UKIP second in Eastleigh...anyone from Eastleigh care to comment?

Sequins, you started a good thread and of course we want you back in the UK. We don't take offence at your views, and your views are shared by many people. Many of us don't think UKIP are racist, just in favour of more controls on immigration.

Tansie - I agree that benefits shopping is not a good thing, although there's relatively little of it. But also, it's not benefits tourism on which UKIP focuses when it talks about immigration. It adopts a simple "we don't want them" rhetoric (as have some on this thread). And it whinges about things like foreigners going to UK schools, as if that were some sort of heinous crime.

When you talk about freeloading, are you referring to people sending their children to school?

I'm British, we live in another EU country and from this year my daughter's going to be in the state school system here. Are we doing something wrong? Should I have stayed in my own country?

Doh, I meant to say in my post at 12:48:55 that I also agreed with lanie.

Sequins You can't seriously oppose other people coming to the same country you did looking for opportunities to better themselves just as you did 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

Well people can - and do - for exactly the same reasons as those whose families go back longer.

It's one of the reasons why the debate about immigration has moved on - it's not just ideological, it's more about practical issues such as unemployment, the cost of welfare, pressure on schools and limited social housing. Once immigration only affected the poorest in their council estates. Maybe no-one else here is old enough to remember "Hard to Let" council properties!

The shortage of council/social or any affordable housing, the introduction of buy-to-let and the Local Housing Allowance has allowed "waves of immigration" to be experienced much more widely throughout communities instead of just being concentrated in sink estates.

The reason UKIP will benefit from this is simply because it isn't possible to restrict immigration from EU countries as it is with non-EU countries. It wasn't really an issue while most EU countries were affluent, but as soon as the EU began to widen its borders to take in less affluent countries, unrestricted immigration was always going to become an issue.

I suppose if you no longer live here, you might have missed this shift in the immigration debate, and the negative effect on opinion about the EU.

I think that's the main reason people see UKIP as a valid protest vote.

I'd just like to make it clear, having said all that, that I would never vote for them!

Q: (vesela) "Are we going to retreat into a world where you're not allowed to leave your country? Or maybe no one should be allowed to leave their own parish - that would make things nice and simple."

No, not at all. I think you'll be welcome to leave your village, parish or country- just like now!- just that you won't be allowed to freeload on the villagers/parishioners/countrymen in your new location. Which means if you don't have the wherewithal, either in terms of cash or skills, you'll be 'on the street' in that new country. Which you'll need to consider before emigrating there.

What's hard about that concept to understand?

And how can it be 'racist' when the person of whom I speak, for instance, my DH, is a bloody foreigner but of exactly the same race and ethnicity as me?! His grandad came from Shropshire.

Sequin you say "You can't seriously oppose other people coming to the same country you did looking for opportunities to better themselves just as you did 10, 20 or 30 years ago."- well, yes you can, and are maybe more likely to do so if you arrived with nothing, were given practically nothing yet worked your way 'up' to a position of relative affluence, well-settled, proper tax paying but contributing, not taking; then see 'incomers' arrive who threaten to 'take away', to push you further down a queue, because yes, I believe you'd have every reason to feel 'entitled'. You entered into a social contact: I'll work hard, I'll pay my way, I'll contribute to this country financially and socially- the trade off being, when and if my time of need comes, there's be some pay out for me.

I will wonder how much 'it will jar' with you when and if you ever found yourself trying to find another primary school for your DC because the local one was suddenly full of unplanned-for incomers, or (and whispers here)- your DC was one of only 2 non-'Eastern European language' speakers in her class... and found herself socially excluded as a result (true documented story- an extreme example, yes, I grant you) BUT the point I am making is that it is the poorer people in more deprived areas who do find themselves 'exposed' by uncontrolled mass-immigration such as a lot of people in Eastleigh and governments ignore their voice at their peril.

