Ukip

Let’s be honest, just for a moment. The Rochester and Strood by-election has been a disgrace. It has been a sewer race during which the two leading protagonists have done their best to demonstrate their lack of fitness for office. In this, if nothing else, they have been successful. I wouldn’t expect anything better from Mark Reckless and Ukip. We know who they are; the type of people they are. So it’s no great surprise that Reckless is happy to allow people to think Ukip’s revolution will lead to the repatriation of immigrants. As usual, Ukip are living down to expectations. But so, alas, are the Conservatives. Their own candidate,

Can you out-Ukip Ukip? Depending on which day of the week it is, both mainstream political parties think you can and you can’t. Last week Ed Miliband said you couldn’t and that he wouldn’t, arguing that it was about time someone levelled with Nigel Farage’s party. Yesterday Yvette Cooper announced tough immigration measures that some in her party thought suggested Labour was trying to chase Ukip. The Tories have the same struggle. One of the problems for both Tories and Labour is that it is unhealthy for them to allow Ukip to become in effect a think tank that sets policy for other parties by spooking their own MPs. This

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_Nov_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss the Rochester by-election” startat=624] Listen [/audioplayer]In a corner of the Ukip campaign office in Rochester, a light-up orb is spinning, with the words ‘Vote Mark Reckless’ endlessly switching from yellow to purple. It’s hypnotic, if disconcerting, but also unnecessary because voters don’t need to be persuaded to vote for him. The by-election that Ukip thought would be a tricky one is turning out to be easier than anyone predicted. Poll after poll has put Mark Reckless as the winner of next week’s vote, and fewer and fewer Tories privately think that their party will win. Yet the Tories were boasting at their

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_Nov_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and John Harris discusses the plight of progressives” startat=36] Listen [/audioplayer]Ed Miliband is the least of Labour’s problems. Its troubles go far deeper than any individual. They are structural and, potentially, fatal. It is certainly easier for Labour MPs, and ultimately more comforting, to concentrate on Miliband’s deficiencies as a leader than the existential crisis facing the left. But until somebody comes up with an answer to the question of what the party is for — in an era of austerity and globalisation — it will be stuck in a death spiral. The Labour party has always believed in spending money for the common good. Public

The Tories have pulled ahead of Labour in a new poll in today’s Evening Standard. The Ipsos Mori poll puts David Cameron’s party three points ahead of Labour, at 32, and Labour down four points to 29. The Lib Dems are on 9 and Ukip 14. This poll is just one poll, Labour will say, as it tries to stop more panic breaking out ahead of Miliband’s speech tomorrow. But it is a bad poll, the worst poll for Labour so far. The Labour leader does need to reassure his party that going neck-and-neck and sometimes behind the Tories is not a symptom of Labour’s weaknesses but a feature of

Well this is a pleasant surprise. After all the years of indifference, David Cameron has condescended to notice us. Not just notice us but want us too. His come-hither smiles and fluttering eyelashes are enough to bring a blush to the cheek. Faced with losing yet another by-election, the Prime Minister is telling  Labour and Liberal Democrat voters that they (we) should vote Conservative to stop Ukip in Rochester and – presumably – in every seat in Britain where Ukip is a contender come May. OK, I can hear my friends and comrades asking: what’s the deal? What do we get in return for calming our heaving stomachs and handing

Interviews with Ukip bigwigs used to happen in pubs. But times are changing. When I meet Patrick O’Flynn — the party’s economics spokesman, and until recently chief spin doctor — it’s in a juice bar. O’Flynn, a former political editor of the Daily Express who studied economics at Cambridge, is one of those driving Ukip towards professionalism. Ukip, he says, is the only party he’s ever joined, and it is ‘not part of the Conservative family’. That is why he rates its chances in northern Labour seats: ‘We didn’t close down any coal mines or steelworks and we’re not known as the patrician Home Counties rich people’s party.’ He claims,

It is interesting that neither Scotland nor Wales have been much bitten by the Ukip bug. The supposedly sensible view is that both of these countries are more kindly disposed towards the European Union than are the English — and that Ukip’s contempt for the European Parliament and its politicians is seen as another example of that rather too familiar English jingoism and xenophobia, commodities which are not terribly popular either north of Berwick or west of Monmouth. It is also sometimes mentioned that immigration is far less of an issue in Wales and Scotland — unless we are talking about English immigration, which does indeed tend to make the