What Ukip wants: get Farage elected, then prepare for a Labour collapse in the north

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[/audioplayer]In Ukip’s Mayfair headquarters there is a copy of Banksy’s monkey with the sign around its neck: ‘Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge’. It seems appropriate. For years, Nigel Farage and his party were dismissed as a bunch of cranks. Within three months, they could be propping up David Cameron’s government, having named their price — perhaps an EU referendum before the year is out. Conservatives stopped sneering at Ukip a while ago. Now they’re more worried about its ambitions. What does Ukip want? Will it attack from the left or the right? Ukip tends not to show people around its HQ: it mistrusts the media. It revels in its reputation as a shambolic salt-of-the-earth party whose policies are decided after the fifth pint rather than endlessly tested on focus groups. But now, with the election nine weeks away, Ukip is changing.