{"id":19860,"date":"2013-04-15T09:59:36","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T14:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19860"},"modified":"2013-04-15T09:59:36","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T14:59:36","slug":"why-ukip-has-been-drawing-support-away-from-the-conservatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/04\/15\/why-ukip-has-been-drawing-support-away-from-the-conservatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Why UKIP has been drawing support away from the Conservatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Telegraph<\/em>, Ed West<\/a> explains some of the reasons for UKIP’s rise in support at the expense of David Cameron’s Tories:<\/p>\n

Across the North of England, Ukip is able to appeal to a wide range of socially conservative people who hate the Tories as the people who destroyed their towns and yet are voting for Thatcher\u2019s heir.<\/p>\n

The key to David Cameron\u2019s failure, in 2010 and since, has been the pursuit of the centre ground. The key to Ukip\u2019s success is their understanding that there\u2019s no such thing, and that on a range of issues — health, transport and jobs — the public are more Left-wing than the powers that be, and on several others — crime, Europe and immigration — they\u2019re considerably more Right-wing. Whether Ukip\u2019s economic policies would help working-class people is open to debate, although restricting unskilled immigration would help.<\/p>\n

The cornerstone of Ukip\u2019s support is the subject of mass immigration, which is not only an unpopular process in itself, but tends to create a code of dishonesty and cant in the political class, further driving them apart from the public. It is an issue inescapably tied up with the European Union, and Ukip has successfully (so far) negotiated a middle course close to the centre of public opinion; most people do not share the political elites\u2019 talk about \u201cBritain\u2019s diversity is its strength\u201d, but neither do they dislike immigrants or wish to support the politics of hate. They just don\u2019t want their country changed beyond recognition, and don\u2019t see why they should be condemned for this.<\/p>\n

None of this would matter, of course, if people had particular confidence that one of the major parties knew what they were doing with the economy. As it is, Labour got us into this mess, while having George Osborne in charge rather feels like being on an aeroplane where the company owner\u2019s 12-year-old son has insisted on being the pilot. I hope he knows what he\u2019s doing, but I\u2019m prepared to let someone else have a go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Telegraph, Ed West explains some of the reasons for UKIP’s rise in support at the expense of David Cameron’s Tories: Across the North of England, Ukip is able to appeal to a wide range of socially conservative people who hate the Tories as the people who destroyed their towns and yet are voting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,53],"tags":[389,337,554,865,533],"class_list":["post-19860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-politics","tag-davidcameron","tag-eu","tag-immigration","tag-nigelfarage","tag-ukip"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5ak","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19860"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19862,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19860\/revisions\/19862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}