I think Grangemouth demonstrated exactly who holds the whip hand here - outside of the public sector it isn't the unions.

UKIP will probably take votes of all parties. To say they will only take votes from the Tories is simplistic.



To dismiss peoples genuine concerns about Europe / Immigration as nonsense is a very wrong.

It's looking like a worryingly comfortable Tory majority to me. UKIP are doing well in the opinion polls but come the general election most of those people will vote Tory, especially as the Tory party will continue to talk tough on Europe. They've managed to get away with pretending to be anti-Europe for 30 years despite being pro-Europe. They'll do so again. As I have said umpteen times and someone has just said above, Labour's leadership will make them unelectable.

As I said on another thread, Osborne today started the PR machine rolling with his covert attack on Cable and his overt attack on Labour and despite spinning the last five years of depressed world economies so that it appears to be all Gordon Browns fault, he got away with it and had his soundbites all repeated verbatim.

After twelve more months he'll be able to sell horsemeat as prime beef and none of us will notice the difference.

What about the Lib Dem vote? I can't believe anyone will fall for whatever they say again and I don't see antone who voted Lib Dem last time but not in 2015 as defecting to the Tories.

Where I live in a marginal seat , two way fight (UKIP is nowhere) the Lib Dems should be toast whereas last time IIRC they affected the result letting the Tory in.

They will take hugely from the Tories compared to everyone else. Massively. There are very few who voted for Gordon Brown in 2010 whose concerns about Cameron are now solved by UKIP. There aren’t many who voted for Nick Clegg in 2010 who wont vote for them again because the Lib Dems haven’t gone far enough to the right.

I don’t dismiss peoples genuine concerns about Europe and Immigration. Lynton Crosbys dog-whistle isn’t however a representation of genuine concerns.