Ukip’s supporters are anxious, not awkward

I guess the ‘unite the Right’ memo has not got through to some Tories, with Michael Heseltine calling Ukip ‘a racist party’ and James Wharton saying they’re ‘an awkward group of strange people’.

That may be unwise — rather like attacking your customer-base — but it’s also untrue. Small Right-wing parties have a huge disadvantage because, although lots of people are socially conservative, soc-cons tend on average to be low in social skills and charisma and so the normals are easily driven away by the weirds, especially when immigration is an issue.

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Simon Cook

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But the early stages are the hardest, when any party right of the mainstream can become toxified and placed behind a cordaine sanitarie; once they reach a certain size their brand becomes established and media are wary of attacking them, and the bad news for Cameron is that Ukip have reached that point.