THE UKIP EFFECT

It’s hard to believe that voting for who you want to be in charge of emptying your bins and responsible for tackling the problem of dog poo on the pavements could create massive upheaval in the Government.

This though is exactly what has happened after the disastrous results for the Tory Lib Dem two tone coalition Government after last week’s local elections, there is obviously panic in the air. According to the Daily Mail the panic has, or so the Mail informs us, that there will be late changes made to the Queens speech.

Now we have given the EU £billions in payments as our contribution for membership of this club that makes our laws, and given further £billions in bail-outs to prop up the currency disaster known as the eurozone, and as there can be little left as the black hole known as our deficit gets deeper by the minute, the statement is to be made: ‘No more bail-outs’. Talk about horses bolting and locking stable doors!

The Tories are spitting nails over the fact UKIP did so well in the local elections last week, they blame UKIP for spoiling their chances. So, it seems, their poor showing in their eyes has nothing to do with how useless their leader and Government has been over the last two years, or to do with the votes garnered by the Labour Party and even their coalition partners, the Lib Dems. It also seems the decision of the electorate has nothing to do with it either, despite the fact we in UKIP were getting calls from people asking who their candidates are as they have had it with the other political parties – a large number of those people said they had always voted Tory, but no more.

UKIP as a whole achieved around 13% of the vote last week with a certain number of candidates elected. To some this may not have been enough as we need people in Parliament and control over town halls, but UKIP is now having an effect just as Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party’s 3% of the national vote had in 1997. Because of the threat of the Referendum Party in the run up to that election the other three parties promised a referendum on membership of the euro – it was thanks to Sir James and his party that the Blair Government did not take us in to the mess that has become the eurozone as they knew the electorate would vote no. The Referendum Party will go down in history for that fact and now UKIP is having a similar effect.

Unlike the Referendum Party, which was a one election and one issue party, UKIP has grown into full party status along with its membership, number of candidates and MEPs. It is now established in its own right and is not just a threat to the Conservative Party, it aims to be a threat to the other pro-EU parties too, all of them will, increasingly, be having to look over their shoulders to see UKIP on their tail, all will have to moderate their support for the EU, this is the UKIP effect, it is one that will grow and grow – the other parties can no longer feel safe.