Cranking It Up

Twenty-four hours from now, UKIP will have secured the re-election of an advanced Right-libertarian incumbent, a figure who is ideologically not really part of British or even of mainstream American politics, thereby giving it its first and last MP elected under its own colours.

His readily available published views will not have been a feature of his campaign, just as they have never been a feature of any of his previous campaigns, since they would absolutely preclude his election by any constituency in the land.

Yet such is the person whom Nigel Farage has described as "a perfect fit" for UKIP. And such is to be its first elected MP, as such.

Twenty-four hours from now, UKIP will also have replaced the Conservatives in a fairly distant second place at Heywood and Middleton. That will receive vastly less attention. But it will be vastly more important.

UKIP insists that it is not purely a party of the Outer Right cranks who, while they are found throughout both the upper classes and the lower middle classes, are especially concentrated within them in the South of England.

Instead, UKIP is curiously preoccupied with traditional Labour voters, whom it describes in terms reminiscent of Victorian descriptions of noble savages.

It obviously knows nothing about the working classes or about the North of England; that it regards the two as synonymous proves that, as well as that it therefore knows nothing much about the middle classes or about the South of England, either. Yet it holds the workers and the North is awed fascination.

When Labour romps home at Heywood and Middleton, with UKIP managing only its combined vote with the Conservatives in 2010, then it will be beyond argument that that compliment, if compliment it be, is completely and utterly unreturned.

For nine months, UKIP will be the parliamentary party of Outer Right cranks in the South. But not of anyone else. After that, UKIP will not be a parliamentary party at all.