Ukip media chief admits general election goal requires broader agenda
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Version 0 of 1. A leading member of Ukip has said the party will have to work hard to broaden its agenda and to overcome its weaknesses if its leader, Nigel Farage, is to achieve a breakthrough in next year's general election. As the government responded to the Ukip threat by saying it would halve the amount of time for which EU migrants can claim benefits, Ukip's director of communications, Patrick O'Flynn, admitted the party was struggling in London. O'Flynn also played down expectations of a Ukip win in the Newark byelection on 5 June, when the Tories will defend a majority of 16,152. "Newark is the equivalent of going from base camp to the summit of Mount Everest in about half an hour but we're going to give it a really good crack," he told BBC1's Sunday Politics programme, in a marked change of tone from Farage's confident predictions of a Ukip win in the European elections. The cautious approach by Ukip, which is to target 20 to 30 parliamentary seats in the east of England outside its weak spot of London next May, came as the three main parties at Westminster dealt with the fallout from Ukip's success in the local elections, in which it gained 161 seats. The results were mixed for Ukip as its projected share of the national vote in the local elections fell by six points compared with last year, from 23% to 17%, according to the BBC. It is difficult to make an exact comparison between the two years because all seats in the London boroughs, where Ukip struggles, were up for election. The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, was fighting off a challenge to his leadership from the left of his party as Labour and the Tories moved to win back Ukip voters. Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, said he aimed to halve the amount of time for which EU migrants can claim benefits. The former shadow home secretary David Davis called on the prime minister to bring forward the date of his planned EU referendum by a year to 2016. Frank Field, the Labour former welfare reform minister, warned his party would suffer permanent damage unless it acknowledged the concerns of voters on immigration as he said that Ukip could lead to a "permanent balkanisation of the old two-party system". Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, will move to show he acknowledges the threat posed by Ukip on Tuesday when he visits the marginal constituency of Thurrock, where his party lost control of the council after a strong showing by Farage's party. Douglas Alexander, the Labour election co-ordinator, has faced criticism for playing down the Ukip threat on the grounds that a strong showing by the party would disadvantage the Tories. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, underlined the irritation in the shadow cabinet that the Labour leadership had failed to campaign on immigration early enough when he said the party needed to speak more loudly on the issue. Field warned Labour could suffer permanent damage unless it reached out to voters attracted by Ukip's message on immigration. He said: "Ukip's success is a major signpost on the road to the permanent balkanisation of the old two-party system … We have yet to notice that Ukip has transformed itself in the last few months from being an anti-EU party to one opposed to the current scale of immigration. Labour has yet to convince its core vote or ex-core vote that it has an answer on this score. "Our [policy] review needs to present key policies that give us a new narrative that the centre-left voter wants to hear as opposed to what we want to tell them. If this chance is lost, to realign what Labour stands for, the outlook is grim. We will open up the possibility of a clear Tory win next year." Rachel Reeves, the shadow work and pensions secretary, told the Murnaghan programme on Sky News on Sunday: "We've got to do more to explain our policies and show them [voters] that we are on their side. And that is work in progress, more to do before the next election, but we are clearly moving in the right direction." As part of the Tory response on immigration, Duncan Smith said he would halve – from six to three months – the amount time that EU migrants can claim benefits. He told the Sunday Times: "Before this year is out I intend to have reduced that six months to a three-month period of claim. That means you'll have to wait three months and you'll only be able to claim for three months. Then it's bye-bye. That's quite a significant tightening up." But Theresa May, the home secretary, indicated on Sunday that the Tories had failed to win the agreement of their Lib Dem coalition partners, as she spoke of "heated" exchanges on immigration. She told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: "We're looking at a number of measures and it's no surprise to anybody that there have been some longstanding, possibly heated at times, discussions among the coalition on some of these issues on immigration." The home secretary watered down the Tory commitment to bring down net migration to the tens of thousands by the general election, saying the proposal was now a long-term "aim". May insisted progress had been made on reducing immigration, saying that 70,000 fewer people had emigrated to the UK last year than in 2010, when the coalition was formed. But she said the government was highly unlikely to meet the Tory target of cutting net migration by the time of the next general election because immigration had increased from within the EU. "We still have that aim of the tens of thousands, but of course it has become more difficult. Net migration is too high," said May. "That is why I want to continue working to bring it down. What we see is in those areas which we can control, that is immigration from outside the EU, everything we have done as a government has been having an impact. And so we see that net migration from outside the EU is down to its lowest level since the late 1990s." |