The new Eurosceptics

[Tamas]

Yeah, that's the scary part about UKIP. It's not that they're racists, it's that they hide behind their populist sort of acceptable brand of anti-immigration pseudo-racism, some pretty disturbing Thatcherite policies. That's what common people need to be made aware of.

So having racist supporters and being intolerant in their campaigning is a-ok, as long as they mix that with socialism

[Razgovory]

The opposite of Thacherite is Socialist?

[Tamas]

The opposite of Thacherite is Socialist?

what else is the opposite of fiscal responsiblity then?

[Admiral Yi]

I don't think Thatcher was particularly noted for her fiscal responsibility, and socialism definitely isn't the antithesis of fiscal responsibility.

[Razgovory]

The opposite of Thacherite is Socialist?

what else is the opposite of fiscal responsiblity then?

Fiscal irresponsibility? 

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, that's the scary part about UKIP. It's not that they're racists, it's that they hide behind their populist sort of acceptable brand of anti-immigration pseudo-racism, some pretty disturbing Thatcherite policies. That's what common people need to be made aware of.

I think this is it. A bunch of Oxbridge educated journos and politicians shouting 'racist' at UKIP doesn't work.

The people who are likely to think they're racist already does (this is why, seeing the rise in support they get more and more alarmed and accuse them more and more loudly of racism). Most people evidently don't think they're racist and UKIP supporters who hate the political establishment become even more convinced that they've got them rattled and stick ever closer to UKIP.

Attacking them for their economic views which go against a lot of their voters' could be more productive. Or maybe not, maybe they'll just carry on hoovering up protest votes to the Euros. This was the last Westminster election poll I saw, after a month of pretty bad news stories for UKIP:


Also I think these two articles get to something despite their very different views on the Labour election broadcast. I think if this one's right then I'd guess UKIP could be better placed to benefit from that sort of populist mood than Labour. Even if Labour win the next election imagine the vote in 2019 when everyone's disappointed by Ed Miliband. I've always thought there's an element of UKIP as an English SNP they could provide a catch-all opposition (once provided by the Lib Dems) to the dominant parties. I can't imagine the North ever voting Tory, I could see some seats voting UKIP:

The rebirth of class war holds perils for the Tories
By Matthew d'Ancona6:00PM BST 10 May 2014

Crass, negative, divisive, childish... and, in all likelihood, rudely effective. Labour's party election broadcast last week was an infantile pastiche of Fifties science-fiction B movies, with Nick Clegg cast as "The Un-credible Shrinking Man".

Shot in black-and-white, the campaign spot depicted the Lib Dem leader growing ever smaller, as the cartoonishly wicked Tories around the table empathised with the rich: "In these times of austerity I think we should spare a thought for the wealthy... Haven't our brave bankers suffered enough?... I have a friend who's down to his last two yachts." As Clegg – or "Claggie" as the horribly caricatured Prime Minister addressed him – scuttled across the Cabinet table, one of his supposed Coalition colleagues asked: "Can we hunt him?" So much for the New Politics.

This weekend, Labour sources are vehemently denying that their purpose was to reignite class war. The inspiration, apparently, was not Engels but Enfield: specifically, Mr Cholmondeley-Warner, Harry Enfield's much-missed character who presented spectacularly reactionary "Public Improvement Films" with titles such as "Women Know Your Limits".

Ed Miliband, I am further assured, has repeatedly vetoed the slightest shuffle towards a renewal of class war, and often says to staff: "It's not where you're from, it's what you do" (spookily similar to Cameron's mantra: "It's not where you come from, it's where you're going"). Make of that what you will. Whatever its intention, the broadcast was almost universally interpreted as a sortie in the class war. As such, it was widely declared a tawdry failure, an embarrassing exercise in retro-rhetoric, its script drowned out by the screech of the barrel's bottom being scraped.

I am not so sure. The "politics of envy" does not stir the soul or help to build the new Jerusalem. But that does not mean it is wholly pointless. Cameron certainly fears this form of attack, especially when his schooling becomes an issue. In March, he was genuinely furious with his friend and ally Michael Gove, for remarking in a Financial Times interview that the number of Etonians in the Cabinet was "preposterous".

All the same, many – perhaps most – Tories think that the PM need not worry: class politics (they insist) died with the oppressive communism that it spawned, euthanised by the spread of prosperity and property ownership in the Eighties and the surrender of New Labour to the realities of globalisation. According to this analysis, Cameron's own ascent to political stardom showed that background was no longer destiny. What voters cared about was not where the Tory leader had been educated, but what plans he had for their own children's schools; what they cared about was not his wealth, but his ability to fix the economy.

There was, and is, enough truth in this thesis for it to have achieved considerable traction. But it errs in two essential respects: first by declaring class politics dead rather than dormant; second by underestimating the capacity of all political paradigms to adapt to fit new environments. Class politics is not extinct: far from it. Instead, it has mutated from its Cold War form to fit the very different context of the post-crash world.

Of all Cameron's advisers, Steve Hilton – now on sabbatical – grasped this most clearly. In May 2008, Labour's by-election campaign in Crewe and Nantwich portrayed the Tory candidate Edward Timpson as a "toff" and "Lord Snooty", and was a disastrous failure. Timpson's victory and the swing away from Labour of 17.6 per cent were enough to convince many Tory strategists that class was now officially dead as a political issue. Cameron and George Osborne were not so sure. Hilton was certain that class could still be a big problem for his party and was dismayed by the complacency of some of his colleagues.

Crude attacks such as last week's broadcast punch the darkest and most livid bruise of Tory vulnerability: the perception that the party is a club representing the few rather than a movement for the whole nation. This has traditionally been a problem for Conservatives. But it has new resonance with the raw, jagged resentments of the post-crash world, and the global sense that, as I wrote last week, the secular religion of capitalism is in need of a Reformation.

Labour's new celebrity adviser, David Axelrod – who helped Barack Obama win two presidential elections – is in town this week. His long conversations with Miliband have been moored in this shared conviction that the crash changed politics fundamentally, and that victory belongs to those who address contemporary anxieties about the ability of globalised capitalism to spread prosperity, as well as to enrich a tiny oligarchy.

It is not enough to declare such fears economically illiterate and to slam Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom on the table. Indeed, this is a big part of the problem. The centre-Right has forgotten how to explain why capitalism serves people, rather than vice versa. Voters sense this impatience.

The new class politics is not about the class-consciousness of the proletariat. Frankly, it has more in common with the muttering of the tricoteuses beside the guillotine or the loathsome "spoiled monsters" of Truman Capote's Answered Prayers. It feeds on a hostility to the oligarchies – imaginary and real – that run the system and have been found wanting (bankers, expense-cheating politicians, sleazy journalists, corrupt coppers). And it is this toxic sentiment that Labour's broadcast ruthlessly fed upon.

Douglas Alexander and Spencer Livermore are running the party's campaign with greater acuity than has yet been appreciated. They know perfectly well that "going negative" is not remotely sufficient (though it is often necessary). Accordingly, this week's election broadcast is about the NHS, with footage of Miliband alongside the staff at Watford General Hospital, returning to terrain that (his allies admit) he has not quarried enough.

But there was method in the juvenile madness of last week's broadcast, too. Bashing Clegg is an essential part of the party's strategy for the local and European elections in 11 days' time and the main event next year. Labour believes it can win 14 seats from the Lib Dems in 2015 and has noticed that in 86 of its 87 Conservative-held target constituencies, the Lib Dem share of the vote four years ago was larger than the Tory majority. The destruction of Clegg may yet hand No 10 to Miliband.

But not without an almighty fight. Cameron walks tall beside his Labour opponent, with the stride of a prime minister, under the banner of a recovery that could yet deliver the Tories their most impressive comeback victory since Michael Foot, the SDP and Falklands-mania helped Margaret Thatcher win in 1983. If Cameron can keep his head when all about him are losing theirs two weeks hence – as Ukip celebrates its achievement in the European election – he can still win.

It is no accident that his aides have taken to quoting from "If ": Kipling warned of truth "twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools". Tories are good at deceiving themselves. Miliband is good at persuading Tories to underestimate him. Last week's broadcast was an attack on Clegg – but its principal impact at Westminster was to cheer up the Conservative Party. In politics, as in life, it is rarely safe to gloat. At this stage of a brutal battle just beginning, it is positively reckless.

