An old adage is, if it isn’t broken don’t try to fix it. Reality in the British political establishment is the exact opposite. The political system is broken and needs fixing and everyone on the outside can see it. But the insiders continue to scratch their heads as UKIP (the UK Independence Party) score one victory after another campaigning on the idea of real change.
Britain’s political shift continued this week as the upstart UKIP scored another by-election victory despite the Conservative Party throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at it including well staffed phone banks co-ordinated by campaign guru Jim Messina and five personal visits from the Prime Minister.
Yet all this campaign machinery fails to recognize that people are more than a little nervous about things like – the rise of militant Islam, so it’s perhaps ironic that Sky’s own political Editor - Faisal Islam (no pun) can’t seem to figure this out.
The Sky man seems to question UKIP claims that only a third of their votes came from the Conservatives. Had it been any more the result would have been a wipe out. Islam though does accurately point out on the Sky News website that “They (Liberal Democrats) polled nearly 8,000 votes here in 2010. 379 here on Thursday.”
Herein lays the real story across the country; the rapid demise of the Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats, which the political establishment is still trying to quantify in terms of allegiance to various centrist political ideologies. It hasn’t occurred to anyone in the political class outside of UKIP that people are pissed off, want real change that you can believe in, and see UKIP as at least a movement that has intention to deliver.
For decades a solid 20% of the electorate has voted for the supposed centre party. Voters who reject both the harsh pro-union victimization rhetoric of Labour, and the seemingly aloof and out of touch Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats were a catch all party, placatingly offering people a third option. These voters never signed up to their ideology which was a softer form of socialism with no mention of unions, they simply said there is nowhere else to go.
Now with another choice the electorate have fled option three almost in totality. Add in the growing number of Tories dissatisfied with the almost meterosexual push from party HQ and the traditional Labour voters distraught as ‘their’ Britain disappears in front of their faces and you have a coalition of voters rallying behind a party that seems to understand them.
That core concept, ‘understand’, transcends all ideological arguments. When people ‘feel’ that someone understands them, relates to them, then they can place some trust in them as well. UKIP leader Nigel Farage is often mocked for having a pint in the pub but that is such a core of being British and is more than symbolic that he understands real Britain.
At Rototherm HNL Engineering in Stockton, workers understand what the politicos seem to miss, why some voters are turning to UKIP. Machine shop manager Phil McGhee said: "They have come along at just the right time to upset the applecart. Nobody has got any trust in the Labour Party or the Conservatives or the Lib Dems at the moment, and I think they are just grasping at something that might just change it."
Engineering machinist Steve Simpson added: "Particularly the health service is in great need of looking at. I think they have made one or two suggestions of an alternative way of looking at things and I think that might be appealing to people."
But the Conservative’s are locked into Jim Messina political hardball while the Labour are trying to revive their union base and counter years of permissive policies that have advanced new cultures making their footprint in the nation.
Indeed the fact that Labour Leader Ed Miliband had to say: "Respect is the basic rule of politics and there is nothing unusual or odd about having England flags in your window," after having his shadow attorney general resign for mocking a family that did just that, goes to show how detached some in his party are with everyday Britain.
Rumblings are that MPs from both major parties are considering defecting to UKIP and if that happens in numbers then a political revolution really is on the cards. As it stands, UKIP continues to establish itself as a credible alternative to politics as usual.
