If UKIP are so terrible, why did they win so much?

[balloondoggy]

I didn't vote UKIP - I voted for my local Christians. However, if I were to purely read the comments on Mumsnet and the comments on Facebook re UKIP, I would have thought they would come last; yet they didn't. Why? Are there so many of us on here that are so different from (clearly) the majority?

Of course this is also on a turnout of about 35%. So maybe there are far fewer unquestioning idiots than it first appears.

I should think it's fairly obvious that a fairly large British NMW workforce, still reeling from de-unionisation and the decline (destruction) of the big industries, have been thrown into the deep end of a new, pan-european market of cheap labour and are still gasping from the shock.

Translation to English and actualities not statements and grandstanding?

In legitimate businesses (like the factories the poster I was responding to was talking about) Migrants get paid NMW.

The British workforce get paid NWM, what is this "cheap labour pool"?

Fideline the older I get the more I realise that politeness, like kindness, is far too underrated.

Why should people whose working conditions are worsening vote for parties who intend to keep the policy on free movement of jobseekers across Europe and extend it to any new nations joining EU?

ilovesooty the changing of working conditions and a greater pool of available labour are related.

All manner of big businesses are in fact making fat profits (although many SMEs are undoubtedly struggling) - the downturn and migrant labour have been conveniently been used as a mechanism/scapegoat to depress lower-end wages and erode working conditions and when workers protest they are patronised and told to accept zero hours, anti social hours, variable hours etc. Or told they are racist for commenting that employers are hiring large numbers of eastern europeans. I'm not surprised they are disenchanted

I wouldn't actually disagree with most of that, and I think zero hour contracts stink and ought to be outlawed. I don't think I said someone was racist for commenting on Polish workers but I'm sure it has been said. I think variable hours are here to stay though, because our whole work and leisure patterns have changed. Years ago we didn't shop on Sudays, press a key on a computer to order next day delivery, expect to go to a McDonalds or similar very late at night or early in the morning. Someone has to do those jobs.

All manner of big businesses are in fact making fat profits (although many SMEs are undoubtedly struggling) - the downturn and migrant labour have been conveniently been used as a mechanism/scapegoat to depress lower-end wages and erode working conditions and when workers protest they are patronised and told to accept zero hours, anti social hours, variable hours etc.

YY. Zero hours contracts are an abomination, and their rise has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with a decline in employee rights and union membership and power. If a business really does not know how many people it needs from one day to the next or indeed from one shift to the next, then it is a reprehensibly badly-run employer and doesn't deserve to be in business.

YY. Zero hours contracts are an abomination, and their rise has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with a decline in employee rights and union membership and power. If a business really does not know how many people it needs from one day to the next or indeed from one shift to the next, then it is a reprehensibly badly-run employer and doesn't deserve to be in business

I agree.

UKIP want us out of Europe and disengaged from the Human Rights Act so that UK can be run at a high value/low pay economy even more than it is already

Translation to English and actualities not statements and grandstanding?

softly it is english and it is actuality. Do you actually need deunionisation and 'decline of industry' explained? Or is it the opening up of the european labour market you don't understand?

There is a lot in the Human Rights Act that I'd be very reluctant to see us disengage with. I don't think disengaging with it would actually increase people's rights overall or improve their lives and well being in many ways.

People are voting ukip because they want out of Europe, at least in its current form. That is being replicated across the 28 states. The European electorates don't want a federal superstate and are finally pushing back against the lofty technocrats who claim to know what's best for them. I think this is very positive and am utterly baffled by how indifferent most MNers seem to be to the lack of democratic accountability there is in the EU, when it's laws already supersede our own. Far from seeing ukip as the first step towards fascism, I think it's the sort of indifference to our loss of democratic power and complacency about the institution we're handing it to that poses the greatest risk of seeing us sleepwalk into a totalitarian state.

