Ukip

It has been clear for several years now that the Tories would not agree to a repeat of 2010 when there were three debates in three weeks featuring the Tory, Labour and Lib Dem leaders. The Tories complain that these debates sucked the life out of the campaign—but the fact that they didn’t benefit from the debates is another reason they soured on them. This time round, the Tories have made noises about favouring a direct Cameron-Miliband head to head debate but have not committed to anything. Indeed, some Tories worry that expectations are so low for Miliband that he would be the beneficiary of any debate between the two.

Ever the insurgent, Nigel Farage decided to give his post-Clacton interview to BBC Sunday Politics today rather than Andrew Marr show. He would have regretted fairly soon: the line of questioning was all about Ukip policies, which are notoriously flimsy. What about Patrick O’Flynn’s idea for a SamCam tax on luxury goods? Farage dropped it, but said today there was nothing to drop. He once said on Telegraph TV that the NHS should be run by businessmen – is that Ukip policy? There’s a “very strong argument” for that, he said, but was it policy? He didn’t say. Lucky the BBC’s current inability to beam in an interview in to

Why are the Conservatives so serene after losing the Clacton by-election and seeing their vote collapse in Heywood and Middleton? It is not that the party has finally decided endless fighting is no longer a good idea, but that it is holding its breath for the Rochester and Strood by-election. If Mark Reckless, the second Ukip defector, wins this, then the meltdown in David Cameron’s party will make the Labour response this week look positively icy. The Tories had quickly accepted Douglas Carswell would win in Clacton and so there was little excuse for even their more febrile factions to panic. But the party believes it has a good chance

Al Gore is an unlikely source of inspiration for Ukip – in fact the party once pledged to ban the former Vice President’s controversial climate change documentary from schools, calling it dangerous global warming ‘propaganda’. But might they have more in common than either of them would care to admit? During the count for the Heywood and Middleton by-election last night, Nigel Farage conceded defeat in the race early in the night, only to demand a recount hours later once it started looking very tight; just as Al Gore did in the 2000 US election. Not that it did either of them much good.

2.50am Douglas Carswell’s victory speech, after winning a 12,404 majority, was not triumphalist: there was no tub-thumping. Instead, he said that Ukip must be the party of 1st and 2nd generation Britons, that its passion must be tempered by compassion and argued that the era of dominant cartel was coming to an end in everything from banking to politics. listen to ‘Douglas Carswell’s Clacton victory speech’ on audioBoom 2.45 Ukip win Clacton, Douglas Carswell is Ukip’s first elected MP with more than 60% of the vote 2.35am Result coming very soon now 2.15 The BBC’s Chris Mason is reporting that Douglas Carswell will have a 12 thousand plus majority, a quite remarkable

The former Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, has agreed to talk to members of Ukip about ‘Magna Carta and the Perfectly Virtuous Pages of our History’. I blogged earlier about the bishop’s bravery in calling on Rome to defend Christians from Islamism, and in the process endorsed the Catholic Ordinariate for ex-Anglicans. But this demonstrates courage of an entirely different order. The Church of England is divided on the subject of bloodthirsty radical Islam but of one mind when it comes to Ukip: They’re the BNP in blazers and that’s that. Vicars know perfectly well that members of their congregations will vote for Britain’s new third party next year but they’d rather

Well! Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian was impressed by David Cameron’s conference speech and no mistake. The campaign for 2015 has begun. On Wednesday, in what may well have been his sharpest, most effective speech since becoming prime minister, David Cameron fired the starting gun. In the process, he lodged at least a couple of deadly bullets into the flesh of his Labour opponents. The result – whatever the polls might say – is that after a fortnight of duelling party conferences, Cameron’s Conservative troops believe they are marching towards a contest in which they now hold the advantage. That’s partly down to what the prime minister did in Birmingham.