Warning signs as Ukip's neo-nasties cash in

The massive vote for Ukip in the English local elections alongside its second place in the South Shields by-election is confirmation, if any was needed, that the political system is dying on its feet. We have now entered a period of the known unknowns.

As defeated Conservative councillor Alexis McEvoy remarked: "For UKIP to come from nowhere like this, you have to ask, what is going on?”  

Political uncertainty and instability is the last thing the ruling economic and financial elites want. But that’s what they’re getting across Europe as disgruntled voters – for a variety of reasons – turn away from mainstream parties or simply stay at home.

South Shields was retained by Labour but on a 39% turnout which saw Ukip reducing its majority while the Lib Dems polled just a few hundred votes and lost their deposit. That is the price they paid for propping up the Tory government.

With Ukip picking up more than 26% of the votes in the council elections, the shockwaves are making themselves felt right across Westminster. John Curtice, the elections expert, said Ukip achieved "an astounding performance of a historic scale" and had a chance to "reshape the structure of English party politics".

No party is safe from the rampaging Ukip, with its right-wing brand of populism which is founded on blatant anti-foreigner, anti-European Union, nationalist prejudices. Ukip has so few policies that internal emails revealed they are thinking of buying ready-made policy packages from right-wing think tanks.

But that did not stop the disaffected from registering their disgust at the mainstream parties in a protest vote which if repeated in 2015 would almost certainly produce another coalition government.

If Labour had hoped to benefit from the hatred of the ConDems, they were sorely disappointed. In fact, their accommodation to the crisis with austerity-lite policies is responsible, in part at least, for the rise of Ukip. Further shifts to the right are to be expected. Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman indicated as much when said Ukip’s rise was a "wake-up call" to other parties. "We should listen very seriously if people are feeling disaffected and disenchanted.”

All petit-bourgeois populists take aim at the ruling political and social elites and Nigel Farage, Ukip’s leader, is no exception. He told the BBC that "the people who vote for us are rejecting the establishment and quite right too". He added: “Three parties, three fronts benches who look the same and sound the same and made up of people who basically have never had a job in the real world.”

That much is indisputable. The logic of Farage’s politics is, however, to replace the Milibands and Camerons with a group of neo-nasties who would make the present incumbents look positively pleasant.

The local election results are line with a recent poll that showed that voters have lost faith in the state’s ability to restore living standards to pre-recession levels. Peter Kellner, president of YouGov which carried out the poll for the Resolution Foundation, said: "The larger truth is that pessimism abounds. The dominant mood is that things will continue to get worse… I cannot recall a time when so many voters had so little faith in the ability of politicians to secure prosperity."

So there you have it. The economic crisis of capitalism has in turn generated a profound crisis in the political system. All the danger signs are there with the growth of Ukip. The mainstream parties have no answers because they are beholden to markets, corporations and the banks.

Far from defending our partial democracy, the ConDems and New Labour before them, sold it to the highest bidder. Opposing Ukip therefore involves fighting for a real democratic transformation, a revolutionary change that leads to a progressive society, a future without capitalism.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Miliband joins race to the bottom after Eastleigh

Earlier in the week,  the key message from the Italian elections was that support for traditional politics was in free-fall. Yesterday, the point was reinforced in the Hampshire town of Eastleigh where the by-election result is likely to kick-start a political crisis at Westminster.

Although the Lib Dems held on to the seat – despite its former MP Chris Huhne awaiting a probable jail sentence and sex allegations surrounding former party chief executive Lord Rennard – the junior partner in the Coalition government lost 14% of its vote.

With the Tories coming third and Labour a distant fourth, the only winner was Ukip – the party of Little Englanders and populist reactionaries. They picked up votes from the right-wing of the other two front-runners and but for entrenched Lib Dem organisation on the ground, would have captured the seat.

Ukip ran with on an anti-EU bureaucracy and anti-immigration platform – hardly issues that affect most people in this relatively wealthy town in southern England. But their appeal also reached out to those whose disgust at Westminster politics has built over the last decades.

Voters like that are to be found in all social classes who, for a variety of reasons, feel betrayed, abandoned or simply used by the major parties at election time. That’s why no party was able to secure enthusiastic let alone overwhelming support at the 2010 general election.

Come 2015, the scheduled date of the next election, neither the Tories, Lib Dems nor Labour will find the position has improved. In fact, Ukip is capable of taking votes off all of them and another hung parliament seems the outcome. Viewing Ukip’s performance as a one-off protest vote would be a mistake.

We should not underestimate the crisis surrounding the leadership of David Cameron following the Eastleigh result. His project to remake the Tory party in a modern image lies in ruins. As Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, noted after the result: “The Conservatives failed here because traditional Tory voters look at Cameron and they ask themselves ‘Is he a Conservative?’ and they conclude ‘No, he’s not’. He’s talking about gay marriage, wind turbines, unlimited immigration from India. He wants Turkey to join the European Union. The Conservatives’ problems are not because of Ukip, it’s because of their leader.”

A coup against Cameron is entirely possible, replacing him with a figure from the right of the party. This would almost certainly lead to a swift end to the Coalition with the Lib Dems and precipitate an early election, at which the Tories could well get hammered. With Britain losing its AAA credit rating, a political crisis of this magnitude would shake the markets. Just look at Italy’s perilous position since the election.

Which leaves with Ed Miliband’s party, New Labour Mark II, the champions of responsible capitalism, and whose policies are barely distinguishable from those of the government parties. The lesson Labour is apparently drawing is that – wait for it – they have to appear tougher on immigration than they have done thus far.

So come next Wednesday, Miliband is to devote an entire party political broadcast to address “voters’ concerns” on immigration (which, by the way, is falling rapidly). He will tell them that Labour should have done more to address the issue when in office for 13 years.

Making this a key issue when austerity driven by the crisis of global capitalism is wrecking people’s lives is entirely reactionary. This is Labour’s appeal to backwardness, narrow nationalism and prejudiced voters who hold immigrants and foreigners responsible for every problem.

Ukip is leading a race to the bottom in British politics and Labour is desperately trying to get in amongst the front-runners. It makes you want to throw up.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor