Articles Tagged "Tim Stanley"

I guess Rotherham’s social services are going to have their work cut out after last night’s key by-election result – it seems there are far more children with Ukip voting parents than previously expected…

Ukip placed a confident second, taking their highest ever share of the vote in a by-election. You might say that this was just another case of a small, motivated band of voters letting off steam in an off-cycle contest – but it still represents a significant breakthrough. Ukip is only supposed to be a middle class, ex-Tory vote – the golf club fringe of conservatism. But Rotherham isn’t Tunbridge Wells; it’s northern and working class. By doing so well in a traditionally Labour area, the party has proven to its sceptics that its support is truly national. The populist revolt is bigger and wider than many anticipated.

Of course, Ukip was helped by the fostering scandal that rocked Rotherham and, briefly, made everyone feel a dash of sympathy. However, its charismatic leader, Nigel Farage, has also done a great job of exploiting long term memories of Labour’s incompetence and short term anger at David Cameron’s vacillating centrism. By establishing itself as the fourth party, Ukip has started to replace the Lib Dems as the “go to” vote for those protesting the status quo.

Caroline Lucas has stood down as head of the UK Green Party. Lucas is her party’s first and only Member of Parliament, an honor that voters nowadays rate about as highly as being “the last person to be hanged in England.” It’s a fascinating piece of trivia, but not the most flattering way to be remembered.

With Lucas gone the Greens will set about choosing a replacement in the traditional manner: whoever can eat a four course meal in a vegan restaurant and survive wins. Expect the contest to come down to a tight race between an unshaven sociology lecturer and a dolphin called Roger. Roger will win on personality.

I lived for two years in the Green Party’s political stronghold of Brighton, a seaside town on the Sussex coast. I was still a partisan Labour man back then, so I witnessed firsthand the slow decline of socialism and its eclipse by the ecology movement. The cause was demographics. Our people were dying out or couldn’t be bothered to vote. The Greens, on the other hand, benefited from the influx of middle-class professionals and students. By nature, Brighton is a working-class town (even those bits of it that are proudly gay), but gentrification took its toll in the noughties and changed its character. I lived in a Georgian dive opposite the burnt-out pier for just £650 a month. Three minutes down the road, BBC producers were forking out £2000 for a studio flat opposite an excrement-fuelled eco garden. The future was Green.

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