Also this on why it may be serious come the Westminster elections:

Ed Miliband is blundering about on a 'crutch' provided by disillusioned Lib Dem voters
So why did he think it was a good idea to attack Nick Clegg in an election broadcast last week?


As Ed Miliband and David Cameron hobble towards next year's general election, one is helped and the other held back. I owe this image to an internal briefing document for the BBC written by David Cowling, the corporation's polling expert, which is called "The Crutch and the Wound".

The crutch, in Cowling's analysis, is what Miliband is leaning on. It consists of those Liberal Democrat voters who defected to Labour when Nick Clegg went into coalition with the Tories. Miliband's hope of becoming PM depends on these new recruits staying loyal.

The wound, which is holding Cameron back, is another group of voters who have changed loyalty since the last election: those Tories who defected to Ukip. Cameron's hope of staying on as prime minister depends on the wound healing, or at least getting no worse.

Both leaders have struggled to deal with their disability. It was, possibly, a misunderstanding of the importance of his "crutch" that persuaded Miliband that last week's Labour election broadcast, attacking Clegg as the Un-credible Shrinking Man, was a good idea. Even if it had not been one of the worst political broadcasts I have seen, being rude to Clegg was never likely to be effective with Lib Dem defectors. As Cowling comments, their attitudes are "generally less harsh towards the Lib Dems" than those of other Labour voters. Why any responsible adult thought it was a sensible use of Labour's resources to aim fire at a party already ruined is beyond me.

Cameron, meanwhile, has tried different approaches towards Ukip. He has insulted it. He has tried appeasing its supporters with Eurosceptic poses. He has tried ignoring it. Now that Ukip seems poised to win the most votes in the European Parliament elections, he is trying to engage with it.

None of which has made much difference, and Cowling's analysis explains why. It looks at polling carried out in January by Michael Ashcroft, the Tory peer and truth-seeker. This tested the line that the Tories hoped would work for them, asking people if they agreed with the statement: "A vote for Ukip at the next general election makes the prospect of Ed Miliband becoming prime minister more likely."

This is a tactical consideration that Miliband understands. As we report on page 8, Labour is putting up a token effort in the Newark by-election hoping to help Ukip at the Tories' expense.

But half of Ukip voters disagreed with the statement in Ashcroft's poll. It is not a good start if half your target audience will not accept the premise of your questions. Even among the minority of Ukip supporters who agreed that a vote for Ukip would help Miliband, most said it wouldn't change how they would vote in the general election. As Cowling comments, "How on earth does Lynton Crosby put the fear of God into atheists?"

New research published last week by the British Election Study confirms this analysis. It casts doubt on the assumption, which I admit I shared, that a huge Ukip protest vote in the European election this month will fall to single figures (mostly in the Tories' favour) in next year's general election. People who intend to vote Ukip on 22 May are more likely to say they will vote the same way in the general election than Ukip voters were before the 2009 European election. Ukip won just 3 per cent of the vote in 2010, but, if the same relationship holds, Nigel Farage's party could win 14 per cent next year.

Ukip voters are like punks. They don't care. They don't care if their votes help Miliband because Cameron is just as bad. And they don't care if their votes fail to elect a single Ukip MP because they are simply voting against "the establishment". We know that Ukip is the anti-politics protest party, yet there is something strange about it, because the party depends to a remarkable extent on the personality of Farage.

Cameron must wonder sometimes about his would-be nemesis. Farage became Ukip leader the year after Cameron became Tory leader. The Ukip leader is the anti-Cameron, personifying the reaction to Tory modernisation. When Godfrey Bloom, the rogue ex-Ukip MEP, accused Farage last year of doing a secret deal with the Tories, I bet the Prime Minister half-wished he had. Imagine if he could have bought him off with a peerage a few years ago: suppose Ukip had been led by Tim Congdon, the economist Farage beat to return to the leadership after a one-year gap in 2010, or by Paul Nuttall, currently Farage's deputy.

However, I come back to a point I have made before. Despite his crutch, Miliband is only three points ahead in the opinion polls and, despite his wound, Cameron is only three points behind. And Ukip is on about 14 per cent, so if that is its share of the vote next May, it wouldn't make Cameron's position worse.

