Dealing with the UKIP threat

How do the Tories deal with UKIP? The party likes to split on most issues, and it has got a nice little fault line running across it at the moment on whether to squash the party as ‘fruitcakes’, or, as Conor Burns eloquently argued on Coffee House this morning, engage with the problems and anxieties that are driving Tory voters towards Nigel Farage. If UKIP does have a good showing in the local elections later this week, one side will blame the other for taking the wrong course. MPs like Burns will worry that colleagues such as Ken Clarke will have insulted their own voters, or that the party’s obsession with whether all those nice-sounding pledges really add up has missed the point. Those on the other side will think the party needs to be more aggressive in denouncing Farage and Co so that voters see their true colours.

Some – like Boris in today’s Telegraph – may take a more sanguine attitude, not just about the local election results, but next year’s European elections.