Four things to note about this Ukip-dominated election

So as the results come in,  some things we knew but still forget are becoming clear from the UK’s Ukip-dominated election.

First, for the soft-left London-based TV media to continually lampoon or be terribly terribly upset by Mr Farage and his utterings simply plays into his hands and wins him popularity and Ukip votes. He is the Jeremy Clarkson of big politics. He’s there to be the bad boy and outrage the fluttering PC political establishment, in the way Clarkson appeals massively to men – and women – fed up with PC censoriousness and who recognise the difference between that and racism. The more you knock him the more popular he becomes.

Second, if all else fails let us consider the issues. There are two: immigration and the EU. They are what Ukip is about. They are what it is for. The message is that for many people outside London concerns about immigration and being “run from Europe” are large and growing larger.

The MSP (mainstream parties) have either run scared of this altogether (Tories on the EU, Labour on immigration), or worse, tried to smear anyone concerned with the racism slur. That simply will not wash with large numbers of people. It doesn’t matter whether they are right or wrong, rational or not. This is politics where – as in much of life – perception always outranks reality. The MSP now have to address this.

Three, there will be a tendency – again in the London media – to try and dispel or ignore the rather simple message from the electorate on the EU and immigration. It’s a protest vote. They’ll  all vote Tory/Labour in the “real” general election. Flash in the pan. They are today where the BNP were heading a few years back and look what happened there.

If you haven’t heard all this, you very soon will. Why? Because the MSM (mainstream media) culturally, politically and psychologically, inhabit much of the same ground as the MSP and find it very difficult to confront these issues head-on in the way so many voters clearly do. There’s a joint disconnect. It needs fixing.

Four – and here’s the good news – this election might, just might, encourage a new atmosphere in which real debate and addressing of immigration and the EU and our relationships with both can now begin in the MSP arena, and indeed the MSM, too. Should that happen, the MSP may begin at last to seem rather less irrelevant, unhearing and uncaring to rather more voters.

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