UKIP level with LibDems in London!

Despite the media promoting the Greens and virtually ignoring UKIP in London's election race, Nigel Farage's Party have surged to 8% on the London list vote - equal third with the Liberal Democrats.

If that translates on Thursday, UKIP will see two AMs elected - with potentially a big say on the next London Mayor's budget.

Whether the media like it or not, it looks increasingly like UKIP has building momentum behind it going into the elections.

Is Cameroonism just an electoral liability?

The idea was simple: the Tory brand of 'nastiness' was toxic and needed to be flushed out of the blue rosette. 'Dave' was the man to make the Conservative Party electable again after repeated drubbings by Labour at the polls.

Thatcherism was to be expelled. Out went meritocracy. Cameron surrounded himself with the likes of George Osborne. Small-c conservatism was banished. David Davis, Cameron's leadership rival, has promised a grammar school in every town and city. But Cameron turned his back on selective education, on tough immigration controls, on proper committed Euroscepticism and other such policies in favour of a tree logo, climate change and bike riding. Right on.

Tory members blindly believed that it was all a game. Cameron had pitched his tent on Blair's so-called centre-ground, but only to win the election and make the Tories more electable. Once he was in, he'd be their man. He'd really roll up his true blue sleeves and make a dent on the destruction Labour had brought to Britain.

Except Cameroonism isn't strong in belief, communication or ability. It didn't win over the public and so despite a virtual open goal against a hugely discredited Gordon Brown, Cameron couldn't get the job done. Instead he has had to sit with Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. As Clegg himself once put it, 'the more we spoke, the more we found we had in common'. Just how far away are LibDem ideology and the Cameroons? I've never been convinced of the difference.

And so this clucking, awkward government has come to prove a bit of a disaster. No street wise Cabinet Ministers to provide firepower, Cameron just seems to enjoy the position without any real vision, narrative or goal. Britain is still borrowing billions, is still subordinate to Brussels and the Conservatives' only notable reforms have come on welfare and free schools.

It is the type of one-term legacy a PM without principle would create. Far from making the Tory Party more electable, Cameroonism has left the Tories looking weak and feeble - and very open to attacks from the prospering UKIP. That is one battle I'm certain Cameron doesn't have the guile or bottle to take on. The Cameroon logic survives by dismissing and ignoring such right-wing rhetoric.

UKIP's popularity seems to have exploded.

Nevermind yet another YouGov opinion poll putting UKIP at 9%, level with the LibDems, despite far less media coverage.

Last night's Question Time performance from Nigel Farage saw something very unusual happen. Twitter exploded in reaction to Farage as always, but this time, this time the number of people with favourable comments seemed to have shot up.

People every few minutes were saying that it was UKIP for them. That they'd had enough of the rest of them. Critically, Nigel Farage was not just tapping into disaffection, it was positively swinging behind him and his Party. Tweet after tweet of new supporters, particularly young people, announced that they had joined UKIP.

I have never seen anything like it online in British politics. The opinion polls can be scoffed out, but the evidence is out there. Whether you look at YouGov's daily polls which have had UKIP as the third party, or Survation's recent survey which has the Party on course for 2 London Assembly seats, something is really going on out there in the run up to May 3rd.

Oh, and if you really doubt what I'm saying, then you may like to know that UKIP beat the Conservatives, LibDems and Labour to win a by-election in Seaford last night. A sign of things to come?

Being Eurosceptic but pro-unelected Lords is madness.

The costly, undemocratic beast from Brussels must be slain. That is now pretty mainstream among right-wing politicians and commentators. So why are they so many of them so keen to defend the current make-up of the House of Lords?

Democracy is democracy. Those such as myself oppose the EU on the basis that it should be for the British people to decide their own future. But that's no use if we have then have an unelected second chamber which meddles in our democracy with no mandate. Even the Earl of Dartmouth, formerly a sitting Peer in the House of Lords and now an MEP, has branded the HoL as dangerously out of touch and unaccountable.

Radical change in the UK requires power to be put back in the hands of the masses. And that requires ripping up the rule book of how things are currently done. The legislative procedure requires a fundamental overhaul in the UK.

