Cross-post from Luikkerlog

An underrated blogger, in my opinion, that could do with a few more libertarian (and UKIP) followers!

"As UKIP arrive, the establishment clutches at straws

The really interesting thing about UKIP’s 2nd place in Barnsley is the reaction to UKIP from the Conservative press and blogging community. If you needed to summarise these you would say that they all engaged in making authoritative statements to manage expectations for those of us who support UKIP, and other observers who are thinking of voting for UKIP. The usual establishment types, and I have left a piece of literary criticism on an example blog post to show people what I mean, are up to their usual tricks in smiley-faced hatchet jobs. The media hasn’t yet learnt that the days are gone when we let them spell out the extent of our ambitions.

The main reaction to the election result is that it was a defeat for the Liberals and not the Conservatives, and behind the approach is the incorrect perception, which is verging on wish-fulfilment, that UKIP is a direct reaction to the Tory Party. As a consequence, their first mistake is to call a vote for UKIP a protest against the Conservatives.

The actual fact is that UKIP is very different from the Conservative Party. The individuals who formed it might be of that heritage, but UKIP are now looking at issues of constitution and liberty that the Tory Party – as part of an establishment that has now clearly overstayed its welcome and therefore which is in a situation akin to how Turkeys feel about Christmas – would not consider.

Justice and a belief in preventing any ruling class or corporate entity to transgress against the British people is the feature that defines UKIP apart from any of the LibLabCon. This is why UKIP is attracting votes from ex-Labour and Liberal Democrat voters. Order-Order.com, although I am not sure where he gets the data (he cites Survation, but I can’t find the pie chart – reproduced below – on their website), suggests that 29% of the UKIP vote at Barnsley came from Labour, and 19% came from the Lib Dems . I wrote myself that UKIP might be set to win support from what is described as the “centre” of the spurious left/right paradigm.

Looking at the bare numbers, what Barnsley does suggest is a rapid growth of the UKIP vote even since the Oldham by-election. In that contest, there were some (relative to the different turnouts) 667 new votes when compared with the General Election (2% of the 2011 turnout). In Barnsley this had risen to some 1815 (7.5% of the 2011 turnout).

The other significant trend that I noticed continuing from Oldham is a reduction in the determined Tory voter. In Oldham, resisting calls from its leadership to vote for the Lib Dems, 12.83% of the people who voted Conservative in 2010 voted the same way again. In Barnsley it was 8.24% which doesn’t tell us conclusively about the fate of the Conservative Party, but does show us what is going on under the Cameron leadership. If it is unchecked, and I believe that there isn’t the guts in the Tory Party to do anything about it, then what I see happening in the not so distant future is a merger between the rump Lib Dems and the Tories. The rest will peel away to UKIP or Labour, or just stew in their feelings of superiority, and there will be many years of Labour misrule until UKIP attains its full potential.

Tory voters cannot say that they were not warned. Many of us wrote on Telegraph, Spectator and ConservativeHome comments pages at the time of the 2010 election and asked Tories to consider engineering another Labour win so that it would have to bite its own hand-grenade in office. For the good of the country, Labour needed to be thoroughly destroyed and that could only be done while it was in government; David Cameron had to made to step down as the Tory leader so that a EU-fanatic and quasi-Marxist would not be able to complete the work of New Labour – as is his clear intention.

As we know, Tory voters decided otherwise and effectively kept Labour alive as a valid electoral option for many. This is why Barnsley people stunned Tory commentators by voting Labour, and in their bafflement, the Tory commentariat has been reduced to accusing the Barnsley folk of gross stupidity.

Of course this sort of political blindness will play favourably for UKIP, who in their new improving, strong and secure form are as much a product of the bad choices of the Tory electorate as is the impending Labour stint as the head of the Westminster Triumvirate. UKIP will have the element of surprise, and as I wrote before, the establishment will not understand UKIP until some of them are in jail for their endless perfidy in the assistance of the EU invasion."

C''mon guys 'n gals - stick this guy on your reading list!