PM must woo back the rebel UKIP voters

TONIGHT, the Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats expect to be served a large portion of the humblest sort of pie in the Euro Elections.

A similarly deep dish will be set before the BBC and many in the media who thought that the repeated cry of ‘racist!’ would be a sort of magic incantation guaranteed to ward off Nigel Farage. Their only achievement was to make large numbers of decent people angry that their reasonable discontent was being loftily dismissed as bigotry by an insulated and snobbish political class.

But what impact will this have? After all, a few council seats and a few Euro-MPs cannot change the destiny of the nation or alter the unchanging purpose of the European Union.

Yes, Nigel Farage has temporarily damaged both the Tories and Labour. But it will be hard for him to advance any further without getting into grave difficulties. Labour voters may toy with UKIP for now, but will surely grow cooler as they learn more of its Thatcherite origins. And Tory rebels will surely return to Mr Cameron, even if they have to hold their noses, as they rightly fear a Labour government. This means Mr Farage will not get any significant number of Westminster seats – without which he is no more than a nuisance, dividing his own side and helping his enemies.

Still, David Cameron and his Tories have to work out, very quickly, what to do next. Any miscalculation, and the Conservatives will go into opposition, so making them more vulnerable to UKIP than they are now.

Mr Cameron must stress above all that it is under his stewardship that the economy has begun at last to recuperate – which would be gravely endangered by another dose of Labour. In the world of hard reality, rather than in UKIP’s world of wishful thinking, the Prime Minister still has far more to offer.