There’s only one home for working people 

David Cameron has proved that under his leadership the Tories cannot hold even their safest seats as his party’s support haemorrhages to UKIP. By contrast, Labour has shown that it is the only party that can win a majority at the next election. We will continue to lead the argument for big changes in our economy to build a better future for working people.

That is why speculation that Labour MPs may be casting affectionate glances towards Nigel Farage is ridiculous. UKIP is a party of Tory people, Tory policies and Tory money, underlined by the fact that whatever UKIP claim it’s Tory MPs and Tory donors who have collapsed in to Nigel Farage’s welcoming arms.

Boris Johnson didn’t even bother to try to be different on the Andrew Marr programme on BBC1 this morning. “Beloved ‘kippers,” the Tory Mayor of London boomed, “there doesn’t seem to be a lot between us.” ​​

Of course Nigel Farage and his acolytes like to claim that Labour MPs are set to join him, but this is typical bullshit.

We’ve been here before – several times in fact. In January 2013 Nigel Farage hinted at a pact with Labour, while eight months later he said he was open to ‘joint tickets’ with Labour MPs. There will be none.‎

After the local election results in May, UKIP claimed they were speaking to “five to 10” Labour MPs about defecting and Nigel Farage declared that it was “no great secret” that Labour MPs agreed with him “very strongly“. It was nonsense, and what actually happened? Three months later a Tory MP, and a right wing one at that, defected to UKIP. There’s no way Douglas Carswell would be joining a party that is anything other than the enemy of the labour movement. ‎

And then in September, it was another Conservative MP, Mark Reckless, who joined UKIP. Nigel Farage again hinted that he had Labour defections and used his party conference to say UKIP were “parking our tanks on Labour’s lawn”, but it was Tory conference which was dominated by fears of further defections, with Daniel Hannan and Chris Kelly just two examples of Tories forced to deny they were about to depart by jumpy Tory whips.

Tory MP Nick Herbert has revealed that the Conservative high command were so alarmed about the impact of a loss in Clacton, knowing that more defections would then follow, that MPs were ordered to campaign there instead of in the Scottish referendum campaign.

Since then the Tories have lost Clacton to UKIP while Labour increased its share of the vote in Heywood and Middleton  – and once again the real attention is on which of Cameron’s MPs is going next. In a sign of how low confidence is, John Baron MP has said he would ‘never say never’ to joining UKIP, while Peter Bone and Jacob Rees Mogg have renewed calls for a Tory-UKIP pact.

Why is this? Because UKIP is a party joined at the hip to the Conservatives by Tory policy, Tory politicians and Tory money. They are more Tory than the Tories.

Ex-banker Nigel Farage presents himself as an outsider but he spent the 1980s as a Tory activist. Half of the UKIP leadership, including their deputy leader and policy chief, are former Tories, as are a quarter of the candidates for the general election.

Nigel Farage is being bankrolled by those who keep the Tories in business. Some 24 Tory donors have given UKIP over £2m, and in the last quarter almost 90 per cent of UKIP’s funding came from Tory backers. Their latest big money backer, Arron Banks, is also a former Tory donor.

Former UKIP Treasurer, Stuart Wheeler said recently: “Our policies, except for a few, are very, very similar to the Conservatives'”. Meanwhile, Jacob Rees Mogg, asked whether Nigel Farage is intrinsically a Tory, replied, “Oh yes I think he is…he’s not very far away from the Conservative Party in most of his views”.

We know this is true. David Cameron gave millionaires a tax cut and Farage wants to go further and give 16,000 millionaires another tax break of more than £100,000. David Cameron has wasted £3bn on an NHS reorganisation which has led to longer waiting times, 7,000 fewer frontline staff, and a GP access crisis. Nigel Farage wants to go further, advocating charging people for seeing their GP, further cuts and increased privatisation of the NHS. The Tories won’t repeat Labour’s tax on bank bonuses and Nigel Farage has defended ever higher bankers’ bonuses.

This is not an agenda that would attract anyone in the Labour Party, a party born from and dedicated to the advancement of working people’s interests and ideals.

UKIP is a party with its history rooted in doctrinaire Thatcherism and its future dedicated to advancing Margaret Thatcher’s ideas. It was Nigel Farage who said “I am a Thatcherite” and it was Douglas Carswell who said Margaret Thatcher lifted Britain “off its knees”. Nobody on the left would join a party which celebrates in the historic destruction of working-class communities, and anyone who wants to campaign for a plan to build a better future for everyday

Michael Dugher is Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office