As I stated, DH is an immigrant, arriving on an ancestry visa (though he could also have applied on a spousal visa). This cost us £650. Once here, he had 'no recourse to public funds' for 5 years and only emergency access to the NHS (though that was never, ever checked or challenged- it should have been). So if he were unemployed- no dole, no housing, no JSA. In fact, after 3 months in a temp job, he did become unemployed, I had to go back to work (with a 2 year old), to pay the rent for the few weeks before he got the permanent managerial job he's still in! And yes, I'm still working PT.

Since then, 10 years odd ago, DH has done nothing but contribute to the country. He finds our open-door immigration policies completely nuts.

I hold dual citizenship with Australia. To gain this, I had to be on their occupational shortage register (HCP, so yes), have no dependents and be under I think it was 35, and stay in my job!

Yes, we may always need immigrant care workers, spud pickers etc (though questions of our own unemployed potential workforce could be asked!) but I am not sure we are, economically, in a position any more to financial provide for their 'collateral'. This way social unrest lies.

Are we going to retreat into a world where you're not allowed to leave your country? Or maybe no one should be allowed to leave their own parish - that would make things nice and simple.

Tansie I agree there are plenty of "don't haves" in Eastleigh itself, but none whatsoever elsewhere in the constituency - Bishopstoke, Hedge End, West End, Fair Oak etc. You won't find many of them anywhere near the Eastleigh's "main street" with its over-abundance of charity shops and pawnbrokers and that grumpy little market. You're more likely to find them in Winchester or West Quay!

Yes Thornden is indeed fantastic - as you would expect of a state school without a single council estate within its catchment area. Toynbee? Not so great, less academic, but still better than many state schools.

What I meant by "largely unaffected by national issues" I had more in mind issues such as welfare reform, NHS, education, transport etc.

I certainly agree with your analysis of why UKIP did well. Growing numbers of East Europeans in Southampton and Eastleigh, pressure on local schools and services whether real or perceived, an excellent UKIP candidate, very poor UKIP-lite Tory, joke Labour candidate. Plus the fact that there is generally high satisfaction with the Lib Dem administration of the borough.

I also agree with your comment Tansie.

I think a constituency like Eastleigh was ripe for a UKIP protest vote - my only surprise was that Farage didn't stand himself. I think he'd have been a shoo-in.

No doubt he has his eye on another similar southern constituency to take from the Tories, which will no doubt give him greater satisfaction!

Ukip may not be ostensibly racist, bu it is on the fringes of politics, and onthe right. Imho political extremes tend to do well at times of recession, or when people are dissatisfied with more main stream politics.

Just because a party has received a superficial makeover to give a veneer of the mainstream, it doesn't necessarily follow that this will go in very far.

I'm sorry, but in my mind ukip sits somewhere between the Tories and parties with an even more right wing agenda. I am not comfortable with that and it does worry me that this makes policies that lie further to the right of the Tory party acceptable to more people.

Really happy that MNtowers is taking a stance against people accusing others who they don't agree with, of being racist.

Well said Niceguy2. Born and bred in Africa here, and looking hard at UKIP.

" Affluent areas like Eastleigh are barely affected by national issues".

I disagree. Whilst the more challenging areas of Eastleigh are hardly ghettoes, there still exists rather a lot of 'don't haves' there. It is very white, working (or unemployed) class, with a significant proportion of eastern Europeans. The main street, of an average weekday afternoon, will have a large numbers of young mums pushing prams, speaking English or what is possibly Polish (not so good on my eastern European languages!), and unemployed youth hanging around outside the pub door; the shops are largely pound shops and charity shops. Yes, obviously Chandlers Ford in Eastleigh borough is well to do and affluent and contains schools like Thornden which produces the highest academic results for any Hampshire comp but that school is very MC, and 'selects' by house price (and some of its catchment isn't in Eastleigh borough). I am not condemning this; my DSs are there!

But the rank and file of downtown Eastleigh are the sort of people who believe rightly or wrongly they witness their children's education being 'compromised' by the teachers spending more time with the DC who arrive without being able to speak English; they see their own teenage, pregnant DD unable to get a council flat because 'incomers' have been given them first; they wait far longer for their hospital appointments because there is an 'un-provided for' bulge of people they see as having been 'non-contributory' in the queue ahead of them (by this I refer to the 500,000 extra people in the UK as revealed by the last census that Labour didn't know were here!). Labour have had the grace to acknowledge they had no idea of how angry the 'average person' was at their free-for-all immigration policies. They also read the DM.

