Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Tory party that is spooked by UKIP is a Tory party that will lose the next election

UKIP are buoyant and, all of a sudden, everyone’s favourite protest-group. In a curious way, the confirmation that many of their candidates really are boggle-minded, eyes-popped extremists of one stamp or another almost helps UKIP. It confirms that they’re not like the other political parties and encourages people to adopt them as the Sod it, I’m just mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more party. (These people tend not to be attracted to libertarian parties; just as well UKIP is not a libertarian party.)

But UKIP should enjoy this moment while they can. They will remain a presence on the political scene and they will fare splendidly at the next elections to the european parliament. Nevertheless, Farage-Mania seems likely to have a pretty short half-life. Its quite possible that I may be mistaken about this but it seems to me that the Tory reaction to UKIP’s successes this week will be more interesting than those successes.

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