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| Local elections results: panel verdict | Local elections results: panel verdict |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| Simon Jenkins: A protest vote has acquired backbone | Simon Jenkins: A protest vote has acquired backbone |
| There is no doubt of the victor. The UK Independence party is the new kid on the electoral block and looking good. The key statistic in the local elections is overall poll share. At the time of writing that is one quarter, and it is well distributed, double their performance in the opinion polls. | There is no doubt of the victor. The UK Independence party is the new kid on the electoral block and looking good. The key statistic in the local elections is overall poll share. At the time of writing that is one quarter, and it is well distributed, double their performance in the opinion polls. |
| Ukip showed strongly from South Shields in the north to Hampshire in the south. It hurt everyone, shaving Labour, humiliating the Liberal Democrats as never before and leaving the Tories with heavy loss of blood. | Ukip showed strongly from South Shields in the north to Hampshire in the south. It hurt everyone, shaving Labour, humiliating the Liberal Democrats as never before and leaving the Tories with heavy loss of blood. |
| The trouble for the Tories is that a customary mid-term protest vote has acquired backbone from three hardcore issues: immigration, Europe and gay marriage. It is hard to see how David Cameron can produce policies that will calm his worried party in the time available. If he were to try on immigration or Europe he could hardly hold his coalition together – though he might argue that no one wants an early election less than Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats. | |
| Splinter parties on the extremes rarely threaten entrenched parties in the long term. Core votes may defect for a while, but have no other place to go when the reason for defection diminishes. But politics is about the short term. Ukip is in a similar position to the Social Democratic party in 1981. It devastated Michael Foot's Labour and helped keep it from office through three subsequent elections. It recovered only when completely recast – in the SDP's image – by Tony Blair. That is the prospect now facing the Conservatives. | Splinter parties on the extremes rarely threaten entrenched parties in the long term. Core votes may defect for a while, but have no other place to go when the reason for defection diminishes. But politics is about the short term. Ukip is in a similar position to the Social Democratic party in 1981. It devastated Michael Foot's Labour and helped keep it from office through three subsequent elections. It recovered only when completely recast – in the SDP's image – by Tony Blair. That is the prospect now facing the Conservatives. |
| Jonathan Freedland: Ukip has cross-country appeal | Jonathan Freedland: Ukip has cross-country appeal |
| Even before the day had begun, when votes had been counted for just seven of the 35 councils up for election, Ukip could claim to have won a great prize: the right to regard themselves as a challenge to every party, everywhere. | Even before the day had begun, when votes had been counted for just seven of the 35 councils up for election, Ukip could claim to have won a great prize: the right to regard themselves as a challenge to every party, everywhere. |
| Consider this fact. Only one party managed to clear the 20% threshold in both the South Shields byelection last night and the parliamentary contest in Eastleigh in February. That was not Labour, which safely won in the former last night, after it had trailed in fourth in the latter. It certainly was not the Tories, who came third in both places. And it emphatically was not the Liberal Democrats who managed to retain Eastleigh, but won a miserable 352 votes – half those of the BNP – to come seventh in South Shields. | Consider this fact. Only one party managed to clear the 20% threshold in both the South Shields byelection last night and the parliamentary contest in Eastleigh in February. That was not Labour, which safely won in the former last night, after it had trailed in fourth in the latter. It certainly was not the Tories, who came third in both places. And it emphatically was not the Liberal Democrats who managed to retain Eastleigh, but won a miserable 352 votes – half those of the BNP – to come seventh in South Shields. |
| Only Ukip performed strongly in both these seats, one in the heart of traditionally Tory southern England, the other in a northern Labour stronghold – claiming nearly 28% in the first and 24% in the second. | Only Ukip performed strongly in both these seats, one in the heart of traditionally Tory southern England, the other in a northern Labour stronghold – claiming nearly 28% in the first and 24% in the second. |
