Another Explanation

A UKIP candidate wants Lenny Henry to emigrate to "a black country". Lenny Henry was born and raised in Dudley. Dudley is in the Black Country.

Meanwhile, David Edgar has somehow managed to persuade a national newspaper to publish this piece of common sense:

On the occasions when Ukip's vote increases dramatically (such as in European elections) their new or temporary voters are more likely to be middle-class, financially secure and from Conservative backgrounds.

And, while Ukip did indeed attract more former Labour voters during the later New Labour years, they have won a substantially higher proportion of Tory voters since the coalition came to power.

So there might be another explanation for the high Ukip vote in Labour areas.

As the BBC's political research editor, David Cowling, points out, in Labour's safest seat in the country at the 2010 election, 28% of voters still supported other parties.

This is not because Liverpool Walton is peppered with enclaves of bankers and stockbrokers; it's because a substantial section of the working class has always voted for parties other than Labour and now that vote is going to Ukip.

Ford and Goodwin argue that Ukip's success has reduced the swing to Labour among old, poor and male voters.

But that's different from saying that Ukip is eating into the existing Labour vote, as it clearly is into the Conservatives'.