Oh, but some may cry. An elected second chamber under PR would give a voice to the likes of UKIP, the Greens and Respect. Well sorry but if we want democracy in this digital age we must accept plurality. We must accept that the two-party or even three party system in Britain is finished. That era over, finished. Tribal loyalties have slowly broken over the past decade and will continue to slide, in my opinion. Cowering away from this fact leaves us with shameful consequences, such as close to one million 2010 UKIP voters going completely unrepresented in the House of Commons.

Sunny days ahead for UKIP?

So now The Sun have caught a whiff of Farage Fever, and their top politico Trevor Kavanagh today warns David Cameron against 'kipping on the UKIP threat. Unlike many at The Telegraph, Kavanagh clearly sees UKIP as a Party with its act together.

Matthew Norman of The Independent has already got a bit speculative over a future relationship between The Sun and UKIP:

It now seems inconceivable that he (Murdoch) will back David Cameron in a general election, and given that he has warmed to neither Ed Miliband nor the Lib Dems, this leaves two options. He must either order The Sun to abstain or come out for Nigel Farage, who best reflects his feelings on Europe, in a brazen effort to avenge himself on the entire political establishment and shift those tectonic plates. 

Of course, Kavanagh's 'Europhobic' slur on UKIP shows that The Sun is not exactly a staunch supporter right now. But it is an intriguing possibility going forward. And after all, there is only one Party speaking about properly restricting immigration, sticking two figures up to the ECHR to boot Abu Qatada out and arguing for EU withdrawal. All things that go down very well with The Sun's readership.

Another bad UKIP hatchet job.

Telegraph Blogs is a project/site that I hugely admire. Unlike most other newspapers it actually invests time and money into its online operation and the results are there for all to see.

The inaccurate smears on the rise of UKIP however seem unbecoming of what is usually such a tremendous site. Damian Thompson, editor of the Blogs, has just done a piece that also appeared in today's print Telegraph.

The article starts off as it means to go on (badly) by quoting Alan Sked, co-founder of UKIP. A man who if you speak to many inside UKIP (which I doubt Thompson has) came across as a paranoid, crazed fruitcake who lost his mind and turned against UKIP once he lost full control of it.

Thompson then makes some incredible claims. UKIP has no grassroots, he says. Well the branches all over the country filled with ex-Conservative Association Chairman must be a figment of my imagination then. Then there is the inaccurate claim that UKIP is pretty much just a bastion for old failed Tories. Thompson should really attend a UKIP Conference - there are many ex-Labour, LibDem and altogether new political activists among the UKIP ranks who have never supported any other party. Like me.

Another key development that Thompson skips out on is the fact - and it is a fact - that young right-wingers are finding their ideological political homes in UKIP. It is a Party with young activist blood running through its veins.

There then is the slur that UKIP finds it hard to keep extremists at bay. No, Damian: UKIP just bans all current and ex-BNP, EDL, NF and so on from ever joining. It ain't that hard to do.

Finally, and incredibly, is the claim that Lord Tebbit and other Tory Eurosceptics are far better off staying inside the Conservative Party. The Party that turned its back on a cast iron guarantee of an EU referendum. That whips its MEPs to vote for things like the European External Action Service. That gives the IMF countless billions to prop up the failed Euro. This is old rigid thinking inside a right-wing media establishment that really needs to stop resisting the UKIP rise and come to terms with the reality. That this is no flash in the pan but a new realignment in British politics.

The absurdity of that last pro-Conservative claim rounded up what I felt was a pretty bad hatchet job on UKIP. I wonder if Telegraph Blogs will be allowed to publish anything vaguely more pro-UKIP, considering that the majority of the comments on Damian Thompson's piece lay into him? After all, if The Telegraph claims to speak to ordinary Conservative voters, it should remember that frequent polls show that 10%+ of them are now UKIPers anyway.

Cameron doesn't have clear direction. That's the whole point.

Lord Ashcroft reckons that with some clear direction, the Tories can see off the UKIP threat. I doubt it.

The reason that many people have left the Tory Party to join UKIP is because of Cameron himself. Because he turns people off. Why? He is a Prime Minister without direction underpinned by a lack of ideological backbone.

