Friday 27 December 2013

Only 5 months to go until the EU elections.... The elections which nobody seems to want to win.

Only 5 months are left until the 2014 European Elections, and despite their being much public interest, politicians and the media have been completely silent. Why is this? One major reason could be because this election represents a huge opportunity for the insurgent party of British politics, UKIP. It is important to remember that many of the major media outlets are controlled by Conservative supporting conglomerates. Kenneth Clarke made the mistake of calling UKIP supporters "Clowns and fruitcakes" back in May, which led to the UKIP surge, hence why the media has been unusually hushed ever since then about UKIP, except when it reports controversial stuff about the party. UKIP have won 12 Council seats and gotten 24% of the vote in Local By-Elections since May 2013, and are shown to be in first place in many parliamentary constituencies as well. Since they came from nowhere to clinch 2nd in 2009, you would expect that as being a right of centre opposition party, they could come 1st in May next year because of a Tory collapse. Indeed, the bookies have UKIP as favourites for winning. However, opinion polls suggest that this is not (Yet) the case. The most recent EU election poll by survation had Labour on 32%, with a 7% lead over UKIP on 25%, the Conservatives on 24%, and the Lib Dems on 8%. Under these results, Labour would win the EU elections, being the largest party (29 seats) by 5 seats, whilst UKIP will make big gains (24 seats) but remain where they are- 2nd. The Tories would be battered (11 seats) and the Lib Dems would also suffer serious damage (4 seats) This would be a disappointment for UKIP and Farage, as the Labour Party policy on immigration is not particularly popular even with Labour voters, and these are the people Farage must convince if he is to win these elections. These are a set of elections where the Red team has always struggled to get its supporters interested enough to get out and vote, and indeed Labour have never topped the poll since the D'Hondt electoral system was introduced. It is vital for Farage to win these elections- A win here would make it absolutely inconceivable for Farage to not feature in the 2015 General Election TV debates. It would also cause panic and perhaps defections within the Conservative Party, which would help Farage even more. So, for now at least, the UKIP surge flatters to deceive.

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