Ukip should return – our politics depends on it

‘The return of Ukip’ declared the headline on our cover story last week. The polling boffin Matthew Goodwin to whose analysis this referred was in fact more careful. Professor Goodwin did argue, however, that the potential may be there for a Ukip revival.

So it may. But the figures for new recruits that he cites are modest. The doubt he describes as surrounding Nigel Farage’s chances of a comeback is real. Ukip’s present stance under its latest leader Gerard Batten (who has developed links with the campaign for the disgraced and imprisoned former leader of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson) looks crazier by the week. And there’s a world of difference between disappointed Brexiteer respondents telling pollsters they’d support Ukip, and the solid organisational revival that would be required of that carcass of a party if it is to present the Conservatives and Labour with a real threat in a real general election.

Goodwin is, rightly, gingerly with his claims. After reading these with care my estimation of Ukip’s chances diminished rather than grew. I had forgotten the nasty and sinister Tommy Robinson story. I’d overlooked the alt-right connections, the racist obscenities of social media campaigners, and all that Breitbart business. Our country is not redneck America. It seemed to me that Ukippery was going niche just when there might be a market for it to go mainstream. To my eyes, the picture Goodwin painted was of a movement lurching off into the sort of company that will attract fierce enthusiasm among the spittle-flecked brigade, but which respectable voters will shy away from.

Instead, therefore, of Ukip’s impending return, I sensed (I don’t accuse Goodwin of this) an appetite among some of the bolder Tory Brexiteers to put the wind up Remainer Conservatives (and there are millions of us) using the spectre of a revival of the hard right: the implicit message being that Tories must harden up their Brexit offer lest a competitor enter the market.