The least surprising part of Douglas Carswell’s defection to UKIP was surely his decision to resign his Clacton seat and seek re-election in a by-election. Quite apart from any satisfaction at the anxiety…
“Let’s see if we can make history”, said Conservative MP Douglas Carswell after he announced that he was defecting to UKIP and resigning his seat in Clacton to fight a by-election for his new party. But…
Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP for Clacton, has dropped a bomb by announcing his defection to UKIP, and will fight a by-election to give his constituents the chance to pass judgement on the decision…
The result from the most eagerly awaited by-election of this parliament was something of an anti-climax. While parts of the leafy Nottinghamshire seat succumbed to the Ukip fever gripping the nation…
It will be some time in the early hours of Friday morning until we discover whether Newark will join the list of shock by-election results. But whatever the outcome, we doubt it will be as remarkable as…
As Ukip mount a challenge to the Tories in the Newark by-election, their apparent inability to stop local candidates going embarrassingly off-script has caught up with them again. And once again, the party…
UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage now has a problem. In the wake of his party’s success in the recent European Parliament election, Farage and his UKIP colleagues need to determine how best…
Alan Sked, London School of Economics and Political Science
It wasn’t until 1997 that I became aware that issues of race or ethnicity could form part of the debate over Europe. The most recent round of European elections show that we are now at risk of these issues…
Data from the latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey shows that since 2000, the percentage of Britons who admit some level of racial prejudice has clearly increased. Nationally, it now hovers around…
The message, it seems, is clear. European citizens are at best unimpressed with mainstream politics, at worst outright dismissive of it. The French Front National (FN) and the United Kingdom Independence…
As Europe wakens to a wave of newly elected right-wing Members of the European Parliament, our multi-racial continent needs to understand what are the psychological roots of this movement. We have some…
Some 400 million eligible voters, 751 seats, 28 countries: a portrait of true democracy at work – unless they held an election and nobody came. Average voter turnout in the weekend’s European Parliament…
It is clear from the European and local election results that there are some interesting and fairly nuanced things happening. Labour has not done as well as it expected to do – and there are a lot of people…
Based on growing polling evidence, it is highly likely that the UK Independence Party (UKIP) will top the national poll in the European elections. Even though historically UKIP has over-performed in European…
Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, appears to have stolen the show in the run up to the European elections. But while he has been pilloried in the papers, discussion about him on Twitter…
Two countries have synchronised their EU election and local election dates this cycle: Greece and parts of the UK (England and Northern Ireland). On May 25, Greeks vote in run-off elections in all their…
The European Parliament elections are just a few days away. And yet, the overwhelming focus of election coverage in UK newspapers has not been about European issues and policy debates, but on Nigel Farage’s…
It is tempting to try and use the recent release of figures from the labour force survey as a (metaphorical) stick with which to hit the likes of UKIP and Migration Watch who predicted that huge numbers…
It is widely predicted that far-right parties will be the big winners of the 2014 European elections. Some polls have even suggested that the French Front National, the Dutch Party for Freedom, the Austrian…
Eunice Goes, Richmond American International University
Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, has responded to the electoral threat of UKIP with proposals to regulate the private rental market. By targeting the forgotten generation rent – estimated to include around…