A three-point lead with a year to go is not enough for Labour: despite his open wound, Cameron can overtake.

[Sheilbh]

I don't think Thatcher was particularly noted for her fiscal responsibility, and socialism definitely isn't the antithesis of fiscal responsibility.

Yeah. If anything I think the 80s are seen as a wasted opportunity. We found gas in the North Sea and instead of using that finite gain to set up a national pension fund or hiving it off for something useful like that, Thatcher used it to reduce the deficit (without having to cut spending too much) and to fund tax cuts.

In retrospect a mistake.

[mongers]

  In the same that Hitler, behind his semi-acceptable wars of conquest and genocide, hid some dangerous statist economic policies.

I think that's an unfair characterization of what Tyr said and Shelf posted about the "lack of racism and anti-semitism " being quite important.

I personally do think a significant part of their electoral base is immigrant focused as an issue and in private probably do espouse some racism. That doesn't make them nazis or at all likely to start pogroms against Blacks, Asians or muslims if they ever came to power.

[alfred russel]

Sheilbh, I suspect the UKIP will do very well in the European elections and then quite poorly (less than 10%) in the Westminster elections.

If the UK public is roughly split 50-50 on a euroskeptic opinion, the 50% anti has to be to a certain extent fired up to vote UKIP. Even the Tory voters. Why vote for a moderate and reasonable version of conservative into a body you vaguely want to leave when you can send a raving lunatic? The 50% pro--I have to think turnout will be less. Short of voting to send kamikazies into the EU parliament (ie, the UKIP), I don't see how anyone could be excited to vote in a European election.

That is totally different from a national election. Just as the lib dems faded to a very poor showing last time, I am sure the UKIP will fade as well, and Cameron has stolen a lot of their thunder by promising a referendum.

[Josquius]

Yeah, that's the scary part about UKIP. It's not that they're racists, it's that they hide behind their populist sort of acceptable brand of anti-immigration pseudo-racism, some pretty disturbing Thatcherite policies. That's what common people need to be made aware of.

So having racist supporters and being intolerant in their campaigning is a-ok, as long as they mix that with socialism

To appeal to the kind of people they're targeting- yes.
Especially since it is these lesser policies that they're more likely to get through should they come into a bit of power

[Sheilbh]

Sheilbh, I suspect the UKIP will do very well in the European elections and then quite poorly (less than 10%) in the Westminster elections.

I'd be amazed if they got as much as 10%. But I think 6%, double last time and a couple of million votes, may not be enough to win them a single MP. But it could be enough to stop the Tories from winning which is why they matter.

While that's a risk the Tory instinct will be to tack right. The trouble is it's difficult to do that without losing centrist votes and, because of coalition, with actual policies. That reinforces the impression that it's just a lot of hot air (further strengthening UKIP) and makes the government look like they're bickering and in-fighting which again turns off centrist voters. I think all parties expect UKIP to win the Euro-elections so we probably won't see much panicking but depending on how badly the Tories or Lib Dems do either could have a bit of a nervous breakdown.

Because of our system, UKIP don't need to do that well to have a big impact. If there are more hard core UKIP voters than last time, which there probably certainly are and they aren't willing to vote tactically in marginal seats to keep Miliband out then that's a big problem for the Tories. I think it's possible we could end up with the Tories winning most votes, but Labour winning most seats.

I don't see how anyone could be excited to vote in a European election.

This is a shame as the results will determine the Commission President which is one of the most important figures in the EU, but you're right.

That is totally different from a national election. Just as the lib dems faded to a very poor showing last time, I am sure the UKIP will fade as well, and Cameron has stolen a lot of their thunder by promising a referendum.

They lost seats, but gained votes and that poor showing was still one of their best ever. The Lib Dems are in a peacetime government for the first time (in a way) since the 20s. They didn't do as well as the polling said during the height of Cleggmania, but they've played a major part in breaking two-party politics in this country. In addition, to repeat, the Lib Dems are in government. They used to attract a lot of protest votes. That's more difficult when you're in a ministerial Jag.

It's striking that Farage says he's consciously modelling UKIP right now on the Lib Dems thirty years ago. Build your local party networks up through Euro and Council elections (they're on the same day). When there's a by-election swarm into the place so it's absolutely full of UKIP activists and then try and target seats cannily at a general election - for example the Lib Dems lost votes from 1992 to 1997 but more than doubled their seats because of tactical voting.

