Election results prove Ukip can damage Labour as well as Tories
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Version 0 of 1. The fox is in the Westminster henhouse. The first tremors of the political earthquake have been felt. The canary may even be asphyxiated in the coal mine. Whatever the chosen metaphor, four-party politics has arrived in Britain, and the only question is whether it will ever go away. Labour can fairly claim it is doing marginally better than the first local election results indicated on Thursday night, but Nigel Farage can reasonably say now that Ukip has an imprint in local government under a first-past-the-post system. And he is promising that the imprint will deepen, and provide the basis to win constituency seats in the general election. The results have also confirmed, if confirmation was needed, that Ukip can damage Labour as much as the Conservatives, meaning both main parties need to throw out the old methods to project swings and to forecast the marginal seats it will gain. For instance, in the West Midlands a strong Ukip performance has meant Labour has not made the gains it had hoped in Birmingham, Dudley and Walsall. "Worcester man" has also not gone Labour. In traditional Labour heartlands, such as Rotherham, Ukip came first in 10, and 2nd in 11 of the 21 seats it fought. Equally, Ukip's performance in the east of England suggests some of the gains the Tories need to secure an overall Commons majority will be elusive. Thatcher's "(South) Essex man" is morphing into Ukip man. Thurrock, Basildon and Castle Point are all in play for the UK Independence party. The exception for the moment seems to be London. The capital has its own house prices, its own multi-cultural population and now, almost its own politics. The city that spawned the recession seems to be the part of the country least hit by its consequences, and most willing to back Labour. There will be exceptions, such as Barking, where the former BNP vote is likely to head to Ukip. The impressive Labour gains in London also reflect the strength of the activist base in the capital where its "get out the vote" operation had some successes. One Labour strategist insisted: "I would rather be where we are this morning than where [Conservative party campaign consultant] Lynton Crosby is. There is a massive wave sweeping over politics called four-party politics. But there is also a strong current to Labour. We think we will make over 200 gains." The sources continued to insist that Labour was winning where it mattered and pointed to good results outside London in Cambridge, Lincoln, Amber Valley Peterborough and Carlisle. Labour accepts that by the time of the general election next year the Ukip vote will not have shrunk back to the 3% it secured in the 2010 general election, but it still believes that the bulk of the Ukip damage then will be inflicted on the Conservatives. Still, there will be a deep inquest into the Labour campaign, and why it has been as much the victim of the anti-politics mood as the governing parties. The doorstep issue of Ed Miliband exists. Parts of the campaign malfunctioned: if you are planning to take Swindon council, you need to know the name of the Labour leader on said council; if you are campaigning on the cost of living, you need to know the cost of living. But Miliband insists he understands the discontent in the communities that have voted Ukip and is assembling the practical policies to address an anger with politics that has been building for decades. It is the approach Barack Obama took with the Tea Party in the US. It means no name-calling, but addressing the causes of the discontent instead. That said, Miliband put out a lot of policy in this campaign and it seems not to have had enough of an effect on the doorstep. The Labour backbench will now demand a much more explicit attack on Ukip. Some Labour MPs, such as John Spellar, John Healey, Peter Hain and John Mann, have long been arguing for the party to go on the front foot about Ukip, exposing them as modern-day Thatcherites bent on flat taxes and NHS privatisation. At one point, there was a plan to go after Ukip at the start of the campaign, but it was shelved. Miliband has only a year to win over this disillusioned vote. The chair of the British Future thinktank, Sunder Katwala, has already divided Ukip support into three groups, each of broadly similar size: "tactical Ukip", "engage-able Ukip" and "rejectionist Ukip". Tactical Ukip was simply lending its vote to Farage for the purposes of the European campaign, he says. Rejectionist Ukip is irreconcilable with the political class. Engage-able Ukip voters, he says, "are those who could vote for a major party in 2015 which is still making a credible pitch for a broad enough electoral coalition to seek to govern. These are the voters who will make the difference between Ukip scoring 6% or reaching 10-12% or higher in the general election, and may determine the success or failure for their major rivals too" . Cameron thinks that by pointing to the threat of Miliband in Downing Street he has the secret weapon to win back defectors to Ukip. Equally, Miliband thinks traditional Labour voters will recoil at the thought of a second term for Cameron, and Ukip's appeal to older white working-class men does not mean Labour will lose heartland seats. The next year will reveal the truth. |