The red Kipper flies at midnight!*

[InsaneApache]

*google it.

There’s much chat today about how important these results are for Ukip. Is it the earthquake Nigel Farage promised? Well, how does one define an earthquake. Some are pointing out that Ukip’s likely share of the vote – 22 per cent – is actually slightly down on 2013. Maybe, but the local results and the European results on Sunday will provide Nigel Farage and his party with a real bridgehead for 2015, in all sorts of ways. First, the European polls on Sunday will give Nigel Farage a much larger team of full-time paid MEPs from whom he can pick a front-bench team to relieve him of some of the burden of being a “one-man band” – perhaps 24 or so. True, he had around a dozen MEPs before (the figure kept fluctuating), but this time the Ukip high command has put a lot more effort into quality-control and tried to exclude oddballs and eccentrics. We will see how successful that has been. Second, the likely result on Sunday will provide Ukip with lots more money from the European parliament, up to 100 paid staff in one form or another and a network of regional offices. In short, a much stronger campaign infrastrucure. Under the rules, these resources are meant to be devoted solely to the parliamentary activities of MEPs. Again we’ll see about that. Third, more and more people are getting into the habit of voting Ukip. It’s become a regular, respectable thing to do. So Ukip’s European election vote this weekend may not crumble so readily as it did after the Euro elections of 2004 and 2009. Fourth, Ukip have rapidly been building up detailed canvass records of who their supporters are. These, in turn, can be used not just to garner votes, but to raise funds and recruit new members. The party has declared that this summer it expects to overtake the Liberal Democrats in membership numbers. It would not surprise me. Fifth, Ukip’s successes will put a lot more pressure on us broadcasters to include the party even more in our political coverage, up to and beyond the election. And it makes it all the harder to exclude Nigel Farage entirely from leaders’ TV debates. Sixth, each election gives Ukip more campaign experience. For example, several of the newly elected Ukip councillors in Rotherham today told me it was only after experience of the 2012 by-election there that they understood the importance of organising postal votes. This time they were a lot more organised to getting supporters to apply for postal votes and use them. And I think it unlikely that Ukip will ever again organise a carnival quite as chaotic as that in Croydon this week. Finally, today’s local election results, added to the results from 2013, give Ukip a detailed ward-by-ward guide map as to where their support and strength lies, and therefore the parliamentary seats they should “throw the kitchen sink at” over the coming year. Great Yarmouth, for example, and Rotherham. It’s simple really. Success breeds success. - See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/michael-cr....hUr2Y2qH.dpuf

I voted UKIP.There's a surprise eh.

Discuss......

[Kadagar_AV]

Seems like people in England are starting to have seconds thoughts....

Or, knowing the English... First actual thoughts on the matter.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I think Farage has done a good job cleaning up the parties image. With the number of black and Asian candidates they ran, it's no longer possible to dismiss them with the race card. The way he publicly distanced UKIP from Le-Pen's FN was also a good move, I think in doing so he firmly established UKIP as a respectable libertarian party.

What's interesting about UKIP is that they can appeal to typical Labour and Tory supporters. While they split the right-wing vote in Croydon and elsewhere, they've also ruffled some Labour feathers up in their northern strongholds by taking a big chunk of their usual voting base. UKIP of course appeal to working-class voters who feel alienated by Labour's liberal-lefty take on immigration, but would never dream of voting Conservative because of their historic antipathy towards them.

As for what I personally think of them, I have mixed feelings. I like how they have shown some sympathy towards Christian values, and how they stand up for Britishness in Scotland and Northern Ireland. My main problem with them is their economic policies. I find certain welfare reforms by the Tories to be repulsive in the extreme (eg, enforced work placements at far below minimum wage), and would be scared that UKIP would continue down this path even further. I've only been on benefits for a couple of months worth in any given year (oh they joys of temp jobs), but still I feel I could never vote for UKIP for these reasons.

[InsaneApache]

but still I feel I could never vote for UKIP for these reasons.

The ONE and ONLY reason to vote UKIP is this.

