Politics

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_5_June_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Delingpole and Michael Heaver debate whether Ukip stands for anything” startat=1222] Listen [/audioplayer]I’m worried about Ukip. It’s possible that my concerns are entirely misplaced but let me give you some examples of what I mean. First, a tweet from Ukip’s Newark candidate Roger Helmer (whose heroic stance on energy and climate change I greatly admire): ‘Meet Robert Jenrick, the Tory candidate for Newark: Gilded youth. Posh Tory boy. London property millionaire.’ Second, the party’s official response to a local newspaper interview given by Donna Rachel Edmunds, one of Ukip’s new councillors in Lewes, East Sussex, in which she argued — on perfectly sound libertarian principles — that businesses should

It’s a constant theme of this column that today’s young need to stop whingeing about their prospects and get on with making their own future. But a quick north-of-the-border tour as official campaigning kicks off for the Scottish referendum persuades me that the pessimism of the generation about to enter the world of work is for once well justified — and may play a key role in averting the potential economic disaster of independence. When SNP leader Alex Salmond chose to give 16- and 17-year-olds a say in September’s poll, he must have presumed that teenage Scots — if they could be bothered to vote at all — would be

One of the spin-offs of Grant Shapps’ cheesy-sounding yet quite impressive ‘Team 2015’ strategy for campaigning in the local elections and now in Newark is that the energetic campaigning atmosphere seems to be making activists and MPs very happy. This sounds like a minor consideration when by-election campaigns are for winning seats, not counselling party members. But given the rather fractious few years that the Tory party has had, this is rather important. Activists and MPs need to feel  they’re sailing with the wind behind them as they approach the election, and so gathering large numbers of campaigners together at once, rather than leaving them to canvass and deliver in

The Tories are looking ever more likely to hold Newark in Thursday’s by-election. In a new poll from Lord Ashcroft this afternoon, the Conservatives are now on 47 per cent of the vote, compared to 36 per cent in the last week’s Survation poll and 53 per cent at the 2010 general election: [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/OevDw/index.html”] As you can see from the chart above, Ukip have dropped behind slightly their position last last week, but will certainly do better than their 2010 result. By-elections are notoriously hard to predict but this ultra-local poll doesn’t offer any indications that Roger Helmer has the momentum to take Newark. Labour’s vote continues to be