its problems.

PS Fantastic cartoon on Guido today says it all

20130505-230706.jpg

8 comments:

Jabba the Cat said...

"Farage with his man in the pub, fags and booze image tapped into this mood brilliantly."

If that was electoral connection brilliance, why did two thirds of voters stay at home last Thursday and UKIP only captured 6% of available council seats?

Eric Edmond said...

In low turnouts which are increasingly the norm in the UK getting your vote out and also getting the postal votes in becomes crucial. That needs a local party machine that Farage's EUKIP have ignored preferring the Brussels Boozers & Bordellos. If they had built a machine like the LibDems that Farage always claims to do but has done nothing about UKIP's result would have been even better.

ALAN WOOD said...

For those people who have never put their neck on the line to win a first-past-the-post election the difficulties of winning a seat at County & Parliamentary level are immense.
The British public cannot be bothered to vote at local elections so one is trying to gain the vote of hard-core voters.
History shows that whilst Independent candidates can win it takes a Political Party candidate and a lot of support to win. When the government party is popular the small parties have little chance. When the Government s unpopular the other major party benefits,which is why the Labour & Conservative parties have held sway for nearly 100 years.
This year all 3 larger parties are in bad odour with the public and the public is gradually realising that the EU is very much to blame, through immigration policy, Human Rights policy, windmill policy and much more.
The public now realise that only UKIP can effect change.
UKIP had a golden opportunity to garner support. They took it.

Mary Poppins said...

Of course the tories are still shaken in Norfolk, it was lovely to
that corrupted blue ocean turn half
grey,so with NOC they have no control,there can only be forward
movement now, farage, is on the forward, move, what i would say to
the new councilors, pay attention
to accounts,don't get greedy millage allowances and other perks can be fiddled.paticularly where
there is total control.

Eric Edmond said...

Alan,

I know how hard you and Steve A worked to win your seat in fptp District Council Elections. I am worried that some of UKIP's new intake may have won as paper candidates in which case it may be easy come easy go.

Anonymous said...

Caesar from Gaul,
QUO VARDIS?
VICTORIA! VICTORIA! VICTORIA!

Richard T said...

In reply to anon I thought the Euro gravy train went from St Pancras.

philip Topps said...

It's started to they have new driver, the blairs daughter has a job in Europe, rmeber the Kinnocks
they all work there as far as I know. Gravy for the boy's Gravy, for the statist dictators.