Do you believe in a right to self determination? So that you want your vote to count?

or...

Do you prefer your way of life to be dictated to by an appointed bureaucrat with no powers to remove him.

RIP Tony Benn, I disagreed on everything he stood for except this....

If one meets a powerful person ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.

That is all.

[Beskar]

Do you believe in a right to self determination? So that you want your vote to count?
or...
Do you prefer your way of life to be dictated to by an appointed bureaucrat with no powers to remove him.

Is it UKIP's policy to eliminate the Civil Service now?

[Papewaio]

Is it UKIP's policy to eliminate the Civil Service now?

& the Monarchy?

[Beskar]

& the Monarchy?

I think it is more about wanting to tear up bilateral trade agreements with their own biggest exporter because some want to have one's cake and eat it too, then realise the irony when our partners can freely change regulations in discussions we are now not party to, nor can we longer opt-out, compromise or veto. We then have to grovel and have to follow said regulations regardless if we are to resume trade after our economic recovery plunges back into another depression.

I guess they think the solution would be gunboat diplomacy with the military equivalent of a little-boy with a pea-shooter.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The last thing the UK needs is a bunch of libertarians running the show.

[Strike For The South]

What does this mean for Scotland

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

What does this mean for Scotland

Nothing, really.

[Fragony]

The last thing the UK needs is a bunch of libertarians running the show.

Couldn't disagree more. UKIP is just sane. The EU is deeply undemocratic, could also make a case for the EU being downright fascist.

Go UKIP, have one on me

Europian elections are an illusion of democracy. Everything has already been decided by unelected eurocrats. As Pat Condel nicely put it, sitting with a toy wheel in the backseat pretending you are actually driving. I am really glad with people like Nigel Farrage and his UKIP party. Geert Wilders is too stupid, he's not of any use. Farrage however is an abolute boss.

Needs a little edit, 25% of the Dutch simply wants to leave the EU, about 50% doesn't care, the amount of people actually want more Europe is pretty damn low. These are just numbers of course. But 'we' already made it very clear what we think of the EU a few years back. Democracy, such an inconfedience for eurocrats.

[Greyblades]

So aside from the usual ukip fight, what was this thread supposed to be about again?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Couldn't disagree more. UKIP is just sane. The EU is deeply undemocratic, could also make a case for the EU being downright fascist.

Go UKIP, have one on me

Europian elections are an illusion of democracy. Everything has already been decided by unelected eurocrats. As Pat Condel nicely put it, sitting with a toy wheel in the backseat pretending you are actually driving. I am really glad with people like Nigel Farrage and his UKIP party. Geert Wilders is too stupid, he's not of any use. Farrage however is an abolute boss.

Needs a little edit, 25% of the Dutch simply wants to leave the EU, about 50% doesn't care, the amount of people actually want more Europe is pretty damn low. These are just numbers of course. But 'we' already made it very clear what we think of the EU a few years back. Democracy, such an inconfedience for eurocrats.

The EU might need some libertarians if they really are that undemocratic. Problem is that the UK is very democratic. It's a case of poisoning the town's water supply to kill your neighbor...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

*google it.

I voted UKIP.There's a surprise eh.

Discuss......

They got you to vote?

Well.

At the very least they'll dissolve into the mainstream and bend your "right" wing further to the right, like the Tea Party has nearly finished doing here. At the most they have a lot more potential than that comparison suggests since european politics are more conducive to upstart parties and coalitions.

I don't really have too much of a political opinion on this one beyond academic curiosity.

UKIP is not all that right wing - Farage is a proud and unreconstructed Tory but his party is primarily Nationalistic rather than idealogical in the traditional sense. Where UKIP are befitting is through a combination of the protest vote that has abandoned the Lib Dems and through "small c" conservatives who view the Tories as toxic due to Thatcher.

It took the Green Party a couple of decades to convert a core vote into a single MP, Farage might do it next year, but he has to be very careful - he risks the prospect of having MP's in the Commons whilst not being there himself.