Tribal Gatherings

The activities of those in office in the 1980s and again since 2010 have created a tribal vote against them born out of shared physical suffering, like those of the two parties in America until the late 1960s and beyond, and like those of the two main parties in the Irish Republic up to the present day.

In both the historically American and the continuing Irish cases, the parties have been barely distinguishable once the war was over. But there were nevertheless two tribes in America for a century after the Civil War. There are still two tribes in the Irish Republic, 90 years and counting after another Civil War. Whereas there is only one scar-bearing tribal vote in Britain, and on its own it is almost large enough to win a General Election.

The other side is defined by not having suffered, rather than by having done so. It is therefore hopelessly flaky. It can go to the Lib Dems. It can go to UKIP. It can go to Labour on occasion. Much of it routinely just stays at home.

Sections of it have leapfrogged Labour to the SNP in previously Unionist Scotland, to Plaid Cymru in rural North Wales, to the Greens in the upper-middle-class South of England, and even to Respect in upper-middle-class Bradford, where George Galloway topped the poll in every ward of what had been a Conservative target seat in 2010.

Whereas the tribal Labour vote - I say again, almost large enough to win on its own - is dyed in the wool down to the roots, and growing larger all the time.

Thank Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron for that.

Thanks to Thatcher and now also to Cameron, the North of England, the West of Scotland, South Wales, the urban centres elsewhere, the public sector and its contractors, everyone who self-identifies as working-class (a figure which has increased staggeringly since the last General Election), people with even some ethnic minority background, Catholics as ever, the generality of people born since 1970, most people born since 1980, and practically everyone born since 1990, are now, at least for parliamentary purposes, as tribally Labour as the American South was once tribally Democratic or much of the American Northeast was once tribally Republican.

The difference being that almost no one, and even their number is declining all the time, is anything like that tribally Conservative. Hence UKIP. And hence the absence of any "UKIP of the Left".

Labour took off as soon as most people could vote, which tells you everything. It is also the key difference from UKIP, which has emerged in the era of universal suffrage.

Labour did attract votes from both of the other parties; it tends to be forgotten that it did so from both. But it was also the vehicle for an entirely new electorate, although of course the people who comprised that new electorate had always been there.

UKIP is not in that position. It likes to compare itself to Labour, which was in office within one generation of having been set up. But there is no comparison. Hence it is already one generation since UKIP was set up, but it has still yet to win a Commons seat. One seat. Anywhere. Ever.