New poll says UKIP could beat Tories into third place in 2014's European Elections

By Tim Montgomerie
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A ComRes poll for tomorrow's People is another sign that the Eurosceptic, centre right vote is becoming worryingly divided. ComRes give the following vote shares for next year's European elections (I've put the gain on last time's results in brackets)...

• Labour - 35% (+19%)
• UKIP - 23% (+6%)
• Conservative - 22% (-6%)
• Liberal Democrat - 8% (-5%)
• Green - 5% (-3%)
• SNP - 4% (+2%)
• BNP - 2% (-4%)*
• Plaid Cymru - 1%  (more or less unchanged)

We know, of course, that UKIP won't get anything like 23% in the following year's general election but the Tory challenge is to get UKIP down to something close to the 3% that they won in 2010 or they'll be the difference between Conservatives holding seats and losing them. All of the evidence suggests that UKIP is taking many more votes from the Conservative Party than Labour. While Europe isn't the only or even the top issue of concern to UKIP voters it is the party's fundamental purpose. Unless Cameron commits to an In/Out vote in his looming speech I can't see how we are going to begin to cap the Farage phenomenon. If tmrw's Mail on Sunday is a clue to Cameron's mood (see right) I'm not sure he's in the right place to tackle UKIP. It may be why George Osborne might be positioning himself to be the sceptic to Cameron's enthusiast.

* The only good news in those figures is that, as expected, Britain should no longer be sending left-wing racists to the European Parliament.

Cameron begins new year with defence of child benefit changes and promise of quicker deportation of likes of Abu Qatada

By Tim Montgomerie
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Cameron appeared on BBC1 wearing a light blue shirt. It's the second time in 2013 he's abandoned his normal white shirt policy. Perhaps Mrs Cameron bought him a new wardrobe for Christmas?

We have two interviews with the PM to report this morning.

In one, in The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Cameron tells Matthew d'Ancona that he wants to go on to 2020 as Prime Minister. He recommits himself to some of the policies that annoy core Tory voters - including gay marriage, climate change targets and the expansion of the aid budget but he also insists that his tough approach to immigration and human rights laws are mainstream. On Abu Qatada he suggests a tabloid-pleasing shift of policy is on its way: “I am fed up with seeing suspected terrorists play the system with numerous appeals." He continues: "That’s why I’m keen to move to a policy where we deport first, and suspects can appeal later.”

During Mr Cameron's interview with Andrew Marr he was pressed constantly on the fact that under the Government's child benefit changes single high-earner couples could be penalised relative to double high-earner couples. This appears unfair to voters and the Centre for Social Justice has attacked it as "another blow to marriage". The PM had no real answer to the single earner problem but argued that “people see it as fundamentally fair that if there is someone in the household earning £60k, you don’t get child benefit.” Polling backs him - very strongly - on that narrow measure.

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The rise of UKIP was the event of the year

By Tim Montgomerie
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The event of the year - according to more than 2,500 ConHome readers - was the rise of UKIP. Readers had a choice of four events in our Picks of 2012 survey and these were the results:

• The rise of UKIP: 51.5%;
• The "omnishambles" Budget: 21.8%;
• The ending of the reform of the Lords and boundaries: 14.0%;
• David Cameron's Party Conference speech and its vision of conservatism: 12.7%.

One of Paul's four big reasons for thinking that David Cameron cannot win a majority at the next election is the first post-war split on the Right of British politics and UKIP's rise is the key reason for that split. Lord Ashcroft's recent polling on the UKIP threat underlined the reality that Nigel Farage's party won't easily be countered - even if Cameron makes a bankable commitment to hold an In/Out referendum. UKIP is now a broadly-based protest party - gaining recruits from people who are angry about the direction of the country, especially on immigration, political sleaze and now, it seems, gay marriage. The hope must be that if the next election looks close then the heavy Tory bias of UKIP's voters (confirmed in Lord A's mega poll) will encourage many of them to support the Conservatives in order to stop Ed Miliband becoming PM. Cameron must use the next two years to ensure that they feel it's worth them doing so.

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UKIP is a magnet for unhappy Tory voters but it's much, much more than Europe that's driving the dissatisfaction

By Tim Montgomerie
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The unhappy Tory family mustn't turn on itself

By Tim Montgomerie
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Exhibit A: "Having been an office holder in the Conservative party for fifty-three years, I find it difficult to remember a time when the party’s leader in government failed consistently to chime with the natural instincts of our supporters." From Brian Binley MP.

Exhibit B: "I’ve always wanted to believe that “better inside the tent” was a sensible approach to the Rabid Right and that the Conservative Party had a social duty to house, sedate and, so far as possible, neutralise the irreconcilist elements on its side of the spectrum: a sort of care-in-the-community role... How much tolerance should the party’s leadership show (and how much attention should commentators give) to MPs whose mandate has been centrist, who would not have been elected except to a centrist party, but who spend time between elections chucking rocks at the very moderation that brings in their vote? Challenged, they have the cheek to growl and whimper about “the party’s instincts”. That their tiny claimed sounding-board for these instincts (a panel of typically less than 100 serious activists) should echo their own views is unsurprising, given that the local MP has spent a career repelling from party membership anyone under 70 who isn’t a spittle-flecked, obsessively anti-European, immigrant-hating social and cultural reactionary." From Matthew Parris in The Times (£).