Just look at the EU. Cameron talks about referendums and Euroscepticism in opposition, but then delivers a government that whips its MEPs to vote for things like the European External Action Service. Similarly Cameron rolled over on increasing the EU's budget. Most recently we have the pathetic case of Abu Qatada who should just be deported, no matter what some unelected foreigners in Strasbourg have to say. Cameron lacks grit or an intellectual honesty that would reach out to people. He plays things by the bureaucratic book. It is unimaginative and uninspiring.

Look for further evidence on the issue of immigration. The government runs around claiming that it will control immigration and brings number down. But it seeks to mug the British public by rarely mentioning that when it says "immigration controls" none of them apply to the Polish or Romanians coming over. And so under Cameron net migration has increased. His dishonesty cannot hide the facts on this one.

Neither can it on the matter of the defence budget as we spend £3 billion on aircraft carrier without any aircraft, something which may be a dire mistake as Argentina eyes up another Falklands conflict. Disgustingly, servicemen and women were laid off from our Armed Forces by text message. All under the watchful eye of a Prime Minister who talks tough on defence and looking after our boys but turning his back where it matters, on cold hard cash.

The truth is that the only 'direction' I have seen Cameron give the Tory Party is one towards the hallowed 'centre ground' of hugging hoodies, tree logos, foolish foreign intervention and the giving of foreign aid at a time when so many of our own are feeling the squeeze.

On the crux issues: the EU, immigration, the London riots, defence, Cameron hasn't and will not deliver what UKIP's increasing number of supporters want. Lord Ashcroft and many others will be hoping that some direction is found and that Cameron can rally back support. But the rise of UKIP I don't believe can be thwarted by a man who does not seem to have a truly conservative bone in his body.

What's Douglas Carswell hanging around for?

A very good question put to the Prime Minister by well known Tory backbench MP Douglas Carswell was met with derision by David Cameron earlier. As Carswell pressed his Party Leader on the question of the Whitehall machine dictating and driving policy instead of elected representatives, Cameron chuckled and told him to get a sense of humour.

It was a serious slap in the face to what was not a Punch & Judy question, but a serious point on how this country is governed.

Carswell, one of the big Tory thinkers who is also openly anti-EU, must surely be questioning if he is in the right Party. People can say that he might lose his seat if he defected to UKIP - but is being banned from your Party's front bench (by being anti-EU) and laughed at when you put a question at PMQs really worth hanging around for?

The anti-EU vote will be fragmented - until anti-EU Tories join UKIP.

Daniel Hannan makes an interesting case: that the Eurosceptic vote in Britain is fractured thanks to the competition between the Conservative Party and UKIP.

I do think much of what he says is wrong however. UKIP is not about 'Euroscepticism'. Euroscepticism really is a failed Tory doctrine that consists of mild bashing of the EU and talking about reform for decades as the thing moves towards federalism unabashed. Tory government after Tory government (Thatcher - Major - Cameron) has talked tough on the EU but effectively done what the project required of them.

That's the past. UKIP's rise shows that people want something else. They want out of the EU. No compromise. It is for this reason that I see the front bench of the Tory Party (which has banned any anti-EU politicians while consisting of Euro enthusiasts like Ken Clarke) having very little in common with the likes of Nigel Farage, or indeed Daniel Hannan himself.

The anti-EU movement is splintered, but I would argue that the splinter comes from Tory MPs and MEPs like Hannan refusing to join the Party whose manifesto matches their own beliefs. I mean honestly, Phillip Davies, Phillip Hollobone and the like have about as much business standing on a Tory manifesto as I do. It doesn't make sense.

So yes, lets unite all anti-EU, anti-open door immigration, pro-flat tax, pro-selective education people. But that unification should surely come under the Party whose manifesto already includes all of these things The Cameroons have taken over the Tory Party and drained it of conservatism just as Tony Blair destroyed any remnants of socialism within New Labour. Those who think the Conservatives will become a viable Eurosceptic Party in the future need to ask themselves if they are being realistic or simply wishful.

British politics is about to change forever.

The era of Coalition always had the potential to radically shake up British politics forever. As ever though, Westminster's focus was on how the positioning of the three establishment parties would change.