| To have such wide geographic appeal, taking on both government and opposition, is a feat rarely achieved by a third party, let alone a fourth. | To have such wide geographic appeal, taking on both government and opposition, is a feat rarely achieved by a third party, let alone a fourth. |
| It's early in the day; we still await four-fifths of the council election results. And, yes, protest parties that do well in midterm or local elections usually fade come the general election that chooses a government. But this represents a huge step forward by Ukip, a protest party that, of course, threatens the Tories above all – but which now represents a challenge that will be felt in every corner of Westminster. | It's early in the day; we still await four-fifths of the council election results. And, yes, protest parties that do well in midterm or local elections usually fade come the general election that chooses a government. But this represents a huge step forward by Ukip, a protest party that, of course, threatens the Tories above all – but which now represents a challenge that will be felt in every corner of Westminster. |
| Polly Toynbee: Next year will be as good as it gets for the Faragistes | Polly Toynbee: Next year will be as good as it gets for the Faragistes |
| Didn't Ukip do well? But the party had better relish the day and revel to the max. I'm going to take a risk and predict that this and probably next year's Euro elections will be its peak, as good as it gets. There is no better time for a protest vote, nor have their been better reasons to protest in most people's living memory. Living standards have dipped low and long, with not much hope in prospect. Immigration has always been the age-old issue that rises up when the low paid feel the pinch: blame the foreigners is the easy weapon to hand, when distant forces too great to grasp grind people down. Besides, there is some truth that the lowest paid have paid the price of immigration. | Didn't Ukip do well? But the party had better relish the day and revel to the max. I'm going to take a risk and predict that this and probably next year's Euro elections will be its peak, as good as it gets. There is no better time for a protest vote, nor have their been better reasons to protest in most people's living memory. Living standards have dipped low and long, with not much hope in prospect. Immigration has always been the age-old issue that rises up when the low paid feel the pinch: blame the foreigners is the easy weapon to hand, when distant forces too great to grasp grind people down. Besides, there is some truth that the lowest paid have paid the price of immigration. |
| But come the general election things will turn less favourable for the Faragistes. The unforgiving logic of our first-past-the-post electoral system crushes incomers: I know, I've been there with the SDP, which at one stage hit 50% in the polls. Who governs the country matters more than who governs the county, sending people back to vote for their least worst likely winner. Besides, once Ukip is under real scrutiny – and attack from the Tory press – slashing tax while increasing defence spending by 40% is just one of its impossible policies that will puncture the lilo. What's more, rightwing mavericks have form for falling apart once they arrive in council chambers. | But come the general election things will turn less favourable for the Faragistes. The unforgiving logic of our first-past-the-post electoral system crushes incomers: I know, I've been there with the SDP, which at one stage hit 50% in the polls. Who governs the country matters more than who governs the county, sending people back to vote for their least worst likely winner. Besides, once Ukip is under real scrutiny – and attack from the Tory press – slashing tax while increasing defence spending by 40% is just one of its impossible policies that will puncture the lilo. What's more, rightwing mavericks have form for falling apart once they arrive in council chambers. |
| Nonetheless, warning lights should flash. The Tories will turn reckless right, losing the last shreds of pretending to be nice. Labour will agonise: go right, say the Blairites, hug the middle way. Others will say the only way is bold: cautious establishment mush, double-speak and ambiguity only makes people despair of politics. They didn't like Thatcher or her policies, but her clarity and determination won the day. We need not watch Ukip too closely, but watch what Ukip does to the only two contenders for 2015. | Nonetheless, warning lights should flash. The Tories will turn reckless right, losing the last shreds of pretending to be nice. Labour will agonise: go right, say the Blairites, hug the middle way. Others will say the only way is bold: cautious establishment mush, double-speak and ambiguity only makes people despair of politics. They didn't like Thatcher or her policies, but her clarity and determination won the day. We need not watch Ukip too closely, but watch what Ukip does to the only two contenders for 2015. |
