"There is no substitute for victory" according to General Douglas MacArthur and UKIP don't need a substitute.
We came a clear 1st in the UK election:
"UKIP won 27.5% of the vote and had 24 MEPs elected. Labour, on 25.4%, has narrowly beat the Tories into third place while the Lib Dems lost all but one of their seats and came sixth behind the Greens."
So we may expect to see the Tories cease demanding free marketeers support them for fear of "splitting" the vote, indeed in theory they should start telling their supporters to vote UKIP everywhere where they came 3rd and while I don't expect them too, the voters are smart enough to work that out for themselves.
While it was not the 100% wipe out for the LibDems some had predicted it is close enough - they were beaten by the Greens.
Eurosceptic parties also did well across the continent.
The Scottish vote is also a victory:
"The SNP won 386,193 votes on the night - almost 29% - with Labour coming second, on 346,377 votes (25.9%).
In third place was the Conservatives, with 230,569 votes (17.2%), followed by UKIP on 139,687 (10.4%).....
The Scottish Greens hailed their "best ever result", after winning 107,805 votes (8%), while the Liberal Democrats got a total of 95,076 votes (7%)."
That is very bad for the SNP, particularly with the referendum coming up. It looks like a lot of SNP who would be Tories elsewhere decided to vote unionist. It is good for the Tories who were well ahead of us, though UKIP thrashed them elsewhere - I suspect this is not so much an increase in approval for them as a decrease elsewhere.
Though we got our seat and are now the 4th party in Scotland, it was by a very thin margin. I strongly suspect that the votes going to the Tories not us (& more) was entirely because of the disgusting, dishonest and wholly corrupt campaign run by the BBC to call us "racist".
In theory, and law, now that we have just over 1/3rd of the vote of the SNP the BBC will be obliged to give 1/3rd as much airtime to UKIP members as to Salmond, Sturgeon and co. In practice you would have to believe we live in a free democracy to expect that law to be enforced. However we can expect an almost infinite amount more coverage (ie some) and even some making up for 2 decades of censorship.
10.4% in an EU election suggests a somewhat lower Holyrood vote, though, since Holyrood is under a PR system, not the squeezing out that happens in Westminster elections. To be a major party at Holyrood we have to have positive Scottish policies to put forward. I am convinced that the Scottish people only need some serious policy alternatives to the present "left of the UK Labour party consensus" that all 5 Holyrood parties share. I hope to keep on suggesting some.
The Greens beating the LDs is also a humiliation for them, though it was achieved more by the latter increasing their vote - another sign more of dissatisfaction with the main party alternatives, I think, than approval of the Green enthusiasm for recession, blackouts and pensioner freezing.
We came a clear 1st in the UK election:
"UKIP won 27.5% of the vote and had 24 MEPs elected. Labour, on 25.4%, has narrowly beat the Tories into third place while the Lib Dems lost all but one of their seats and came sixth behind the Greens."
So we may expect to see the Tories cease demanding free marketeers support them for fear of "splitting" the vote, indeed in theory they should start telling their supporters to vote UKIP everywhere where they came 3rd and while I don't expect them too, the voters are smart enough to work that out for themselves.
While it was not the 100% wipe out for the LibDems some had predicted it is close enough - they were beaten by the Greens.
Eurosceptic parties also did well across the continent.
The Scottish vote is also a victory:
"The SNP won 386,193 votes on the night - almost 29% - with Labour coming second, on 346,377 votes (25.9%).
In third place was the Conservatives, with 230,569 votes (17.2%), followed by UKIP on 139,687 (10.4%).....
The Scottish Greens hailed their "best ever result", after winning 107,805 votes (8%), while the Liberal Democrats got a total of 95,076 votes (7%)."
That is very bad for the SNP, particularly with the referendum coming up. It looks like a lot of SNP who would be Tories elsewhere decided to vote unionist. It is good for the Tories who were well ahead of us, though UKIP thrashed them elsewhere - I suspect this is not so much an increase in approval for them as a decrease elsewhere.
Though we got our seat and are now the 4th party in Scotland, it was by a very thin margin. I strongly suspect that the votes going to the Tories not us (& more) was entirely because of the disgusting, dishonest and wholly corrupt campaign run by the BBC to call us "racist".
In theory, and law, now that we have just over 1/3rd of the vote of the SNP the BBC will be obliged to give 1/3rd as much airtime to UKIP members as to Salmond, Sturgeon and co. In practice you would have to believe we live in a free democracy to expect that law to be enforced. However we can expect an almost infinite amount more coverage (ie some) and even some making up for 2 decades of censorship.
10.4% in an EU election suggests a somewhat lower Holyrood vote, though, since Holyrood is under a PR system, not the squeezing out that happens in Westminster elections. To be a major party at Holyrood we have to have positive Scottish policies to put forward. I am convinced that the Scottish people only need some serious policy alternatives to the present "left of the UK Labour party consensus" that all 5 Holyrood parties share. I hope to keep on suggesting some.
The Greens beating the LDs is also a humiliation for them, though it was achieved more by the latter increasing their vote - another sign more of dissatisfaction with the main party alternatives, I think, than approval of the Green enthusiasm for recession, blackouts and pensioner freezing.
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