The reality is that the story of Coalition has been the rise of UKIP, alongside the demise of the sell-out LibDems. UKIP has never been just a part of 'others'. It came second in the Euro Elections in 2009, winning 13 MEPs. The Greens and the BNP got just 2 each.

Similarly at the 2010 General Election UKIP came close to receiving one million votes. That's more than triple what the Green Party received.

Since then UKIP has had its gang of big beasts expand alongside the likes of Nigel Farage and Lord Pearson. Figures such as Stuart Wheeler and former Tory Treasurer Lord Hesketh have joined the Party, as Farage has re-taken the leadership. People like ex-head of OFSTED Sir Chris Woodhead are now speaking on education at a UKIP Conference. The Party is run by Executive Chairman Steve Crowther who demonstrates just how credible UKIP are internally when his opposite Tory number is the appalling Baroness Warsi. MEP Roger Helmer has also defected as have a number of Councillors.

The 'others' myth has been put to bed. We are witnessing a UKIP surge, as the Greens and BNP stagnate. The London Assembly elections could well see only UKIP gain a seat aside from the old three. And only UKIP has a spread of support across the country rather than in Bradford or Brighton sized pockets.

With a European Election in 2014 that UKIP will aim to win, I honestly believe that 2015 could see very many UKIP MPs elected, even under First Past The Post.

One thing is for sure. British politics has a new fourth player. It's first task must be to consign the LibDems to the 'others' category and take its place as an anti-establishment, low tax, anti-EU third party alternative.

Evening Standard embarrassed as UKIP continue to outpoll Greens.

Despite the BBC, LBC and the London Evening Standard treating the London Mayoral race as a 'four horse race' between the old three and the Green Party, UKIP continue to outpoll the Greens.

The Evening Standard has commissioned its own poll by YouGov that has UKIP on course to pick up a seat on the London Assembly, whilst the Greens are on course to lose both of theirs. The Standard's big Mayoral hustings event however barred UKIP.

Will this latest poll give the media a kick up the backside? I doubt it. But there is little doubt in my mind that they have all spectacularly misreported this election thus far.

Dividing Uni Campuses on sectarian lines is unacceptable

Multiculturalism is coming to a University Campus near you. Professor Malcolm Gillies of London Metropolitan University is championing the idea of alcohol free areas on campus due to the large amount of Muslim students who attend the Uni.

Has it really come to this? Do we really believe that Muslims' faith makes them so different from the rest of us that we need separate areas of the Campus for them? That it is really terrible for a young Muslim to hang around in a bar where alcohol is sold? In my experience young English Muslims are patriotic and outwardly proud of this country, as they seek to publicly reject their characterisation as a group of scheming British-hating would-be terrorists. It is usually middle aged white men as in this case who insist on unnecessary measures that have the effect of making those who believe in Islam seeming to many others to want a completely different country. 

But moves like this by airy fairy academics don't help our society or the integration of Muslims youngsters into our great country. We've already seen the damage done in places like Yorkshire where cities and schools are divided by ethnicity and religion. If this ill-thought move is implemented at Metro Uni it will be bringing sectarianism and segregation into a University. What next? Banning condom machines so as to not offend those Catholics who do not believe in contraception? 

Professor Giles earlier this month said that the selling of alcohol 'plays to particular parts of society'. But the truth is that Uni bars and pubs themselves are places where now young Muslims hang about and belong. These places for some may be about getting blotto, but really they are about community and communication. Every pub is a Parliament. If we insist that those of a Muslim faith cannot handle it then we increasingly create a 'them and us' culture that is leading to our nation's divisiveness.

UKIP to stand against anti-EU Tory MPs. Good.

According to The Independent, Nigel Farage wants UKIP to stand in every Westminster seat at the next General Election. Good. That apparently also includes standing against MPs who back EU withdrawal. Great.

In one way this may show that the Party is ramping up the pressure on anti-EU MPs who may be toying with the idea of defecting to UKIP anyway. But for me this stance has a greater significance. The main reason that  disagreed with Lord Pearson's strategy of UKIP standing down against Eurosceptic MPs is that it creates the impression that UKIP only cares about the EU. That despite its blathering on about other policies, really we only care about your stance on the EU.

