But I do find these election results fascinating. The fact that, with one by-election for a parliamentary seat excepted, the remainder were concerned with voting in sundry county councillors who are for the most part a complete waste of oxygen, makes the results, which have produced national reverberations, all the more interesting and several random thoughts occur, and to be honest, not all of them are mine, but then, who expects original thinking around here?!
My first thought, if such you can call it, was the joy in discovering that personality still counts in a political world in which almost all of the participants from all parties appear to have been manufactured in a factory somewhere in China! Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, is undoubtedly a man we Brits would call 'a character'! Like all such 'characters' one meets in life, one is not sure whether, in the words of Sellers & Yateman, that is "A Good Thing" or "A Bad Thing". Only time will tell. Churchill was 'a character' and a thoroughly detested one up until he 'got lucky' and a world war came along which eventually ended with him placed firmly upon a plinth of national reverence. Of course, I don't put Mr. Farage in the same mold as Churchill but undoubtedly he has proved determined to stick to his own political course through good times and bad whilst making every effort to distinguish himself personally from the factory-produced muppets in the mainstream parties. These sorts of 'characters' arise from time to time and usually they are found out and sink back into the obscurity they deserve - one thinks of the likes of Arthur Scargill. However, there is no doubt that Mr. Farage is an exceedingly intelligent political operator which he combines with a remarkable skill in political eloquence - his speeches in the European parliament are small classics - and an equal expertise in public relations. A man to watch, not just for the politics but for the fun!
Another thought occurs and this one really is mine. I wonder if the British people, or at least, the English, have at last discovered a subversive way of exerting their pressure on the seemingly invincible political class who so resolutely ignore them? The Lib-Dems used to be a sort of "party of protest" but they were so much part of the establishment that they were ineffective, and now that they are part of government they are well and truly hog-tied to the two main parties. The Greens were, are and forever will be, a sort of religious sect which most voters would avoid like a dog-pile on a pavement. But the UKIP has, under Farage's leadership and also under the pressures emanating from Berlin-Brussels, developed from its beginnings as a single-issue party into something much wider and therefore much more interesting. It is no longer necessary to be possessed of swivelling eye-balls in order to vote UKIP - as I discovered last Thursday!
My thought that the English electorate has discovered a useful weapon with which to threaten the 'Westminsterites' is developed with much greater historical analysis by John Redwood, the title of whose blog post (worth reading!) says it all:
The Ancien regime of the EU is under pressure but not about to collapse
He points out the difficulties faced by anti-EU groups in their efforts to achieve a pan-European opposition to Brussells for the simple reason that there is still no European-wide, European government. Now there's an irony for you! Instead, opposition is limited to various national groups fighting within their own frontiers, just like UKIP. So Mr. Redwood does not expect a sudden revolution leading to the overthrow of 'Rumpey-Pumpey & Co' but what he does foresee is a sort of latter-day Reformation:
I do not think there will be a single trans EU revolution. The forces
against the EU are very split by geography, preoccupation, language and
political affiliation. One of the ironies of the situation is that because the
EU has not succeeded in making a single European demos, there is no single
political community to unite against it.
This does not mean, however, that the current EU is stable and
proof against opposition. I suspect rather the change will come as it did in the
Reformation in sixteenth century Europe. Peoples in different parts of the
Catholic empire had different reasons for disliking Catholic authority. They
adopted different means of getting out from the Catholic yoke, and did it at
different times. Although the Catholic powers at the beginning seemed to have
all the cards, they lost much of their empire in a devastating thirty years. The
Catholics started with the intellectuals, the lawcodes and the armies all on
their side. They ended by losing most of Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands,
and the UK . The fault lines from this can still be seen in modern EU
negotiations.
I wonder if the impact of UKIP is actually the beginings of another Reformation in British politics. As a shrewd commentator (whose name I have completely forgotten!) said on TV or radio, the tiny SDP who broke away from the Labour party in 1981 and then dissolved into the Liberal party seven years later had a huge impact on British politics. Remember, Labour then were dominated by extreme Leftists and the rupture hit them below the waterline allowing 'that woman' a more or less free run over three general elections. You could say that the SDP defection eventually brought Tony Blair to power with an electable, soft-Left, social democrat party instead of the sub-Trotskyite rabble it had been hitherto.
I am hoping that even more people will realise the effectiveness of using the UKIP to discipline the Tory party in general, and Dave and his Old Etonians in particular. This could lead next year to a huge win for UKIP in the European elections and an equally huge spanking for the Tories. It might even, with a bit of luck and a following wind, get rid of Cameron if enough of the Tory MPs see the direction the wind is blowing.
