The Guardian view on Ukip conference: Nigel Farage’s phoney flutter

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/26/editorial-ukip-conference-farage-phoney-flutter

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Every year, Ukip’s annual conference gets more media attention than it did the year before. This year’s conference, which began in Doncaster on 26 September, is no exception. The combination of party leader Nigel Farage and a racecourse, where the conference is being held, comes gift-wrapped for sketch-writers and provides an irresistible photo opportunity. But there is a serious political horse-race taking place in Doncaster too. Ukip has had an outstanding electoral year, topping the poll in the European parliament elections in May and making serious inroads in local government too. In two weeks’ time, byelections in the Essex seat of Clacton and the Lancashire seat of Heywood and Middleton could produce Ukip’s first elected MP. And then there’s May’s general election, in which Ukip’s performance may decide the government of the UK. No one can pretend that Ukip doesn’t matter any longer.

Ukip is trying to present itself this week as a changed party. It used to be a single-issue party, the argument goes, in which the EU and, more recently, immigration have been the causes that have attracted voter support. Now, Ukip argues, the party is the focus of a wider insurgency against the established political class more generally. Ukip now claims to be the party that will change the political system, not just get Britain out of Europe. After the near-death experience of the UK political class in Scotland last week, Mr Farage is offering to do in England what Alex Salmond so nearly did in Scotland. Ukip has come north to offer itself as a party for blue-collar voters.

It is a fraudulent offer. In the first place, there is no disputing that the SNP talks the talk of a leftwing alternative to Labour in Scotland. Whether it also walks the walk is a different question, on which there are deeply divided views. But there is no disputing that tens of thousands of former Labour voters last week decided that their interests were safest with the SNP and the yes campaign. None of this is true of Ukip. Ukip is not a leftwing alternative to Labour or even the Tories, but a rightwing one — as the conference powerfully underlined.

Mr Farage said that the NHS would be safe in Ukip’s hands. This is simply incompatible with the classic Tory tax-cutting agenda that he then announced a few hours later, in which inheritance tax would be scrapped and those on skilled workers’ salaries would get a 5p income tax cut. The figures do not add up, and the gap between income and spending would widen still more if the flatter tax regime the party favours as a goal, with a further 5p cut in the top rate of income tax, ever came into force. Mr Farage is selling a lie.

None of this is to pretend that Ukip’s current claims will always fall on stony ground. Ukip’s rise in parts of old industrial Britain has been eased by Labour complacency and neglect. There is a widespread appetite for change. But the answer for Labour is to mount a principled response to Ukip, not to ape it.