There's an upcoming by-election in Newark. The mainstream press were full of talk over whether Farage would run and he declined. They then spent the next few days saying that he'd wimped out and UKIP had peaked.  But Farage got to spend all that time saying he didn't think he'd run because he didn't have any connection with that area and basically that he didn't want to carpetbag. I think that message will have had far more traction than the 'he's bottled it' version. There's also rumours Labour are going to semi-deliberately lose in the hope of UKIP winning causing the Tories to go insane.

UKIP get most of their support from immigration, not Europe (I think even UKIP supporters only rank Europe as the third most important issue), and, according to the polls, their strong supporters (including ex-Tories) loathe Cameron. They don't see a difference between him or Miliband. They hate them all. As Rentoul says, it's an anti-politics party.

The UK's not that different from other Euro-countries which have seen a populist/anti-politics right emerge: our political class is hated (especially after expenses) the usual beneficiary (the Lib Dems) are in office, the opposition are uninspired and the ones who presided over the crash. They won't do well because of our voting system, but because of that they could tilt the balance.

[Tamas]

I don't think Thatcher was particularly noted for her fiscal responsibility, and socialism definitely isn't the antithesis of fiscal responsibility.

Yeah. If anything I think the 80s are seen as a wasted opportunity. We found gas in the North Sea and instead of using that finite gain to set up a national pension fund or hiving it off for something useful like that, Thatcher used it to reduce the deficit (without having to cut spending too much) and to fund tax cuts.

In retrospect a mistake.

IDK man. Venezuela and Iran channelled the oil wealth to the poor in form of various subsidies. Much good it has done.

[Agelastus]

That is totally different from a national election. Just as the lib dems faded to a very poor showing last time, I am sure the UKIP will fade as well, and Cameron has stolen a lot of their thunder by promising a referendum.

I haven't decided whether or not to vote UKIP in the Euros (mentally it's surprisingly hard to make a change after so many decades of voting Tory) but Cameron's got my vote in the next General Election for two reasons.

(1) He's promised me what I want - a referendum (and despite the fact I like several of UKIP's policies towards Defence and the NHS etc. I'm one of the odd UKIP voters where Europe is the most important issue to me.)

and

(2) If I vote UKIP I risk letting Milliband in - and the thought of Labour being in charge again when still run by most of the people who literally pissed money up the wall during the Blair premiership is personally revolting to me.

Of course, if Cameron wins and then weasels out of his 2017 promise (presumably on the grounds of "I haven't got a deal I want to put to the vote" which seems the most likely outcome) then I don't know who I'll support in future.

----------

Sheilbh I'm not sure I entirely agree with you that our political class is hated; I think even before the expenses scandals broke that there was more of a sense of resignation concerning them. That's why the attack on Farage for employing his wife didn't work since it was simply what we expect of our current politicians ("employing a family member - so what? They all do it. Fiddling expenses? What's new?") It's also why I'm not convinced that the "protest vote" proportion of UKIP's support isn't a tad overstated.

I do think it'll be interesting to see what the turnout figures are for the next General Election; I've got the nasty feeling it'll be a record low.

[Agelastus]

I don't think Thatcher was particularly noted for her fiscal responsibility, and socialism definitely isn't the antithesis of fiscal responsibility.

Yeah. If anything I think the 80s are seen as a wasted opportunity. We found gas in the North Sea and instead of using that finite gain to set up a national pension fund or hiving it off for something useful like that, Thatcher used it to reduce the deficit (without having to cut spending too much) and to fund tax cuts.

In retrospect a mistake.

IDK man. Venezuela and Iran channelled the oil wealth to the poor in form of various subsidies. Much good it has done.

At the time I thought it was fine; now I wish we'd diverted at least a proportion of it into a Norway style sovereign wealth fund. Some of it had to be used to cushion the effects of the various reforms of the Eighties but not all of it.

[Tamas]

So I take I have until 2017 here then? A lot of you Brits seem to have serious doubts about the merits of not being closed off from Europe via tariff zones and the like. If the UKIP can gain such popularity on that issue alone, who knows how that referendum will go.