UKIP Steps Up Bid To Build Four-Party Politics

Nigel Farage and UKIP are attempting to step up from a party of protest to genuine contenders in four-party politics.

After the European elections in May, they could legitimately claim to have done that, having topped the poll with 27.5% of the vote.

It was the first time since the 1906 general election that any party other than Labour or the Conservatives had come top in a national poll.

Now UKIP is bidding to win its first seat in a parliamentary election, when Douglas Carswell attempts to hold his Clacton seat in a by-election on 9 October triggered by his shock defection from the Conservatives. UKIP is also challenging Labour in another by-election on the same day in Heywood & Middleton.

But while Mr Carswell stands a good chance of turning his 12,068 Tory majority in 2010 into a comfortable win for his new party in Clacton, realistically UKIP will win no more than a handful of seats at next year's general election.

The party had hoped its conference this weekend would be a springboard to victory in the two by-elections next month and then a major breakthrough in next year's general election.

But suddenly, Parliament has been recalled to debate going to war and, with no MPs, UKIP has no influence on that decision and its conference is in danger of looking like a sideshow.

It was all very different after the European elections, UKIP's 27.5% of the vote gave the party 23 MEPs. Labour was second with 25.4% and 18 MEPs and the Conservatives third with 23.94% and also 18 MEPs.

The Greens polled 7.87% with three MEPs, while the Liberal Democrats slumped to 6.87%, winning just one MEP. On that showing, it wasn't so much four-party politics as three, with UKIP replacing the Lib Dems as the third party.

But that was the European elections. Parliamentary by-elections are different and the general election different again. Making a breakthrough is harder, as UKIP has already found.

UKIP's task has been made harder by the fact that many of the 18 by-elections since the 2010 general election have been in fairly safe Labour seats. And while UKIP has come second in five, Labour has held them all comfortably, with one spectacular exception.

But in Bradford West, Labour's shock defeat wasn't at the hands of a flamboyant beer-drinking party leader, but an equally flamboyant teetotal firebrand, George Galloway, who stormed to victory by 10,000 votes.

UKIP came second in Barnsley Central, Middlesbrough, Rotherham, South Shields, and Wythenshaw & Sale East.

It came third in Corby and Croydon North, but fourth in Oldham East & Saddleworth, Leicester South, Feltham & Heston and Manchester Central and fifth in Bradford West and Cardiff South & Penarth.

By far UKIP's best result was in Eastleigh, where in the seat previously held by the disgraced Cabinet minister Chris Huhne, Mr Farage's party fell just 1,771 votes short of defeating the Lib Dems.

While UKIP's Diane James was a strong candidate, Mr Farage faced claims that if he had stood he might have won. Not so, he insisted.

In the most recent by-election, in Newark, a monumental Tory effort saw the Conservatives see off the UKIP threat with a comfortable majority of nearly 7,500.

Now the UKIP leader has opted to fight Thanet South, where the Tory majority is 7,617 and a one-term Tory MP, Laura Sandys, is standing down at the general election. Mr Farage is tipped to win. But how many seats will his party win in 2015?

That may depend on whether any more Conservative MPs follow Mr Carswell into the arms of UKIP. And that could depend on how well he does in his by-election next month. Another question: will Mr Carswell hold Clacton in the general election?

Provocatively, UKIP is holding its party conference at Doncaster racecourse, in Ed Miliband's constituency. Mr Farage claims his party takes votes off Labour and Conservatives in equal numbers.

But the evidence of the by-elections so far in this Parliament suggests UKIP will damage the Conservatives more in the general election, handing victory to Labour in some marginals and merely eating into Labour's majority in its safe seats.

The European elections may have given us four-party politics. But unless UKIP springs a surprise and wins more than a handful of seats at Westminster, we won't see four-party politics after the general election.