Enjoying the election campaign so far? No, thought not. Still, this is not a counsel of despair. I believe that, however shouty or tedious it gets, by close of play on 7 May, you are duty bound to have thrown your weight behind someone or something and to have made that clear at the ballot box. I wouldn’t make failure to vote illegal, but I’d like to make abstinence socially embarrassing.
I heard myself the other day telling a jovially disengaged taxi driver – who had said our great nation was sliding into hell – to vote Ukip if that was where the logic of his thoughts took him. Better that than indolent spluttering from behind the wheel. By the end of our conversation, he said he would, especially as that Farage seemed a good bloke. I only hope his vote, delivered late, with the cab illegally parked and the meter running, doesn’t hand Farage another seat.
I’m beginning to wonder about Ukip. There is the narrative that the bandwagon will roll through to May and the Nigel-ites will prove unstoppable, with all the deleterious repercussions that might have for cohesion and communal harmony. But increasingly, I’m not so sure. Just as it is accepted that many voters may have last minute doubts about endorsing Ed Miliband, might a few not have worries about Nigel by the opening of the polls?
An interesting study emerged last week. The campaign group Hope Not Hate says that, with the implosion of the BNP and EDL, far-right support is at a 20-year low. Ukip has benefited from that, embracing some of that support. But it makes a terrible mistake when it sounds like a far-right party itself, because I just don’t think the British electorate, even the disaffected among them, likes extremist parties.
When Nigel used the Charlie Hebdo outrage to brand Muslims fifth columnists and followed that up by telling Fox News (where else?) that many French cities are no-go zones for non-Muslims – with no hope of being able to substantiate that claim – he did seem to be entering that loopy, cranky, far-right Nick Griffin territory that grabs headlines but also unsettles the electorate. It’s early days; he has a lot on his shoulders. And now he’ll have a real clown – Al Murray, the Pub Landlord – mocking him man to man in Thanet. He could yet unravel.
