reform uk within reach of main two uk parties

 Why Labour are to blame for UKIP 

This shouldn’t take long. Since 1997, and particularly since 2001, what passes for the political ideology of the Labour Party in Britain could be accurately summed up in one short phrase: be the smallest possible single step to the left of the Tories.

Protected by the grossly undemocratic First Past The Post electoral system – which discriminates massively against third parties and ensures that Labour or the Tories can secure huge, unassailable majorities on barely more than a third of the vote – Tony Blair’s brilliant, ruinous flash of political inspiration was the willingness to fully grasp the implication of that fact: that Labour could effectively all but become the Tories and still capture the left-wing vote, because that vote had nowhere else to go. 

For as long as Labour continue to handcuff themselves to the Tories in pursuit of Middle England votes, then, UKIP will continue to rise. And in the process, Labour will continue to dig itself deeper into a hole, pushing the terms of political discourse further and further onto the ground where it’s least comfortable and least trusted, and making it easier and easier for UKIP to dictate the agenda.

(With a side effect that Labour voters in the poorest areas, especially in the north of England, will also become easier prey for super-extremists like the BNP, who capitalise on the desperation of working-class poverty with what are fairly left-wing economic policies ostensibly funded by excluding ethnic minorities from services.)

Labour seems deadlocked into this cycle of self-destruction, completely bereft of the courage to offer the electorate a genuine alternative to Conservative ideology. The unfortunate British public has only begun to suffer the consequences.