This is why UKIP have done so well.

And yes, my DSs attend this well-to-do school along with 'foreign' DC, largely Indian sub-continetal, Chinese, northern European, and I can say, hand on heart, that their parents whom I know feel the same way: they arrived in the UK as well educated contributors, so no, this UKIP thing isn't a racist thing, it is, as already stated, an economic thing.

People are angry that when it comes to the millions of Romanians who will flood the British welfare system next year, some well-educated, well settled, higher earning contributory Romanian will be wheeled out to accuse us all of racism, as if we can't tell the difference between someone like them (who could just as well have been from Burkina Faso as Romania) who had to apply for a work visa, (only granted after a British employer jumped through dozens of hoops to prove he couldn't find a suitable domestic applicant), then had to show sufficient funding to support themselves, then had 'no access to the public purse' for the first 5 years of their residency- disregarding that yes, 10 strong incoming EU families may have a couple of (minimum) wage earners among them (hooray, say the employers federations, we need care home workers and spud diggers!) but their tax contribution will be negligible against the cost of the state housing, the education, the health care etc etc the rest of the family will take from the public purse.

Our country is simply not wealthy enough to support its own needy any more, it does not want thousands if not millions of somebody else's. Only UKIP's withdrawal from the EU can prevent this.

I am not a likely UKIP voter- I don't want grammar schools back, for instance and yes, I believe we need ties with Europe, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that there is absolutely no way to prevent a tide of people we cannot support flooding the country next year other than to shut the door. I am not anti-immigration; DH is an immigrant (Australian), but was subject to the terms and conditions as outlined for the settled Romanian above. Australia wouldn't look at you twice unless you could tick those boxes!

I live near Eastleigh. People didn't care for the Con candidate. I've met a few new UKIP voters. Their candidate was impressive if you were minded to be swung in that direction.

Labour usually puts up a "paper candidate" in Eastleigh (ie one who does not actively canvass; just a name on the ballot sheet). It was arrogant of the party to put up a "celebrity" candidate - John O'Farrell. it just shows how Leftie-London centric the party is if they think anyone in Eastleigh knows or cares who he is.

lancaster it's an interesting point. I lived on an inner London estate for 15 years, and during that time I got to know traditional white working class families who were dismayed by the number of Irish and Caribbean families on the estate who gradually replaced them. They in turn became dismayed by the number of Nigerians and Somalians who arrived, and replaced them. They became dismayed at the number of Bangladeshis who arrived. No doubt by now the Bangladeshis are getting concerned about the prospect of Romanian gypsies...

Many areas, especially where there are high levels of social or affordable housing, "churn" all the time. It seems that people of all races tend to feel concerned about the area they live changing significantly, so I'm not sure that racism is necessarily the right way to describe that resistance to change, or the decision so many people make to move out to a "better" area if they can afford to.

If your entire High Street changes out of all recognition, you no longer share a language with your neighbours and the local amenities don't provide what you want, you're bound to be peeved.

I think to dismiss concern about immigration as racist is too simplistic.

Yes, a force to be feared by other parties if they could poll at 7 per cent in a general election. Not likely to win seats themselves

Then you need to get out more.

It's perfectly possible to be anti immigration without being racist.

It's not racist to say you oppose further mass immigration because the country cannot support it. There's not enough jobs already, we're spending too much already on benefits. The country cannot cope with another huge influx of immigrants. Of course at the moment there's a lot of concern over huge numbers of Romanian's coming.

It would be racist to say that we don't want lots of Romanian's because they're all gypsy criminals. But it's not racist to say that we don't want lots of them because we can barely cope with the numbers living here now.

One is racism, the other is a legitimate concern.

It does everyone a disservice to brand everyone who is concerned about immigration as racist.

I am also shocked at Labour coming in 4th. Where did all the protest votes against the "evil" Tories go?

sorry that didn't make sense, I meant UKIP voting Asian friends.