Well that's just not true anymore. I didn't join UKIP just because it is anti-EU. Neither did many other members, particularly younger ones. I joined for grammar schools. Flat taxes. Prison expansion. Abolishing the Human Rights Act. UKIP candidates have a unique platform that will remain very different to the manifesto that Tory MPs stand on, even those Tories who are anti-EU.

If the report is accurate then I welcome this news. UKIP after all is a political party and a fast rising one at that. The murmurs of it being an EU-obsessed single issue pressure group are dying more and more rapidly under Farage's leadership. That is a very good thing indeed.

Tory to UKIP switchers on the increase again.

Another day, another YouGov poll that is bad news for the Conservative Party. Up from yesterday, 11% of 2010 Tory voters now say they'd vote for UKIP, including 12% of all British voters aged over 60.

Whilst the emphasis at the moment seems to be on people seeing to discredit UKIP, the polls are only going one way.

One in ten 2010 Tories now backing UKIP.

The latest YouGov poll from tonight has a very interesting figure - that 10% of those who voted Conservative in 2010 are now backing UKIP. By any measure, for one in ten voters to have switched to a rival Party is a huge number and is very good news indeed for UKIP. Don't forget, we are still less than two years into a Coalition that is supposed to last until 2015.

It gives even greater evidence to the mounting speculation today that the right-wing of British politics is shifting. With Councillors and an MEP already having defected and MPs potentially on the way also, polls are also confirming that ordinary voters are deserting the Conservatives for UKIP in large numbers.

Is Bill Cash one of the potential UKIP defectors?

There is lots of talk about who Tim Montgomerie's two potential MP defectors are today. Last night however there was one name swirling around the Twittersphere - veteran Eurosceptic Bill Cash.

Personally I'd be flabbergasted if he was one of the two that is considering crossing the floor to UKIP. Cash, to my knowledge, has never even publicly endorsed EU withdrawal before. Though as the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, perhaps he has had to reign in his public views a bit. A veteran and highly respected Parliamentarian, his defection would undoubtedly be a huge boost to a young party like UKIP.

Is this just unreliable Twitter gossip? Probably. But it will be interesting to see who else is gossiped about as being future UKIP MPs. With the way the Tory Party is going, there are just so many names that you could throw around...

The Tories should worry about more than defections to UKIP.

Tim Montgomerie's piece in The Times today (£) has certainly got tongues wagging. Though Montgomerie wrongly seeks to caricature UKIP as a Party not in touch with the British people - when in reality very few people want to see things like foreign aid lavished on the likes of India - he does point out a few interesting things.

There are some Tory MPs seriously considering defecting to UKIP. That's hardly surprising given UKIP's increasingly solid polling and recent defection of Councillors, a former Conservative Future Deputy Chairman and an MEP in Roger Helmer.

I think however Montgomerie's thinking is a bit wishful. I truly believe that the 'Cameron Project' hasn't just temporarily turned off some true blue Tories who will easily return to the fold. What we are instead seeing is people formerly who had spent decades in the Conservative Party breaking away perhaps forever, such is their disillusionment. They see a Conservative Prime Minister they campaigned to get in, who seems utterly terrified with the notion of implementing small-c conservative policies. Instead, he's jumping through hoops to appease the LibDems, a Party that is polling the same 11% as UKIP in the latest Survation poll.

What's more, Cameron can't do a damn thing about those now opting to vote UKIP who previously didn't vote at all, voted Labour or voted LibDem. UKIP's Bradford by-election candidate was a former Green Party member! These are people who would never vote Tory anyway, particularly in the North, and give UKIP a resilient backbone that is not up for grabs for Cameron anyway. It is this widening appeal nationwide combined with the Tory defectors that should worry Cameron. UKIP is not a narrowly appealing Party filled to the brim with ex-Tories as the media would have you believe.

What's more, UKIP is no longer some upstart Party of two or three years with no national structure or activist base and the signs going into this year's May local elections are very good. In many areas UKIP are putting up more local candidates than the governing LibDems. That shouldn't just worry the Tories, but all of the establishment parties currently inhabiting Westminster.

