The tide is high

So that's the election to the European Parliament pretty much done and dusted for another four years. The final results from Scotland and all of those from Northern Ireland have yet to come in, but they're not going to make much difference to the UKIP vote, which turns out to be around 4.35 million people, pretty much where I said they should have been.

This is the important figure: not the share of the vote, but the raw number of voters. Because, while many, many more people will turn out for each of the three main parties in a general election, this is high tide for UKIP - if you didn't vote for them last Thursday, you're unlikely to do so next year.

Unless, of course, the party changes radically. If UKIP is to get any further, it's going to have to make greater inroads into old Labour territory. And that probably means thanking Nigel Farage for all he's done, but telling him that he's gone as far as he can. A bit like Ian Holloway, he might get you promoted to the Premier League, but he won't keep you there. Or you could see him as the Moses of politics, the man chosen to lead his people back to their promised land but destined not to take the final step himself. But that's a tad heroic, as a comparison.

In any event, it's time for Farage to lay down his burden. UKIP needs to change if it's to mean anything. Now if they could recruit Alan Johnson and make him leader...

Just as a postscript, it's a pleasure to see erstwhile Mail Online blogger, Janice Atkinson-Small, elected as a UKIP MEP. At last, one of the great heroes of this blog is to get a decent income from the state.

Janice Atkinson-Small vs Glam Rock

I am, as I've said before, a big fan of Janice Atkinson-Small, a UKIP member who blogs on the Daily Mail's Right Minds site. She's great fun, and there are few more entertaining things in the British media than her single-handed (and single-minded) assault on the English language.

Today, as far as one can discern her meaning, she seems to be rejoicing in Margaret Thatcher's reported dementia: 'For the first time I hope she is somewhere else in her mind when opening her newspapers and does not seek the sick joke of the bad-taste t-shirts sold by the Derbyshire Unemployed Workers' Centre at the TUC conference.'

(I'm reminded of the Bishop of Leicester, whose quote I included in Crisis? What Crisis?: 'I never thought I should give thanks to God for being blind, but since my wife has told me what she has seen in the film, The Devils, I am genuinely grateful that I have been spared that.')

Ms Atkinson-Small goes on to denounce 'the hard left' as: 'A spent force who have to result to shock tactics.' And she reflects that: 'My generation remember the demise the UK car manufacturing industry which as a direct result of union action closed down with the loss of thousands of skilled jobs.' (All syntax, punctuation and vocabulary, incidentally, are taken from the original.)

But then she goes too far, saying that apart from union militancy in the 1970s, 'the only other memorable things about that decade - equally bad - were Heath taking us into Europe and glam rock.'

Now that's just being provocative for the sake of it. The wisdom or otherwise of joining the European Economic Community is a matter of political opinion. But glam rock was - and I speak objectively here - the highest achievement of post-War British popular culture. If she really was around in the early 1970s and doesn't appreciate the beauty of glam, then I can only conclude that 'she is somewhere else in her mind'.

Janice Atkinson-Small

I tend to visit the Daily Mail's website to read specific journalists: mainly the ever entertaining Simon Heffer and Peter Hitchens. This morning I wandered a bit further afield and found myself reading Janice Atkinson-Small, of whom I confess I know nothing.

But she's a gem. This is from her piece about the proposal to introduce gay marriages into British law:

'I am a libertarian believing that people should live their lives freely, not hampered by big State but within the law - and sometimes natural law - which I believe is the union between a man and woman as defined by centuries of tradition.'

That's terrific stuff. She writes like John Prescott speaks.

It's not just the language that gets a bit mangled. Facts take a kicking as well: the government's proposed change 'smacks more of the loony days of Margaret Hodge running Islington and Red Ken in Brent and the GLC'. As I recall, Ken Livingstone was an MP for Brent East but had nothing to do with Brent Council at any stage.

But still, as Ms Atkinson-Small warns, 'the extreme gay lobby will win the day on this one. As have the bullies in the animal rights and pro-life lobbies.' The pro-life lobby? Has it really won the day? Apparently so.