UKIP and Housing

From Rupert Myers in The Guardian

There is an argument raging about why London doesn't reflect the national polls when it comes to Ukip support. The party didn't do anywhere near as well in the capital as it did elsewhere. Some claim it shows how ethnically diverse London is, and how tolerant. I don't believe that London is any more tolerant than any other parts of Britain. What it has is wealth, and a property market that has pushed out working-class residents. Thus in London Ukip has both smaller networks of activists and fewer people likely to vote for it.

When the main parties are able to unveil policies that assure the least well-off that they are on their side, when the housing market doesn't make people scared that their children will never own homes, then support for Ukip will collapse. When Ukip supporters cite immigration, it's not because they don't like the faces of people moving in down the road, it's because they fear the road is now unaffordable for their children to live on.

If you've not read the whole piece, Rupert Myers is a Conservative down in London, and he's written what I think is generally a good piece that is saying that you can't just stand around calling UKIP supporters braindead racists - it's more complex than that. And that's a mature view of the situation.

The trouble is that where UKIP are at their strongest is in areas like the South West which are very much white and without many European immigrants. OK, there's some black people in Bristol and a few people from the Indian sub-continent in Swindon*, but it's mostly white and there isn't a big influx of immigrants. And yet, they campaign across the UK in their manifesto for

• In planning, the local people's opinions should be respected and not overruled.

That's an even more brutal version of the homeownerist protection charter of the Conservatives. If you're worried about your kids getting housed, voting UKIP for that reason is pretty crazy.