Ukip are getting squeezed

You could smell the fear. When Ukip won last May’s elections to the European Parliament, it wasn’t just the fact of their victory that spooked their opponents. It was the way they seemed to hijack the campaign. Immigration and Brexit were what they wanted to talk about. The Conservatives hated to be asked repeatedly about their failure to reduce the number of migrants coming to Britain, while Labour, though comfortable with its rejection of an early referendum on EU membership, loathed facing questions about why it didn’t trust the people to decide the matter. If the euro campaign was a dress rehearsal for this year’s general election campaign, it boded ill for both Tory and Labour.

They can now relax. Europe and immigration are the dogs that are not barking in the current campaign, or at least not yet. So silent are these canines that the past few days have seen a significant crossover in YouGov’s polls. It’s not the crossover that the Conservatives have wanted and expected—their party moving into the lead—but one that Labour, in particular, will enjoy.

Twice a month we show people a list of 13 issues and ask them to tick the two or three “most important issues facing the country at this time”. This week, for the first time in this Parliament, health has overtaken immigration. It’s part of a wider picture of how the political agenda has changed since last May. Here is how our latest figures compare with the immediate aftermath of the European elections:



Those figures help to explain both why Ukip’s vote is slipping and why the Tories are struggling to overtake Labour. Ukip’s agenda is passing many voters by, while the topic that Labour wants to talk about most has jumped in the list of voters’ concerns.

Ukip’s problems are intensified by answers to our next question. We show people the same list and ask which matter most to them and their family. Once again, health is up, from 37 per cent last May to 44 per cent today. Perhaps curiously, immigration is not down. In fact it is up fractionally, from 19 to 21 per cent. The point, though, is that most people who say immigration is a national problem do NOT say it affects their own family. Likewise with Europe. Just 8 per cent say it is a top concern for them and their family. It comes 11th in our list of 13.

So Ukip’s passions are not really shared by the electorate. Indeed, for all the novelty of the current campaign, with the variety of parties and the possibility of a messy outcome, this election is in one important respect resembling most of the others of recent decades. At heart, it is about the economy and the NHS.