EU Referendum


UKIP: hiding the decline


06/04/2015



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The really interesting thing about the Mail on Sunday front page story is that it was scheduled to appear in last week's paper, and would have done do but for Ukip's attempts in the High Court to suppress publication.

The interim injunction, however, was overturned in time for the MoS to run the story this week, and adds credence to the claims that Farage was trying to bury the poll. This shows him trailing behind the Conservatives, and only one point ahead of Labour in the South Thanet constituency, Nigel Farage's target seat.

It's all very well for Ukip now to attempt damage limitation, claiming that the ComRes finding is a "rogue poll", but if it wasn't at all damaging, one has to ask why the party went to such pains to suppress it - especially as the methodology has been supported by other pollsters, and is unremarkable. Furthermore, ComRes stands by its methodology.

Of course, it could that there is little confidence in the earlier Survation poll, which gave Farage a twelve-point lead in February. As this relied on those who said they were certain to vote, and asked about named candidates, the result was likely to have flattered Farage's standing.

Interestingly, this marginal seat has been showing signs of drifting to Labour and, with the current ComRes poll putting the Conservative's Craig Mackinlay in the lead, it could be argued that the net effect of Farage's intervention in Thanet South is to give the seat to the Tories.

For Farage to lose to an ex-Ukip leader (albeit only a caretaker), now turned Tory candidate, would be the ultimate humiliation. And that may be enough to explain why Ukip took what is on the face of it the rash decision to suppress the poll.

But, as Compete Bastard points out, it is going to take far more than manipulating the publication of a poll to rescue Ukip's fading fortunes. Win or lose at Thanet South (and more likely, lose), the party is on the rocks, with no obvious way that it can survive.

When the final chapter of Ukip's decline comes to be written, the causes will be pretty obvious – as they have always been. A party without an ideological base and lacking intellectual substance was never going to prosper in the longer term.  

Of the pundits that allowed themselves to be fooled into believing that this was a political party, most are going to look very stupid indeed when the general election is over.

As it now stands, the period will be marked by the resignation of Farage as party leader, prompting some to speculate as to who might replace him. But the reality is that, once Farage has gone, no one really cares. The dross that surrounds him are even less capable of running a party that he is, which means that, when he goes, his plaything will fall apart and become an electoral irrelevance.

On the up-side, it looks more certain each day that Mr Cameron's Conservatives are likely to win, and I am even more confident that we will be seeing a majority Conservative government. But that will then face us will the challenge of an "in-out" referendum, which actually needs Ukip to be pushed to the background, where its capacity for damage is minimised.

At least in Thanet South, though, we will have in Craig Mackinlay an MP who is robustly anti-EU … a fine legacy for Mr Farage to leave us with.