Regional Realities

Nigel Farage, ludicrously overexposed for the Leader of a party which has never won a seat, apparently shares the BBC's delusion that David Miliband won, and therefore sees UKIP as a potential home for traditional Labour supporters whom he assumes still to be as alienated as they were in the Blair years. 

Bless.

I should be fascinated to hear exactly what policies he believes could have that appeal without driving away his existing base of Ayn Rand devotees on the platform of UKIP meetings and blazer-and-cravat, gin-and-Jag, Bring Back Maggie types in the audience. But that's just me for you. It is not as if anyone else would be listening.

 

In the South and in some very rural areas elsewhere, the Conservative Party is an entire way of life. Ideology or opinion matters not one jot. Affiliation is the point. Tory MPs and Councillors might at a push be willing to give up all the hunt balls and the débutantes' parties that came with their positions and join UKIP or what have you. But their wives would never, ever countenance it. So that would be that. Indeed, that already is that.

In the North and in some very urban or industrial areas elsewhere, Labour is like a faith or an ethnic identity. Something like the Durham Miners' Gala, still going strong and even addressed this year by the Leader of the party 10 points ahead in the national polls, resembles a Spanish fiesta, or the local Saint's Day in Italy, complete with an intensely moving service in the Cathedral. Again, it has little or nothing to do with ideology or opinion, at least beyond tribal dislike of the Tories, and even that is only partially about politics. It is all far, far, far deeper than that.