UKIP's leadership can always be relied upon to turn to the right
UKIP came second in Rotherham with 22%. Sounds impressive doesn't it? But let us take a closer look!
The voter turnout was just 33.89%. So UKIP's '22%' was in fact 7.3% of the vote. And that's from a total electorate of 63,131!
And let us not forget that UKIP was several thousand votes behind Labour, a pro-EU party!
To use Rotherham as the basis for the claim that UKIP is now offically Britain's third party - as some newspapers have done - is just madness!
Here is what Richard North had to say on UKIP's election 'victory' night.
Typically, the by-elections of yesterday have evoked some extraordinarily superficial analysis, including a complete misrepresentation of the UKIP position. But then, with the legacy media getting so many things wrong, it should be no surprise to find it going adrift here.
UKIP aside, however, the really interesting story is the mandate delivered at these and the last batch of by-elections – six contests in total.
Starting with the Middlesborough constituency, we find that an electorate of 65,851 delivered a Labour victory on a turnout of 25.6 percent. With 10,201 votes cast for the winning candidate, Andy McDonald, that represented a mandate of a mere 15.5 percent.
The picture in Croydon North, with an electorate of 85,107, also delivered a Labour victory, this time with 15,892 votes, giving the winner a mandate of 18.7 percent. Then we have Rotherham, where Labour's Sarah Champion gets a mandate from 15.6 percent of the electorate.
Then, two weeks ago, we had the Manchester Central by-election. With 89,519 registered voters, Lucy Powell 11,507 votes gaining a Labour victory with a "mandate" from 12.9 percent of the electorate.
On the same day, the 75,175-strong electorate of Cardiff South and Penarth gave Stephen Doughty a mere 9,193 votes, delivering a mandate of 11.6 percent while Corby, with its electorate of 79,468, gave Andy Sawford 17,267 votes – a mandate of 21.7 percent.
In a total of six recent by-elections, therefore, we have mandates ranging from 11.6 percent to a maximum of 21.7 percent. Overall, from a total electorate of 461,251 the total votes cast for the six winning candidates were 73,836, representing an average mandate of exactly 16 percent.
Interestingly, that compares closely with the dismal performance of Labour's Seema Malhotra in last year's Feltham and Heston by-election, where she gained a mandate from 15.7 percent of the electorate.
Thus, as we remarked at the time of the police commissioner elections, we have a situation where politics is in crisis. Actually, it is democracy in crisis. Where you have six MPs elected to parliament on an average mandate of 16 percent, that is no longer democracy.
This is not even the tyranny of the majority. It is rule by a tiny minority – less than one fifth of the electorate.
As for UKIP, in the six by-elections, 15,074 votes were cast for the party, out of that total electorate of 461,251. That actually gives an average poll of a tiny 3.3 percent of the electorate prepared to turn out to vote for this minority party.
On the other hand, Ed Miliband welcomes his recent results as an endorsement of "One Nation Labour". But the mandate is no endorsement. The reality is that, if representative democracy is not already dead, it is dying on its feet. And, with the support of 3.3 percent of the electorate, UKIP is not providing a credible alternative.
To read the original: LINK
Also see: LINK
Nuff said!
Hi,
ReplyDeleteUKIP's spin machine seems more crass than ever - it seems to believe its own propaganda and is rather making a fool of the party.
We are used to the little boy who cried woolf methodology of rushing around telling everyone they are going to do incredibly well even win in upcoming elections.
We are used to the desperate efforts to pretend they did well when clearly their result was of zero consequence but this time they are even quoting selective medi who are flattering them to use them as a stick with which to beat the government.
UKIP just don't understand the first principles of politics, to judge by my experience and the recent deeply derogatory exposee by BBC Radio 4, perhaps they are too hungover to comprehend the facts!
UKIP seem to believe they have done well recently which is an incredible display of both hubris and stupidity when one measures their risible results against the reality.
UKIP is a rather tacky one man band where the performing monkey is in charge for want of an organ grinder - the tune is excellent and popular, the crowd is desperate for a lead and most of the time the organ lies in the ditch whilst the monkey preens!
A one man band where selection of candidates is based on that one rather insecure little man's need to have his ego massaged and where he has gathered a claque of fools and cowards to lick his boots but which is bereft of a single solitary individual of gravitas, competence or credible stature.
Thus the cockrel that performs stand proud like a diamond on a dung heap and ensures no challenges to selection or staff for fear of rivals.
UKIP is thus less relevant on a daily basis for after 20 years they have less than 30 elected offices of any note out of the 19,500 available, by election, in British governance!
UKIP is realistically no closer to election of an MP than they were never having EVER had a candidate come within spitting distance of holding office at Westminster.
You will note that they scraped together their best ever performance in Rotheram utilising every possible trick to get the protest vote but bypassed by the electorate who chose to stay at home leaving UKIP with half as many votes as the winners sue largely to the lack of a credible and competent candidate of any stature or record in the constituency and a leadership of squabbling fools and petty criminals!
UKIP is clearly, in its present state, no part of the solution but a very large part of the problem as it squanders the goodwill and protestations of those who wish to Leave-The-EU with such irresponsible and self serving behaviour!
It is sad that the party so many of us had such hopes for has become so befouled with drunks, fools, cowards and the self serving as to be unfit for purpose.
Root and branches eviceration would not be too difficult as their intellectual roots are near non existent and as for branches tyhey are all but non existent in competency terms!
Regards,
Greg_L-W.