Farage Fever swept the nation - but will Ukip wake up sweating?
Credit must go to the party for taking the local elections seriously
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.UKIP’s success in the local election show that either people don’t read what’s written on leaflets or if they do they don’t really care. With most promises being about national issues with the EU obviously featuring highly but Equal Marriage and Immigration often making appearances, many UKIP candidates didn’t quite get the ‘local’ bit of these elections. In the end it didn’t matter.
Farage Fever swept across Britain last night and this morning. Whether it be a protest at in increasingly out of touch, depressingly similar and elitist political class or not is something for psephologists to work out.
Credit must go to UKIP for turning around their approach, for too long while I was a member even senior figures told me that there "wasn’t enough time" to fight "unimportant" elections like the locals as we had to leave the EU instantly before it was too late. UKIP have finally realised that to turn the popular anger that has seen them shoot up in the polls into General Election votes they have to turn it into local election votes first.
This could mark the long await professionalisation of UKIP that has been mooted for years, but with candidates such as the one who believes exercise ‘cures’ homosexuality winning for UKIP I am sure we can expect some interesting comments from UKIP’s 100 odd new spokesmen.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments