Ukip's Rochester win shows voters no longer trust the main parties
The main Westminster parties treat modernity as virtue, and its critics as moral inferiors, as with gay marriage. This attitude is behind the rise of Ukip, says Charles Moore.
... It is taking the main political parties and most of the mainstream media a very long time to adjust to how things are changing.
On the BBC news yesterday morning, I heard its political correspondent telling us that “the [Rochester] result was never in doubt”, and implying that it had not been all that good for Ukip. Never in doubt! Who would have predicted, even six months ago, that two Tory MPs with safe seats would resign them and re-present themselves to their voters, standing for a party which had never before won a seat? Who would have predicted, if they were mad enough to do this, that they would win? Certainly not the BBC. Yet they did all these things.
At the Conservative Party conference last month, the leadership boasted that although it might not be able to halt Douglas Carswell in Clacton, it would crush the treacherous Mark Reckless in Rochester. David Cameron and the Tory part of the Cabinet more or less stopped governing the country to pound the streets of Rochester (and Strood). Every Tory MP was ordered into the constituency. Yet Mr Reckless won. The Tories did very badly. Labour did worse. The Liberal Democrats did worst of all. What are they all misunderstanding? ...
It is true, for instance, that modern sophisticated societies need quite a lot of immigration;
In an otherwise fine piece, this is false: (1) Even at greatly reduced immigration numbers, with their drastically disproportionate birthrates, Third Worlders will still eventually demographically erase Europeans; (2) This is an example of what Garrett Hardin use to call "ecological innumeracy," assuming that humans can forever redouble their numbers without eventually plunging off a resource shortage / people and pollution longage civilizational cliff.
but it is even more blindingly obvious that extremely high rates (we have double the number of immigrants of 20 years ago), which, because of the EU, the Government cannot control, are unpleasant for the poor communities which have to accommodate them. This makes them socially dangerous. If, when you complain about this, you not only get no help, but are also told that you are a horrible person, you get angry. And if you get angry, you are much more likely to vote Ukip. ...
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