A further thought about the UKIP

[andrewducker]

Plenty of stuff I've seen recently talks about the UKIP and how most of their supporters aren't actually focussed on Europe. UKIP have successfully positioned themselves in the "Modern life is rubbish" slot, with Europe, gay marriage, political correctness gone mad, health & safety gone mad, immigration, and various other things that the Daily

Comments

[iainjcoleman]

I'm not sure you can point to anything so specific in policy terms. This has been building for a while, ever since the rise of the Cameroons. It seems to be based on a perception that the Conservative leadership consists of a bunch of affluent urbanites who regard their traditional supporters in the shires and small towns as embarrassing, ignorant buffoons. The reason for this perception is that the Consevative leadership is in fact a bunch of affluent urbanites who regard their traditional supporters in the shires and small towns as embarrassing, ignorant buffoons, and they aren't very good at hiding it.

[danieldwilliam]

Yeah. Cameron didn't do in the noughties what Kinnock, Blair & Brown did in the 90's.

Consequently, the Tory populist right-wing think they've been lied to.

[cartesiandaemon]

Yeah, that sounds like what I was thinking, although I didn't describe it so harshly

[philmophlegm]

That was pretty much my gut feeling. Let's not forget that these council elections were for the most part in rural England. That's a very large percentage of the population of the UK that the current Conservative and LibDem leaderships doesn't identify with because they're mostly metropolitan and the Labour party gave up on years ago

[marrog]

I dunno about the Europe thing. If Question Time has told me nothing else it's that angry locals really don't like the implication that the government in power thinks they're too stupid and irresponsible to get a say on EU membership, and the media has got them pretty riled up about it. It's not so much that they want to leave the EU necessarily. They just don't like not being given a say about it.

But if word on the street is different fair enough. The Question Time audience are not, of course, a representative cross-section (I wish - at least they give a shit, even if they're thick and obnoxious).

[rosamicula]

My spy at the last two UKIP meetings in Ealing thinks the clear issue locally is immigration.

[ext_208701]

He stands for something other than just being in power. He wants to change the UK to make it more like the 1950s. Cameron has ushered in gay marriage because otherwise he'll never be elected again - he doesn't give a shit what his supporters actually think. Clegg sold out virtually all his principles for a shot an an AV vote for more power in future that he lost. Milliband won't say anything at all in-case it keeps him from power plus he shafted his brother

[heron61]

Wow, if they allied with the BNP, you'd have your own version of the US Republican party (and with largely the same motives). With luck, Germany will abandon their insistence on austerity and the EU's economy will improve. I suspect that you're correct about the motives of the UKIP core, but if the EU's economy was less troubled, I'm guessing that the UKIP would get considerably fewer votes.