Why no one’s ready to oust Nick Clegg (except the Tories, of course)

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[/audioplayer]Nigel Farage is pretty good at giving people hangovers, and on Monday morning all three Westminster party leaders woke up with one. Ukip’s victory in the European elections represents the first time in more than a hundred years that Labour or the Tories had not won a nationwide vote. It showed that the old allegiances on which our politics are predicated have broken down. It also reminded us that none of the parties are national affairs any more; Labour came third in four regions, as the Tories did in six. On this result, Ukip have more claim to be a national party than them; they came in the top two in more parts of Britain than either Labour or the Tories.

Ukip won by increasing its vote share by 11 per cent. This would be a remarkable achievement in any campaign, but it is particularly striking given that the last European elections took place during the 2009 expenses scandal, the presumed zenith of anti-political feeling. That the Ukip vote is still growing at such a rate shows that public anger at the political class has not abated. Go out on the campaign trail and you hear voters complaining even more loudly than before about how no one is listening to them on immigration and a host of other issues.

On his victory lap, Farage rather cheekily thanked Nick Clegg for challenging him to two debates on Europe. These debates — and Farage’s clear victories in them — kick-started the Ukip campaign. This has added to Clegg’s woes. Liberal Democrat MPs were already worried that his defeats in these debates showed that the electorate was just not prepared to listen to anything that their leader had to say.