Could Douglas Carswell's election as UKIP MP be bad for them?

I quite like Douglas Carswell. He believes in democracy and better structures to support democracy. He is very independently minded. In fact, he could put the Independence into UKIP.

He's now a big fish in a small pond, rather than a small fish in a big pond. He will be on our TV screens a lot more as a spokesman for UKIP.

I think though that we'll be seeing some obvious differences of opinion with the leadership of Nigel Farage. He's already been highlighting a different opinion on immigration to the leadership, as he pointedly mentioned it in his victory speech in Clacton.

For now, though, he is the only UKIP MP and although not the leader he is now the most senior elected representative of the party. A full on general election campaign, this time round, will be looking for major differences of opinion between the leader and its first MP. Expect there to be more controversies.

I think it's likely Carswell will win re-election in 2015, but what happens if La Farage does not become MP? The differences could get more extreme.  I foresee fireworks! In fact I can imagine a leadership challenge which Carswell might win. Afterwards, though, if Farage is not leader he would be very grumbly and UKIP could lose it's best electoral asset, as Carswell doesn't have the common touch of the current leader.

We might just be in the phase of peak UKIP, it might be downhill from here. It's possible we've just witnessed a new Kilroy-Silk moment.

Squiffy.

UKIP want Labour to win

Most commentators think that UKIP would prefer there to be a Tory Prime Minister and a European referendum campaign rather than a Labour PM. Not true.

The nightmare scenario for UKIP is that the Tories win, David Cameron wins some marginal powers back and manages to sell it to the country in the referendum.

In much the same way that the Scottish referendum was David Cameron's gamble in that would take independence off the table for a generation, UKIP think the same is possibly true about the EU.

Any way in which Labour win and deny us another referendum will further the calls for us to be out.


It's possible, though, that they could get us out of the EU sooner rather than later. Though, it would be a pretty big gamble on their part. In this scenario, they'd need David Cameron to win and hold the referendum. After a period of stability, we may be about to see a bigger Euro problem than we had two years ago.

EU interest rates are at rock bottom and it looks like there may be a period of deflation. At the moment inflation is 0.3% and looking to go lower. Growth is anaemic. Germany is faltering. France and Italy are sick. The ECB would have no options, it would be up to EU Governments to save their economies - difficult given their levels of debt!

Given this back drop we may actually see more convulsions than we did in sovereign debt crisis. If Britain can keep growing while the EU, including Germany, starts to really have difficulties then maybe the whole Euro and even the EU could be on the table. Maybe then we'd want to be out.

As I say, a lot of things have to happen for this scenario to occur. But you never know.

Squiffy.