And actually, even worse than zero hours contracts is the rise in self-employment, which has been a feature of some huge percentage of the so-called 'new jobs' 'created' under the coalition. At first glance, that might look like some kind of wonderful swathe of entrepreneurship sweeping the nation but on closer examination a lot of these people are not really self-employed as well; they work for one employer, they get their instructions from one employer etc - they just don't have even the same rights as someone on a zero hours contract does (which are pretty bloody minimal to start with anyway). Typically these will be poorly paid - most of the new 'self-employed' earn minimum wage or less - and of course with no job security. Zero hours is actually old news - the debate about them should have been had in the 1990s when they became prevalent. The labour market has moved on since then, to newer depths.

Pan that's why I'd like to see a more Eurosceptic party on the left.

The LibDems and Labour don't see beyond the nice bits of European integration, they have studiously ignored the downsides for poorer and less qualified people.

Well their 2010 manifesto seems pretty reasonable - and if you don't agree with things that it says like

*Take all minimum wage earners out of tax by
raising the tax threshold to £11,500

*Make no cuts in NHS frontline services

· Restore free eye tests and dental check-ups for all UK citizens

then thats your choice but some of us agree so try to accept it!

Sorry, that should say not really self-employed at all...

Well it isn't being replicated across the 28 other states, is it? At spectrum ends, Germany hasn't had this reaction, and the later-joiners haven't either. I'd agree that the aceding of some powers to Euro is an issue, but not of a disportionate swing away from a European ideal that the far right on the continent and UKIP in Britain thinks is justified. Farage does a job in trying to talk this fear up.

Why should people whose working conditions are worsening vote for parties who intend to keep the policy on free movement of jobseekers across Europe and extend it to any new nations joining EU?

Exactly funny

Zero hours contracts are an abomination, and their rise has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with a decline in employee rights and union membership and power. If a business really does not know how many people it needs from one day to the next or indeed from one shift to the next, then it is a reprehensibly badly-run employer and doesn't deserve to be in business.

Oversupply of labour is the backgroud to all the deteriorations in workers' rights and conditions we have seen, but that doesn't mean we need to curb migration, we could just legislate some very minor employee protection including banning zero-hours contracts (and none of that opt out clause nonsense).

Typically these will be poorly paid - most of the new 'self-employed' earn minimum wage or less - and of course with no job security

YY

Funnyosity - I agree. It's bizarre to see left wing parties tying themselves in knots trying to justify a political institution - the EU - that disproportionately adversely impacts the poor, the young and the less qualified pretty much everywhere in the 28 states. I don't get why any party of the poor would be pro-EU.

We are back to the fact that those running the parties don't have experience of normal life amongst the great unwashed. Even Ed at his comp.

But Toad - it goes on to say that anyone earning over that £11 500 should pay 31% tax which means it's only better for those working 40 hours or less on minimum wage...anyone working more hours or for slightly above minimum will be worse off.

It also says they want to rethink inclusion and that adults with learning disabilities should be placed in congregate communities, which aren't reasonable at all.

And I think the reason the left is so baffled by Ukip and its ilk across Europe is that on the whole the left has abandoned the cause of workers (except in the sense of advocating a larger welfare state, which is less for workers than for those who can't work) in favour of the cause of equalities eg race, gender etc. Which is all very noble but in the case of Schengen the cause of race/culture equality actively harms the cause of the working poor. Then when the working poor protest about this they are sneered at and demonised as thickos and racist cunts, which increases the division yet further.

I think it makes absolute sense that Ukip are cleaning up in the post-industrial English heartlands. Labour abandoned that constituency a long time ago in favour of centrist economics (Thatcher but with tax credits) combined with the kind of moral leftism that's horrified by racism and sexism but ambivalent about workers' solidarity and even, in many cases, secretly doesn't like the working classes very much.

unfortunately ukip seem to have removed the policy documents behind the 2010 manifesto and all I can find are scraps reported by the media: here Its the policies behind the kid glove words that are especially nasty.

I don't understand the concern about congregate communities. Can someone please explain? We already have them for the elderly, and they seem to work well in the US. As long as people are not forced into them, the same as the elderly aren't forced into them now, then I don't understand why the provision of highly specialised care communities is necessarily a bad thing for those that might need it.

The secret's out since Gordon Brown surely?

I'm going to try and hunt down as many of their policy documents as possible. (its raining, I might as well do something vaguely constructive)

UKIP energy policy including thoughts on climate change.