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Cameron and Boris both want renegotiation not exit --- but both seem ready to give voters an In/Out choice

By Tim Montgomerie
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"The London Mayor forces the pace on Europe, telling the Prime Minister to sever most of our ties with Brussels and hold an in-out referendum on a bare bones relationship."

That's the verdict of today's Sun on yesterday's speech by Boris Johnson on Europe and it looks like we may not have to wait long for Cameron to respond to the Mayor's lead.

This morning's Times (£) reports that the Prime Minister is also ready to give the British people an In/Out referendum at some point in the next parliament:

"Mr Cameron would urge the public to support a looser relationship with Brussels that he hopes to negotiate over the coming years. But he is ready to give the country the chance to say “no” to such a deal, a result that would effectively be seen as a vote to quit the EU, at least on the proposed terms."

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UKIP's threat to... Labour?

By Paul Goodman
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At the last election -

• Labour got the best part of 17,000 votes in Rotherham.
• And the Conservatives won over 6000 votes.
• UKIP won just over 2000 votes.

Yesterday -

• Labour won almost 10,000 votes.
• The Tories gained just over 1000 votes.
• And UKIP got well over 4500 votes.

Did all of UKIP's extra 2000 votes or so have come from people who voted Conservative last time?

It's possible, but I doubt it.

Some of them must surely have come from the 7000 or so people who voted Labour in 2010, but didn't do so yesterday (and not just from the 5000 people who voted Conservative in 2010, but didn't do so yesterday).

One could, of course, counter-argue that, despite yesterday evening's results in three Labour seats (UKIP came second in Middlesbrough and third in Croydon North), UKIP is primarily a threat to the Tories in true blue Conservative seats.

For this to be true, UKIP would have to be taking a significantly larger proportion of votes from the Tories than Labour in these constituencies.  It is claimed that this is so - and that UKIP cost the Conservatives up to 40 seats at the last election.

I will return to this assertion next week.  In the meantime, here is the unsurpassable Anthony Wells on the matter.

Grassroots message to Cameron --- Don't offer Farage a pact. Offer voters an In/Out referendum.

By Tim Montgomerie
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Yesterday's newspapers gave prominent attention to Michael Fabricant's suggestion of a Tory/UKIP pact but within hours both Nigel Farage and Grant Shapps had rejected the idea.

In order to establish grassroots views of the UKIP threat we held a snap poll of Tory members yesterday afternoon and evening and more than 1,350 voted. Although 48% of respondents thought a Tory/UKIP pact would be an effective way of dealing with the UKIP threat only 16% thought that it would be the single most effective response. Exactly 50% thought that the single best electoral response to UKIP was to make "a bankable commitment to hold an In/Out referendum on UK membership of the EU". 74% of members saw an In/Out commitment as an overall effective response to the UKIP threat with just 12% thinking that it was ineffective.

Grassroots Tories are aware that a referendum will no longer be enough to kill the UKIP threat completely. Two-thirds (68%) agreed that "UKIP is now a party with strong views on immigration, foreign aid and gay marriage. It will still be a threat even if the Tories have a stronger Europe policy."

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Should there be a UKIP/Tory pact?

Should Cameron offer an In/Out vote?

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Take the latest ConHome survey.

If we agreed a pact with UKIP, we would own their pain - and their problems

By Paul Goodman
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A UKIP-related story has made a splash this morning.  Here's another that can easily be imagined on the front page of the Guardian or the Independent, before being highlighted the whole day long on the BBC, from Today to Newsnight.  Maggie Chapman, a UKIP election agent, has tweeted what supporters might call light-hearted observations, and opponents - plus a very large number of people who are neither - would call racist jokes.  "EastEnders is just so unrealistic," one of them reads.  "A Paki family planning to actually go home."  There are more, including one playing on the verbal similarity beween Shiite - as in Shiite Muslims - and the swear word for excrement.

My point is not that UKIP is a racist party.  Indeed, the opposite is true: UKIP is not a racist party.  The first two words that describe it on its own google entry are "libertarian, non-racist".  Four of the five people photographed with Nigel Farage on the home page of its website are black.  And if you google "BNP" on the site, up comes an article by the UKIP leader containing the words "BNP membership is not compatible with UKIP membership".  He writes them in the context of dual membership of UKIP and other parties.  "We've always been open to dual membership," he says, adding that he's happy if UKIP members are also Labour or Conservative ones.

Why is this?  The answer is obvious, and I'm afraid that it's necessary to use some cliches to explain it.  UKIP is happy to draw members from what most people would call its left - from the two biggest parties - and to make it as easy as possible for them to sign up.  "Joining us is an easy thing to do," Mr Farage is saying to Tory members disgruntled with David Cameron's position on the EU or gay marriage or grammar schools: "Look, you don't even have to leave the party you've been a member of for so long - you're welcome here anyway."

So why, then, the BNP bar?  Because Mr Farage and the UKIP leadership, sitting as it does to the right of the Conservatives, is nervous of political activists who sit to the right of their own party. (I apologise again for using the cliche as a form of shorthand.)  As I say, UKIP isn't a racist party, but it does have, at least potentially, a racist problem - which takes us back to the Chapman tweets.  This is bound to be so in a party that lives where it does on the political spectrum, and Mr Farage and co are smart to be wise to it.

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