The UKIP effect - by Richard... Friday, May 07, 2010

The UKIP effect - by Richard... Friday, May 07, 2010

A quick but inaccurate sounding suggest that the minority vote cost David Cameron his victory. What in 2005 I termed the "UKIP effect" cost the Tories an estimated 28 seats. And, neglected entirely by the media and the claque, it was very much in evidence in this election.

My early calculations indicate that over 20 seats could have gone to The Boy if he had courted the minority vote, which would have meant offering a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

An example of this is the Dudley North result. Labour gets 14,923 votes in a marginal that the Tories expected to get, putting them on 38.7 of the vote. Graeme Brown for the Conservatives gets 14,274, and Mike Beckett for the Lib-Dims gets 4,066.

But the "killer" is UKIP. Against a majority of 649, Malcolm Davis gets 3,267 votes - 8.5 percent of the vote, up 3.9 percent. Easily, the UKIP vote handed to the Conservatives, would have given them the seat. On the other hand, there is the BNP which polled 1,899 and the National Front on 173. Some of those might have gone to Labour, but others would have been Labour on their way to Tory.

With only two results yet to declare, the Tories are on 305, Labour – in contrast with the first exit poll – is "over-performing" with 258 and the Lib-Dims are on 57. Add the 20-plus seats attributable to the UKIP effect and The Boy could be in Downing Street right now.

And not one of the media pundits have even mentioned this. Nor will they – their brand of politics is a reality-free zone.

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The only certainty - by Richard...

"Any government formed in the next few days will not be able to command a stable or overall majority in the Commons. So the new Parliament is unlikely to last more than a year or so. A second general election is probable either later this year or in the spring of 2011," says The Times.

Forget the welter of low-grade and over-excited comment. That is probably the best that we can expect. The realities of power make it so.

In the meantime, I do not see Brown handing over the reins of power. If I had to put money on it, my scenario would be Cleggie and Boy Dave failing to come to terms, and Gordon planting his flag in the Commons, daring the boys and girls to bring down the government in the midst of a financial crisis, then declaring an autumn election.

And isn't it so very interesting that, after this election, all the parties are being so candid about that crisis. The speeches we are hearing now are of a tenor that was curiously absent before the election.

What we have to factor in right now is that virtually all of the professional pundits got it wrong. The volume of prattle is inversely proportional to its value - the "bubble" is so up itself that it is reacting, rather than thinking, and will consistently get it wrong.

No one could predict the way the seats would fall, says a fatuous little BBC girlie ... if she pulled her head out of her arse, the result exactly reflects the mood of the country - a pox on all of you. Only the BBC, the political classes and the claque have no idea what is happening in the real world - they did not see it coming.

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