The Ukip factor

Where the election will be won

GIVEN THE acceptance that Theresa May will win the election on June 8, this campaign continues to lack the vim and vigor of previous battles. Yet the Tory leader’s majority is very much dependent on the scale of Ukip’s implosion rather than Mrs May’s own qualities and Labour’s welldocumented failings.

This is borne out by the fact that Ukip, the party which transformed politics with its crusade for Britain to leave the EU, is only fielding candidates in 32 of Yorkshire’s 54 constituencies.

Coming on the back of humiliating local election results, it’s even more marked in Brexitsupporting areas like Doncaster where Ukip’s conference in 2014 saw the defection of the then-Tory MP Mark Reckless. Despite the borough having three constituencies, the party is contesting just one seat – further evidence of the extent to which the party is becoming a spent force without Nigel Farage or its chief cause célèbre.

Yet, while Ukip is perversely fighting seats in Yorkshire currently held by Conservatives who backed Leave, it has, paradoxically, not selected a candidate in York Central which endorsed the Remain campaign. Where’s the strategy?

With Labour’s majority over the Tories in 70 marginals smaller than the number of votes polled by the respective Ukip candidate in 2015, these are the seats which will determine if Mrs May wins by a landslide or not.