Tremors in Eastleigh, but no earthquake – thanks to Ed

A strange and largely unremarked result, certainly unremarked on the BBC coverage, came about in Eastleigh last week; UKIP failed to take any seats in the Borough elections, which held across wards where just last year they had romped home in the county council poll recording up to 40% of the vote.

Despite UKIP topping the Eastleigh vote in the European elections on Thursday, with 35% of the vote over the Tories on 24%, bang on trend for the South East region, voters did not vote ‘double’ UKIP.

Expectation

Expectant Nigel was in town last week for a pre-triumphal rally. He chose to wrap up his European campaign here, in Eastleigh, because of running a close second in the 2013 by-election, the county success and his sense that this prosperous Southern borough and former railway town is his people. It is not. His rally was hardly Sheffield 1992 but still attracted both hard core UKIP and some last minute protesters – I was out walking the dog and popped along. The UKIP reaction to the protest was also illuminating as we were told to “get jobs” and we were offered soap bars by two or three kippers, reminiscent of National Front behaviour in the 1980s (who has half a dozen bars of soap in their bag?).

So what happened? There were no scandals amongst the UKIP county councillors, Farage has been promoted massively across local and national media and most incredibly the council incumbents are the less than popular Liberal Democrats – but not one seat fell to the UKIP ‘earthquake’.

Ground Game

Publicly Labour activists, and privately LibDems – including their MP, put UKIP’s failure down to a big push in the town seats from Labour. We canvassed in seats that had seen very little contact from Labour apart from the by-election influx, for decades. We built capacity, had waves of leaflets on the fuel price and childcare policies and we listened. We tackled immigration with the policies announced in March, framing controlled immigration as a ‘two-way’ deal, a progressive and positive message which is beginning to get traction – although it has not punched through and been picked up by the media. In all this we mobilised in a seat where Labour comes fourth. Our campaigning seems to have stopped traditional Labour voters from wanting to put UKIP near any real power. The LibDems were active and kept die-hard supporters onside, huge numbers of leaflets but also organised canvassing. The effect was UKIP were frozen out of their Southern homeland.

As the Fabian’s Marcus Roberts has pointed out, UKIP has almost no ground game, even in a target constituency. National UKIP leaflets were mailed out, with the rather desperate ‘No More Leaflets Please’ on the centre spread poster, and then, just before their eve of polls rally, an empty open top purple bus toured the sights of Eastleigh (don’t start) with a loud hailer and a  forlorn BBC TV crew on the top deck without a windscreen (see Rally link above). I saw no sign of personal leafleting or canvassing – perhaps they thought it was in the bag, or they prioritised elsewhere.

No Manifesto

UKIP’s greatest strength, which delivered victory last week, is their inherent weakness. “We have no manifesto” as was constantly shouted at us during our protest against Farage to avert criticism, a bizarre point of pride and a fact can undo a very mixed party of protest. Explaining where they, probably, are in respect of the NHS or schools is met with a indifference in respect of the European elections as their voters are perfectly convinced a European parliament makes no difference, or does them harm. Labour should welcome the current UKIP media excitement as it must be followed by heightened scrutiny when Farage finally states his policy solutions.

Policy/agenda

The key reason our doorstep activity was effective and stemmed the flow of traditional Labour voters in a fourth place constituency to the fashionable protest was clear. Miliband.

On the doorstep it is about energy prices, generation rent and childcare, about real living wages and controlled migration, and about pushing risk and uncertainty on the poor with zero hours contracts while keeping all reward. Ed Miliband is not seen as the persuasive ‘heir to Blair’ or able to out-glib Farage or Cameron, nor does he have that faux-earnest look that Clegg perfects.

What Ed Miliband has is thoughtful and constructive policies and a quiet ability to set the political agenda while in opposition. These are rare gifts that will turn the tide for Labour more effectively and in a deeper way than the televisual chimera politicians are supposed to have. In many ways Ed Miliband is what voters are seeking from Nigel Farage, someone who is thinking about them and their lives, from their point of view. In Eastleigh we will maintain the pressure on getting this message and our policies out there.