| John Harris: Ukip can now weave itself into the social fabric | John Harris: Ukip can now weave itself into the social fabric |
| "An astounding performance of a historic scale," says the psephologist John Curtice of the great Ukip surge, and he's not wrong. Sixteen councillors in Lincolnshire, 10 in Hampshire, nine in Essex – and so the list will go on as results are announced through the day, and Tory headaches grow ever-more painful. Metropolitan political commentary pays too little attention to local government, and the upshot of these results is simple enough: Nigel Farage's party now has the basis of an English national infrastructure, and a means by which its activists can be introduced to the grind of public office. Some, perhaps, will find it a shock. But for the next four years at least, Ukip can weave itself into the social fabric of scores of neighbourhoods. | "An astounding performance of a historic scale," says the psephologist John Curtice of the great Ukip surge, and he's not wrong. Sixteen councillors in Lincolnshire, 10 in Hampshire, nine in Essex – and so the list will go on as results are announced through the day, and Tory headaches grow ever-more painful. Metropolitan political commentary pays too little attention to local government, and the upshot of these results is simple enough: Nigel Farage's party now has the basis of an English national infrastructure, and a means by which its activists can be introduced to the grind of public office. Some, perhaps, will find it a shock. But for the next four years at least, Ukip can weave itself into the social fabric of scores of neighbourhoods. |
| Nice to see the Greens winning two seats in Essex, but the message sent out to the left by Ukip's rise is sobering beyond words: after years of wondering what a crack in mainstream politics might look like, there comes a huge fissure – and the people responsible hail from the populist right. And what does it speak of? Anger and bafflement – "protest", if you prefer – about immigration and so-called "welfare", for sure. But also a profound cultural estrangement from Westminster, and an anodyne political class whose inadequacies were always going to spark public anger, not least in the midst of an economic crisis seemingly without end. | Nice to see the Greens winning two seats in Essex, but the message sent out to the left by Ukip's rise is sobering beyond words: after years of wondering what a crack in mainstream politics might look like, there comes a huge fissure – and the people responsible hail from the populist right. And what does it speak of? Anger and bafflement – "protest", if you prefer – about immigration and so-called "welfare", for sure. But also a profound cultural estrangement from Westminster, and an anodyne political class whose inadequacies were always going to spark public anger, not least in the midst of an economic crisis seemingly without end. |
| Such is the message for Labour from South Shields, though there obviously are even sharper signals from these results for the Conservative party. I was in Essex with Ukip on Wednesday, and among voters of a certain age, there was bafflement about the Tories' modern public face, and a nostalgic yearning for the days of Thatcher, Norman Tebbit, and such past local MPs as Teddy Taylor and Teresa Gorman. The merits or demerits of what the government is up to are secondary: the people I spoke to see Cameron and Osborne as representatives of the same alien tribe as Tony Blair, and long for politicians who instinctively understand the nitty-gritty of their lives, and cannot quite understand why the Tories' once rock-solid bond with the south-eastern working class has been so neglected. Similar questions, I would imagine, will be eating away at more clued-up Tories throughout the weekend, and beyond. | Such is the message for Labour from South Shields, though there obviously are even sharper signals from these results for the Conservative party. I was in Essex with Ukip on Wednesday, and among voters of a certain age, there was bafflement about the Tories' modern public face, and a nostalgic yearning for the days of Thatcher, Norman Tebbit, and such past local MPs as Teddy Taylor and Teresa Gorman. The merits or demerits of what the government is up to are secondary: the people I spoke to see Cameron and Osborne as representatives of the same alien tribe as Tony Blair, and long for politicians who instinctively understand the nitty-gritty of their lives, and cannot quite understand why the Tories' once rock-solid bond with the south-eastern working class has been so neglected. Similar questions, I would imagine, will be eating away at more clued-up Tories throughout the weekend, and beyond. |