‘Ukip seems to have imploded,’ one ‘mainstream’ politician remarked to me yesterday. ‘We haven’t heard anything from them.’ True, Ukip have been rather quiet since Christmas, but anyone in the Tories or Labour who is dancing around imagining that they’re set fair for an election without Nigel Farage has got rather carried away. The truth is that Farage’s party has decided to stay a little quiet for a few weeks, at least while the main parties slug it out over who would really cut the deficit and who really cares about the NHS.
Sources tell me that they think the effect of all these launches, counter-launches, dossiers and dossiers debunking dossiers is to make the electorate even more fed up with mainstream politicians. They don’t need to do very much at all, other than let the parties get annoyed with each other. From a distance, it just looks like a lot of people shouting at one another about who is the bigger liar.
Ukip also now benefits from being recognised as a ‘major party’ by the Electoral Commission, which means that during the election campaign broadcasters must offer the party the same level of coverage as the others. This includes the same number of party political broadcasts, quotes on stories about policy and inviting the candidate to participate in broadcasts from the constituency. As a result, Farage and co don’t need to shout as loud or as often to get heard because they will have the opportunity to put their case across alongside Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems.
There will be announcements from Ukip over the next few weeks, but it will be during the short campaign, which begins on 30 March, when they really get noisy again. In the meantime they’re quite happy for the other parties to do their work for them.
Comments