Whatever happened to the UKIP of tomorrow?

The polls have been remarkably stable over the first two months of this year. In the end, the heralded “Green Surge” was as muted as a Natalie Bennett explanation of her party’s housing policy funding. It existed for about a week in January, and they never quite managed to reach the heady heights of usurping the Liberal Democrats’ hard-earned fourth place.

While Labour and the Conservatives have switched intermittently, the nearest we have come to any noticeable ‘shift’ has been a slight decline in UKIP support. Since the beginning of January, they have fallen about three points (working on a weekly, poll-of-polls average). While this is in no way major, the finely balanced nature of this election, in terms of both likely votes and seats, means that any movement of voters could have considerable effects on the result.

One of the most interesting aspects of UKIP’s emergence as a major political force over the past few years has been its potential to attract Labour support. In the short-term, I can see that costing Labour valuable target seats, while in the longer term, if they manage to establish themselves as a major opposition in Labour heartlands, there is the chance they could cause serious and unexpected damage to the party in coming elections. For a blueprint of this theory, see: Scotland.

The north west should be a major concern in this regard. There is recent precedent there for successful radical right messages to working class audiences; UKIP’s second place in October’s Heywood & Middleton by-election did not arrive completely out of the blue.

This was something I was mindful of when I spent a day on the road with Progress recently. I met them mid-way through their week-long 3 Seats Challenge tour.

The 3 Seats Challenge has been going for just over a year, and sees them organise canvassing sessions with three CLPs in a single day; whoever attends all three gets a plastic medal at the end. In February they took the challenge on tour, doing three seats a day, across the country, for seven days. Over that week, 5,105 contacts were made by 321 activists.

I joined the tour on an overcast Wednesday in the target seats of Crewe & Nantwich, Weaver Vale, and Warrington South. The seats, I was told, are chosen largely by what is feasible to do in a single day, but each of the 21 seats were also taken from the list of the 106 Labour targets.

Progress’ Director, Richard Angell, also made clear to me that there is no factional agenda to their campaign days. “We don’t just do this for candidates we’ve mentored,” he told me, “This is about getting as many Labour MPs elected in May as possible.” There certainly seems to efforts by Progress to live up to their ‘Labour’s New Mainstream’ slogan (January’s Operation Flight is another example) – and tours like this set them out as a far cry from groups such as Compass, who have renewed their call for tactical voting this week.

Turning regular doorstep campaigning sessions into ‘events’ is clearly an effective way of promoting and encouraging doorknocking. MPs Ivan Lewis and Mike Kane were on the knocker, and Stephen Twigg travelled around to each seat in the (white) Progress minibus. Bringing in a coachload of people can add a bit of buzz to a campaign, and that will be very welcome in an election that’s already starting to drag.

We canvassed terraced streets in Crewe, a council estate in Weaver Vale, and new build cul-de-sacs in Warrington South. With the former two constituencies being in the list of top 100 most UKIP friendly Tory seats, I asked local activists how that support looked. Tentatively, I heard the same thing: in Labour areas, UKIP support is noticeably receding. On a day when 635 contacts were made, I spoke to only one “Nigel Farage” voter. There is a real sense that what we see in the polls is being reflected on the ground, and to Labour’s advantage.

Should this be true, it will help to limit the short-term damage, but the long-term problems remain. If Progress continue with their new campaigning focus, and travel the country engaging Labour members outside of formal panel discussion formats, they will have a strong claim to bring valuable insights to the debate.