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Captain Starlet wrote: It's hardly a ukip victory being the last larger fringe party to actually get an elected seat! The Greens and respect beat them to that long ago, but you won't hear that being celebrated in the press!
Also how did they win exactly? Carswell was already the MP there, already in parliament who defected last minute to ukip. People would have voted for him anyway as he was their MP and clearly liked in the area. So this isn't a ukip victory at all it's just a vote for carswell and maintaining the status quo in the area.
After approx 17 years of ukip to finally get 1 mp in parliament with a 36% turnout should be seen for exactly what it is, a huge failure to gain momentum and curry favour of the opinion of the country.
I'd tend to go along with a lot of what you have to say, though I'd also sound a note of caution. Historically, small parties in the UK have generally gotten nowhere near actual power. And the notion that UKIP will have a significant number of MPs after the next election seems fanciful.
More than that, while all political parties succumb to a certain amount of infighting and factionalism, it tends to destroy smaller parties and those who don't represent broad mainstream views; whereas large, centrist parties can generally shed fringe members without a fatal split occurring.
This tendency to split is especially true whenever small parties get even a whiff of power. Witness the rapid disintegration of the BNP as soon as they'd got themselves an MEP or two. It wouldn't surprise me if UKIP win a handful of seats in the next election and collapse as a party within two years, half of that handful returning to the tory fold and the others queuing up to bad-mouth Farage in the tabloids as they all plan simultaneous leadership bids.
But at the same time, I wonder if that's not a bit complacent...?
I believe we're looking at some pretty tough years ahead (socially and economically). I'm of the opinion that the financial crash of 2007/2008 was merely an earth tremor ahead of a much bigger quake. And in environments such as those, there's a real danger of fringe parties gaining surprising traction.
There are plausible scenarios where UKIP actually start influencing policy more than perhaps you or I might like. Both indirectly and directly.
Even if they don't get a huge number of MPs, there are precedents that don't require a major economic downturn by which they might "share power". And that's excluding the scenario of an official coalition (which I don't think the tories would countenance for fear that it confer legitimacy on UKIP and cannibalise their own membership). All the same, there have been brief periods when the Unionists in Northern Ireland were propping up a slim tory majority, and most objective historians would agree that, behind closed doors, concessions were made to secure that support.
Again, I'm not suggesting that will happen. Past experience seems to suggest it's very rare. But it's not such a completely insane idea that those of a leftist bent shouldn't be at least a little bit concerned about it.
For me the nightmare scenario for Britain would be a solid showing for UKIP (7+ MPs), a collapse of the LibDems and a razor-thin Labour majority. Miliband has already found himself dragged ever further to the right by the sheer weight of the media presence given to the UKIP / tory discussion and it'd only get worse if that discussion relocated to the House of Commons. His inability to forge a distinct voice for Labour and instead chase UKIP, Osborne and Boris Johnson rightwards would paralyse the government who would almost certainly end up with rebels on their own backbenches.
Then, come the first major crisis, the Labour government will be unable to cope, UKIP won't have had time to implode and an early election will see them capitalise hugely on Labour's split into "Labour Left" and "Labour Right". Prime Minister Boris Johnson won't have any choice but seek coalition with a UKIP that now occupies 43 seats in the Commons. The snap referendum sees the Euro-Out side win by 55% to 45%. Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland all fail to qualify for the next world cup.
OK, OK, so the fiction writer in me got caught up in the dystopian potential there. But strip away the hyperbole and I think there's a point in there somewhere. Farage is likely to self-destruct, and let's all keep our fingers crossed that he does.
But at the same time... I'm not nearly as confident about that happening as I was with Nick Griffin or James Goldsmith or Robert Kilroy-Silk. For a start, the mainstream media is treating him very very differently, and that's no small thing.
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