Sleepwalking to extinction?

At least one UKIP member has been upset by our criticisms of Nigel Farage - so much so that he reported us to Mr Farage himself, presumably for Contempt of Something.

Yesterday this blog made it to its first UKIP leadership hustings, the (seemingly inevitable) traffic jam occurring on the way back, unlike Saturday.

The overall impression was of a gentlemanly party not realizing how close it is to irrelevance.

Nigel Farage was absent again and escaped the criticism he deserves, having been the power behind the thrones for many years. One of his more febrile supporters - who manages to support David Campbell Bannerman also, despite DCB's heavy criticisms of Nigel Farage's strategy on his website - objected to our describing Nigel Farage as the puppetmaster. We think that fits the bill.

Let's be blunt. Nigel Farage's strategy failed at Bromley, comprehensively and in broad daylight. The only new strategy on Nigel Farage's site is to prepare harder for elections.

As always though my absolute priority will be on planning and fighting elections.

So the troops will be exhorted to pound more pavements and climb more stairs while a nation yawns.

Meanwhile, there is no proposal - not one - to broaden UKIP's focus into themes that actually matter to the typical voter, or to comment on them in a sustained way. UKIP's so called campaigns consist of isolated demonstrations soon forgotten outside the party, while inside the party we are called upon to applaud them repeatedly, rather like a crowd of extras at Mao's rallies. If the demonstrations leave any lasting impression, it's the feeling that UKIP are the perennial outsiders in the nation's political dialogue.

With enemies like UKIP, who needs friends?

This brain-lite approach is reflected in the puppet master's website, and under his (likely) leadership it will doubtless continue to be the hallmark of the party.

No one is stressing that Nigel Farage has already failed as leader. Since 2004 he has been leader of a sizeable block of MEPs. They are astonishingly unproductive, and probably the most dysfunctional element of the party if you consider the impact they should be having. If this is not a failure of leadership, what is?

Sadly none of the other leadership candidates is rubbing the members' noses in this, and warning them that the party is sleepwalking to extinction.

This blog is passionate about this, not because we aim to knock UKIP - there is no secret agenda here - but because Britain needs a party of small government to rebalance political debate, as we argued on Saturday and Fraser Nelson reminds us in The Business

The blunt truth in British politics is that we face three high-tax parties which take broadly the same approach to the main divisive issues of the day, both foreign and domestic. It remains possible that David Cameron’s Conservatives will break this consensus with bold, new, small-state policies but the indications are that this is unlikely.

This reduces British elections to a simple question: who will manage the centre-left agenda? Will it be Blair and his team or Cameron and the even less-known Conservative Shadow Cabinet?

There is thus a huge political gap which UKIP should be filling. But UKIP's present regime aren't interested in bestirring themselves, and the other leadership candidates are being far too nice to them.