18/08/2013
Over at
Autonomous Mind a further post and the response to it indicates that UKIP is developing "secret squirrel" policy-making. This is a: "We do have a policy, but I'd have to kill you if I told you what it was", sort of idea.
Despite this risible approach, the
Independent on Sunday tells us that UKIP support in the latest
ComRes poll is standing at 19 percent, reflecting, it says, "the rise of Euroscepticism among the electorate". The findings appear to give some endorsement to Mr Cameron's attempts to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU, the paper adds.
Actually, it does no such thing. Inasmuch as UKIP still has a policy on the EU, secret or otherwise, it is about leaving the evil empire. But, more to the point, since the
ComRes survey itself focuses on immigration, the probability is that UKIP is capturing the neo-BNP anti-immigration vote, part of its transition from a dedicated anti-EU party to a general protest vote dustbin.
Of some interest, though, are the headline figures on voting intentions. These show Labour's support up to 37 percent, while the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have slipped back to the share they registered last month, at 28 and eight percent respectively.
The support for Labour as a party, though, contrasts with Mr Miliband's dire personal performance. He net personal rating has plummeting 17 points, with only one in five Britons â and fewer than half of Labour voters â now saying he is turning out to be a good leader of the Labour Party.
Mr Cameron's rating also fell slightly, with three in 10 people saying he is turning out to be a good prime minister, but more than half saying he is not.
Nevertheless, that keeps us in a position where Labour is more popular than the Conservatives, while the position is reversed for the respective leaders. That adds to the complications of predicting any election outcome, especially when we see a collapse of the Lib-Dem vote and the neo-BNP UKIP polling strongly.
Ed Miliband, in fact, is facing a torrid week. Two Labour "heavyweights" (if there are such things) have "mauled his leadership". John Prescott has said that Labour had "massively failed" to hold the Conservatives to account or make its own case, and Lord Glasman, a guru to Mr Miliband, said that the Labour leader needed to prove that he was a "grown-up politician" capable of leading the country.
Meanwhile, a
YouGov poll for the
Sunday Times has it that 69 percent of voters feel Mr Miliband is "failing to provide an effective opposition to the government". That is a rise of three points since the same question was asked early last month. That compared with 55 percent disapproving of the government's performance, with only 28 percent approving.
With the voters effectively opting for "none of the above", it is relatively easy for demagogic politicians such as Mr Farage to hoover up the protest votes, so it would be a mistake to think that UKIP's performance can be directly translated in anti-EU sentiment.
Incidentally,
YouGov has UKIP's polling at 13 percent, as opposed to the 19 percent
ComRes, perpetuating the wide spread in results between polling companies. But, whether you take the high or the low estimate, potential UKIP voters only represent a fraction of those who, in polls, are prepared to say they would vote to leave the EU.
What is intriguing though is that the last time
YouGov did an in-depth analysis of Labour supporters voting patterns,
it found that immigration, far more than "Europe" was likely to trigger a switch in allegiance.
On that basis , from a purely electoral perspective, Mr Farage is right to push the immigration button. That is best calculated to bring in the votes. But whether that advances the anti-EU cause is less clear. Certainly, the "secret squirrel" plan to leave the EU isn't going to help greatly, which means we are probably right to wonder what the real agenda of UKIP really is.
