Nigel Farage is fond of talking about the prospect of a "political earthquake". He reckoned that Ukip coming first in this year's European elections was worthy of the higher end of the Richter scale, and we now know where the next tremors might originate: 12 constituencies targeted by Ukip for the 2015 general election, a list of which has been seen by Sky News.
Looking through them, a couple of thoughts spring quickly to mind. First, the fact that nine of the 12 are Tory-held seems to belie all that Ukip chat about how the party now represents just as much of a threat to Labour (something underlined by the lack of seats in the post-industrial north). Second, though past election results and local demographics have obviously been considered by Ukip strategists, so has the looming retirement of sitting MPs, which Farage and co obviously think might leave certain seats wide open. Such is the art of intelligent political opportunism: you look for cracks in the ground – sorry, more seismology – and then try to prise them open.
In keeping with Ukip's roots in the east of England – where people often feel light years from the centre of power, and immigration and low wages are frequently a big issue – a large number of the targets are on that side of the country, in the form of Grimsby, Boston and Skegness, Sittingbourne and Sheppey, Thurrock, South Thanet (where Farage himself is standing), North Thanet, and Great Yarmouth. There's also an obvious preponderance of seats on the coast: places that tend – to quote the set text on Ukip, Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin's Revolt on the Right – to have a preponderance of "pensioners, working-class and low-education voters", as against bourgeois graduate hipsters.
Note also a couple of wild cards: the safe(ish) Tory seat of the Forest of Dean, where the local press claim that Ukip has seen "a surge in popularity", and Aylesbury, where the Tory Europe minister, David Lidington, has an 11,000 majority, but the unpopularity of the looming HS2 rail line is a big local factor. What happens there next May might be more a matter of a few teacups crashing to the ground than an extinction-level event, but you never know.
