Ukip

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/the-snp-threat-to-westminster/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the not-very-general election” startat=780] Listen [/audioplayer]There’s normally an easy way to tell which party is losing a general election campaign. Whenever one side starts telling you to ignore the national polls and look at what is happening in certain key seats, it is a sure sign that they are in deep trouble. In this election, however, all the parties are arguing that what’s going on in their target seats matters more than the national polls. No one is keener to dispute the relevance of the national polls than the Liberal Democrats. To demonstrate that they’ll still matter after the next election — particularly

Is Douglas Carswell happily at home in Ukip? The Clacton MP’s latest policy intervention, this time on immigration, adds to the sense that his beliefs differ somewhat from his party and its leader. His op-ed in the Times today for example stated that Enoch Powell was wrong about the dangers of immigration: ‘Immigration has not been without its challenges. Yet it has been, overwhelmingly, a story of success. Britain today is more at ease with the multi-ethnic society that we have become than once seemed imaginable — and not just to Enoch Powell. Like many before and since, Powell underestimated the ability of a free society to adapt.’ Nigel Farage on the other hand has backed the ‘basic

Naturally, the parties set to benefit the most from any allegations of impropriety against MPs are the ‘anti-politics’ bunch: Ukip, the Greens and the SNP. You can always when the Greens think there are some votes to be snaffled from Labour by how quickly they issue a press release condemning the latest policy or revelations that concern the party. Today Natalie Bennett said: ‘The influence of big business in politics is corrosive, and seems to run through the veins of the entire political establishment. That’s why we need real change now.’ Jack Straw was rather swiftly suspended from the Labour Party following the publication of the joint Telegraph/Channel 4 sting. Ed

Mr S has just been flicking through the latest figures released today by the Electoral Commission, and was intrigued to see that in the last quarter Robin Birley, the half-brother of Tory MP Zac Goldsmith and New Statesman associate editor Jemima Goldsmith, has donated £55,000 to Ukip. This latest lump takes the millionaire’s donations to Farage’s self-styled ‘People’s Army’ up to £120,000. In the lead up to the election, the club wars of London have taken a political twist. With Birley and his 5 Hertford Street venue now firmly in the Ukip camp, Mr S was amused to see deadly Mayfair rival Annabel’s giving £20,000 to the Tories. The club’s proprietor Richard Caring recently

Labour’s decision to shy away from an EU referendum has cost it a senior figure. The Telegraph reveals that Harriet Yeo, the former chairman of Labour’s National Executive Committee between 2012 and 2013, has quit the party over Ed Miliband’s refusal to offer a referendum. Although she hasn’t joined Ukip, she will be lending her support to the party at the next election. Nigel Farage is naturally pleased with the news. In a statement this afternoon, he said: ‘A life long Trade Unionist and Labour Party member who served as Chair of Ed Miliband’s NEC she is yet another voice calling for Britain to have a choice about its future. We

Nigel Farage wrote in the Spectator of his struggle to complete Dry January, while Jean-Claude Juncker is reported to be partial to a glass of cognac to kick start the day. So it came as little surprise to Mr Steerpike that the leader of Ukip named the President of the European Commission as his preferred drinking partner. Asked by Jim Mellon of Master Investor who out of David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband, Jean-Claude Juncker, Hilary Clinton and Jeb Bush, he would most like to go for a pint with, Farage opted for Juncker. ‘Oh Juncker every time, top man . I don’t agree with him politically, but I tell you something, he’s got a

Voting Ukip is a state of mind, according to Nigel Farage. At his first major speech of 2015, and the campaign, in Canvey Island, Essex, Farage set out his stall for the election with the slogan ‘Believe in Britain’ — following on from his article in today’s Telegraph. He hit out at the ‘endlessly negative’ and ‘boring’ campaigns from the other political parties and promised to do things differently — especially now that he believes Labour and the Conservatives live in ‘fear’ of Ukip. There were few details in the speech of what Ukip’s manifesto will contain, just general themes: Ukip are the only party ‘redefining capitalism’ against the ‘corporatism’ of big government and

With the Tory’s Black & White Tie Ball to prepare for yesterday, it’s understandable that the brains at Conservative HQ may not have been 100 per cent focussed. This could explain why an error on the website appeared to reveal the party’s non-target seats for the election. Images of the varying candidates on the Conservative website showed in the url if they were listed as a ‘non target candidate’. Memo to Conservatives: including “Non%20target%20candidates” in URLs is a bit of a giveaway https://t.co/QGy7v7aphm pic.twitter.com/M6WCraLDVn — Phil Rodgers (@PhilRodgers) February 9, 2015 Included in the list of non-target seats were South Thanet, Boston and Skegness, and Rochester and Strood. If this is the case, it would mean the Conservatives are not

What are you doing when you vote? Much of the discussion about elections assumes – implicitly or explicitly – that voters are making a judgement about policies being put forward by the parties; that they would only vote for a party which had policies with which they broadly agreed; and, moreover, that these policies will have to form a vaguely coherent programme, and be realistic and affordable. Even allowing for that fact that we know that many voters don’t know the details of the various policies proposed, it is still widely assumed that they would care if they knew. This is why there is so much discussion of policy proposals

Last year Simon Danczuk was accused of disloyalty by his fellow Labour party members after he was photographed meeting Nigel Farage for a pint. Ed Miliband’s troupe can, however, breathe a collective sigh of relief as judging by a recent incident relations between Danczuk and Ukip members are far from friendly. The Labour MP for Rochdale has accused his Ukip opponent of dirty tactics. Danczuk claims that Mohammed Masud, the Ukip PPC for Rochdale, was thrown out of a local mosque after he tried to badmouth him. Just hearing that my UKIP opponent has been thrown out of a Rochdale mosque after trying to address the congregation & clumsily attack me! — Simon Danczuk (@SimonDanczuk) January

Ukip’s foray into animal rights campaigning is going well. After the Jewish Chronicle pointed out that Nigel Farage boasted to them that he had done a great deal of work to protect shechita, the party’s agricultural spokesman Stuart Agnew told the paper: ‘This isn’t aimed at you – it’s aimed elsewhere – it’s aimed at others. ‘You’ve been caught in the crossfire; collateral damage. You know what I mean.’ If you didn’t know what Ukip meant when it announced it would oppose non-stun slaughter of animals, then at least you know now. This isn’t so much a dog whistle as a foghorn. Who else could Agnew possibly mean when referring

One interesting nugget from Lord Ashcroft’s latest batch of polling is what his focus groups in two seats – Sutton and Cheam, and Elmet and Rothwell – had to say about the parties’ messages. Here’s a quick summary: Conservative: ‘Finish the job and get back on track’. Labour: ‘Vote Labour to save the NHS’, possibly adding ‘and stop the cuts’ or ‘and tax the rich’. Liberal Democrat: ‘Vote Lib Dem to balance the extremes – to split the difference’. Ukip: ‘Leave the EU and control immigration.’ Greens: ‘Vote Green to save the planet.’ Ashcroft was also struck by the cut-through achieved by the Greens’ now-defunct policy of decriminalising membership of