Tory MPs defecting to UKIP is a big threat to the current status quo. Even bigger will be UKIP's ability to have built up local strongholds and have UKIP MPs elected outright in 2015.

Why are we subservient to a European Court?

Oh thank you European Court of Human Rights in all your wonders for allowing us to extradite Abu Hamza and other terrorist vermin. Seriously, has it come to this?

Our own elected politicians and so-called British 'Supreme Court' have been exposed as a charade on this issue as a group of foreign judges sat and pondered whether Hamza could be extradited or not. Frankly it should have nothing to do with them. It's like they sit there in Strasbourg running our country....oh wait.

Sovereignty and self-determination may seem like technical and boring subjects. But they matter so much. The British people deserve better than for scumbags like Abu Hamza to be protected by foreign red tape that our citizens detest and who our politicians try and tinker with pathetically.

This bureaucratic age of overarched human rights that has led to the bastardisation of national sovereignty will soon be consigned to the dustbin of history once we leave the EU and decide that our own judiciary can make these calls and be accountable for them. Until that day, Westminster appears increasingly weak, pathetic and unwilling to stand up and reassert itself as long as Cameron, Miliband and other weaklings remain the main voices.

When is UKIP's poll rise going to be covered?

The Mail on Sunday have a Survation poll showing UKIP to be tied with the LibDems on 11% nationally. Those good old Greenies are on 3% - the same number as with YouGov - despite receiving extensive BBC, LBC and Evening Standard publicity during this year's London Mayoral race thus far.

UKIP's rise is a phenomenon that is being utterly ignored by the establishment media outside of the Daily Express. The Party is now polling at the same level as the LibDems - a Party whose Conference for instance was extensively covered by all the TV channels over multiple days. For UKIP's Spring gathering meanwhile, the BBC did a few half-minute pieces while ITV, Channel 4, The Telegraph and others seemed to completely ignore it. That was despite Roger Helmer defecting on the day.

May isn't likely to see hundreds of UKIP Councillors elected. But many hundreds of UKIP candidates from all over the country are likely to see their vote share shoot up, as more and more local UKIP strongholds build silently, under the radar of the nation's Westminstercentric political class. With a few years of Coalition still to go until the next European and General Elections, this is a rise that the media should really start paying attention to. Because come 2015 it could explode with a flurry of UKIP MPs being elected to Westminster in a manner that catches the pundits with their eyes off the ball just as occurred in Bradford.

UKIP frozen out of the London Mayoral debate

So everyone, the BBC included, are ignoring polls and giving the Green Party in the London Mayoral race a shot with the big boys while freezing out UKIP.

LBC, the London Evening Standard and now the BBC are making a clear differentiation between the Greens and UKIP despite this poll in February 2011 that has UKIP leading the Greens. And this one in January 2012. Oh and this one from last month. Tenner to the person who can find any London poll that has the Greens leading UKIP.

Fine, the Greens have Assembly Members. But using that as justification to ignore polls doesn't really work because the BNP also had an AM elected and aren't being included in any of the debates.

So just why UKIP are excluded from the big debates in London? It can't be on the basis of not having AMs currently. Nor can it be down to poll ratings. Is there, dare I say it, a hint of bias going on?

The point is, these things really matter. As demonstrated in the Norwich North by-election that I worked on heavily back in 2009, the Beeb's pushing of the Greens ahead of UKIP has been shown to be embarrassingly unjustifiable at times. But the damage of not being included as one of 'main options' for voters is very real. As a Party that is frequently running the LibDems close in national polls (something the Greens haven't come close to doing), UKIP deserves a better deal.

We need to free free schools.

Free schools? How free? Free from local authority, sure. But not free from control of central government. After all, if you want the cash to start one up, you have to adhere to the ethos that selection is not allowed.

It this kabosh on academic selection that greatly halts excellence in education for the young and especially those who live in poor areas. Kids who are academically minded should have a school they can attend that is about academic rigour. Those who aren't academic should be able to develop vocational skills at a young age instead of being pressed into system of education that is ill-suited for them.

If free schools were allowed to be set up in such a way, that would be true decentralisation from government. Alas, comprehensive hell goes on under another guise.