Whole lotta UKIP

You have to hand it to Lord Monckton in his letter in today's Telegraph.

SIR – UKIP hates neither Islam nor foreigners nor Europe (report, March 5).

As the only party that trusts the voters of Britain to call referendums on any matter on which our remote governing elite fails to represent their wishes, with the results binding Parliament, we are the party not of hatred or of xenophobia, but of love. That is why the young and idealistic are joining UKIP.

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

Joint Deputy Leader, UKIP
Rannoch, Perthshire

Meanwhile Simon Heffer in the same paper today gets it spot on. UKIP while once a single issue party now has clear, defined, and different policies to the mainstream jaded and doppleganger parties that are the coalition and Labour,

In case you missed it, the Tories came third in Barnsley. They were beaten by the United Kingdom Independence Party, whose share of the vote rose dramatically compared with last year's general election. This was bound to happen sooner or later. Ukip's raison d'être is opposition to our membership of the European Union. However, it is also a party that believes in a small state, tax cuts, welfare reform, strong defence, grammar schools and strict non-racial controls on immigration.

Of course what Heffer doesn't point out is that UKIP's support is now coming from across the board (as, indeed it always did). A look at the post Barnsley polling in that constituency makes it claer that the 12% picked up by UKIP in that by-election did not come from disaffected Tories,

This survey merely repeats what we have been seeing on a national scale. YouGov reports that UKIP pick up equaly from Lib Dems and Tories. As does Angus Reid/Vision Critical. The latest poll from Populus in the Times (data not yet available, and what there is is behind the Times paywall) puts us on 5%,

Labour has edged slightly further ahead in the latest Populus poll for The Times, amid evidence that public enthusiasm for the Tories and Lib Dems working together is fading.


Labour’s support is now on 41 per cent, up 2 points on the Populus poll from last month, while the Tories are down one, on 35 per cent.

The Lib Dems remain unchanged on 11 per cent.

Of the remaining parties, UKIP secured 5 per cent support and the Greens 4 per cent.

which for Populus is a massive increase on their normal polling for UKIP where we were lucky to hit 2%.
 
Things are moving.