- Contrary to expectations nobody other than the LibDems got a bloody nose. The percentage take of the votes and the resultant numbers of MEPs came to:
% MEPs
UKIP 27.49 24
Labour 25.40 20
Conservative 23.93 19
Greens 07.87 03
Lib Dem 06.87 01
-Although Labour on the left came out marginally ahead of the Conservatives, the combined Conservative and UKIP vote on the right soundly beat them by gaining 51.42 of the total share and 43 MEPs against 20
Even the cave dwelling Greens did better than the LibDems. The message here is that if anyone on the right thinks they are likely to get what they want by voting UKIP at the General Election in May 2015 they are going to be sorely disappointed. All they will achieve is a socialist , interventionist tax and spend Labour government, something the majority clearly don't want. Even less will they like the resultant Prime Minister, Ed Milliband who clearly doesn't like them.
-The UKIP win, much hyped in advance and since by the media, should not yet cause too much hysteria and panic in the ranks of any party. Its ingredients are too complex and mixed in likely lifespan to benefit from kneejerks. Careful and wise (now that might be a problem) consideration over the summer is required. One factor affecting a string of constituencies along the line of Britain's major north-south high speed railway line HS2 is how those Conservative voters who opted for UKIP because they opportunistically oppose the project will vote next year. As above, if these people really insist on voting UKIP out of rail-rage all they will do is to let Labour, whose project it originally was in. If that happens HS 2 will still go ahead but possibly with some cost saving reductions by reducing Chiltern and other landowner- protecting tunnels and cuttings. Labour doesn't much care for the vociferous rural lobby and why shouldn't the Liverpudlians, Mancunians be able to enjoy the much vaunted outstanding scenery they will pass through in their hundreds of thousands?
-Nigel Farage comes over as a man of the people, the sort of bloke anyone could have a good chat with anywhere. He's also the sort of man who you would be likely to meet in the pub, cafe, bus, anywhere. None of the Party leaders get anywhere near that. As result much of what they say, however good or bad is simply filtered out. People stop listening. They are not taken in by carefully arranged and managed PR photoshoots in schools and hospitals (mainly) and selected faux "man of the people" surroundings and they certainly don't like feeling they are being spoken down to.
- David Cameron opens his mouth too often about too many issues ranging from football managers to anything else he thinks might make him look as if he is feeling people's pain, whatever it is. Dave is probably a nice enough bloke, has limited life experiences outside his own small coterie and caste and is never going to break out of that mould. He is an average manager, not a leader and certainly not a man driven by a vision of Britain and the world in 50, 25 ,10 years time or probably even tomorrow morning.
-Ed Milliband isn't a forward looking visionary either. Any vision he has is from the rear view mirror. He is stuck in the same old grooves. His Marxist father sits heavily on one shoulder and Unite's Len McClusky on the other. Both are people of the past and both drag him there too. When faced with any situation he can only trot out the same old phrases designed, through constant repetition,to take insidious root in the electorates' sub conscious. Increasingly though they irritate and make said electors feel an urge to throw up. How many more times must we hear "The cost of living crisis" , "Hard working families" (what about hard working singles, bone idle families etc?), "For the many not the few" and the rest. Apart from the cost of living crisis many of the rest go back to Gordon Brown's time. Didn't he do well? Do people really, really want a re-run?
Nick Clegg was beaten and truly routed but has so far held up remarkably well against the subsequent LibDem plots, attempted coups, rumours of deep divisions and disloyalties. Such things are the substance of top level or even bottom level (something maybe we should be careful of talking about unless we stray into other contraversial territory) politics. Every politician needs to keep firmly in sight former UK diplomat Percy Craddock's warning: "It isn't the other side you've got to worry about. It's your own." The same goes in much of business and industry but that's another story. It's very lonely at the top and real friends are very few. Caesar may have be the best known to be surprised by Brutus but the tally of Bruti grows relentlessly.
Next up in the elections game is the Newark by-election this week. Here the focus is on an older UKIP candidate versus a shiny new young wealthy, London based Tory boy straight out of standard box. When will they ever learn? A UKIP win against a Tory majority is almost unthinkable but..................... This could be the tail and of the Euro election UKIP bubble. Then comes the will they, won't they, debate over whether the UKIP vote is just a one-off protest against the current state of UK politics and politicians with their attendant whiffs of shallowness, greed, self interest, lack of vision and class issues or whether it is something more deep rooted. In some areas it probably is here to stay at least for a while. In others, voters should think very carefully about what they really want and who/what they are really voting for. Certainly the most likely effect of a big UKIP vote in may 2015 is a Milliband-led Labour government. One way to ensure HS2 and another London runway is built maybe as that is where they were in 2010, but the downsides to another 5 years (at least ) of Brownite style government may not be something at the top of everyone's list of preferences.
