Has the steam run out of Ukip’s bid for power? The polls suggest it has. More telling still is the press response to the manifesto launch by its leader, Nigel Farage.
There is precious little support for the party despite, on the right at least, some sympathy for its policies. Consider the Daily Mail, for example.
“If Ukip candidates were as sound as most of their policies, this paper would be tempted to support the party”, starts the Mail’s leading article.
“Nigel Farage deserves great credit for addressing public concerns over such issues as mass immigration and the scandalous waste of overseas aid – the former treated as taboo by the political class, the latter as sacrosanct”.
And then comes the “but”. The Mail “most emphatically does not support Ukip. For Mr Farage is a one-man band, many of whose candidates are untrustworthy.
“And in all but a handful of seats, the reality is that a vote for Ukip will be wasted – or worse, a boost for statist, pro-immigration, EU enthusiast Ed Miliband”.
So here’s what the paper thinks voters should do. Vote Ukip in three Labour/Ukip marginals where “the Tories have no hope”. Otherwise, “the only sane advice” is to “help the Tories keep Labour out”.
The Daily Telegraph editorial, Voting for Ukip will help to put Miliband in No 10, makes a similar point. It believes Ukip “has done much that is positive for this country and its politics” because it has ensured that “politicians of all parties now debate the merits and costs of immigration more freely and frankly”.
Its pressure on David Cameron and his Conservative party has resulted in the promise to hold a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union. And then comes that “but”. The Telegraph says:
“For all its protestations about having a coherent and costed policy programme, too many of Ukip’s policies remain little more than incoherent ambitions...
The conduct of some Ukip members also raises the concern that it has not yet completed its transition from populist rally to mature political party. The aggressive heckling of a Telegraph journalist at yesterday’s manifesto launch was a case in point...
The principal reason for resisting any temptation to vote for Ukip, however, is to be found in another party: Ed Miliband...
Every vote cast for Ukip makes it more likely that next month, Mr Miliband and his party will take power... Britain cannot afford that”.
What then of the Sun, another paper that has previously shown a measure of understanding for Ukip’s EU stance (but not its antagonism to immigration)?
The paper’s view was clear from its news story headline, Nigel’s bullies cross the line. It was based on the reaction by Ukip supporters to a journalist’s question to Farage about his manifesto featuring the picture of only one black person.
The Sun’s editorial, despite accepting that some of its readers like certain Ukip policies, pours scorn on the party as “a magnet for weirdos and extremists”.
In other words, the papers that liked Farage’s policies - as they still do - were happy to give him plenty of coverage in the years up to the election. Now, with votes for his party being a danger to a Tory victory, he’s on his own.
Neither of the dailies published by Richard Desmond, who donated £300,000 to Ukip in December last year, appear overly enthusiastic about the party.
The Daily Express gives the manifesto launch reasonable coverage, a page lead headlined “We want out country back, says barnstorming Farage”. But there is no leading article. The news story, noticeably, makes no reference to the treatment of the Telegraph journalist who asked the ethnicity question.
The Daily Star carries a top-of-the-front-page blurb to its Farage story, which gets only a 10-paragraph single column piece inside.
Metro, the supposedly non-political paper, gives the Ukip launch a page lead boost too, “Set Britain free from EU, demands Ukip’s Farage”, and buries the question incident.
Some papers, rather than run editorials, left it up to their sketchwriters or commentators to deal with Ukip.
In the Times, Tim Montgomerie delivered a similar message to the ones urged by the Mail, Telegraph and Sun, Dear Ukippers, quit while you’re ahead.
He believes Ukip “has had a massive impact on British politics” - on immigration, the EU and the construction of wind farms. So it “can lay claim to have been the most successful pressure group in recent political history”.
Then comes the “but”. “By splitting the anti-Labour vote... there’s a real danger that the purple army won’t be remembered for being a transformational pressure group but for being the most destructive political party”. So stop your nonsense and vote Tory.
The Mail carries an op-ed piece by Stephen Glover and the headline itself carries the “but”. It says: “There’s hardly a word I disagree with in Ukip’s manifesto. And I know the other parties are lying to me. But...”
The sketchwriters, by the nature of their trade, are less concerned with scoring political points than trying to see the comic side of the political business.
All seemed to find it amusing that the launch was staged in Thurrock, “the beating and belching heart of Essex”, according to the Times’s Ann Treneman.
Matthew Engel, in the Financial Times, thought the constituency might well be Ukip’s most likely gain (rather than Thanet South, where Farage is standing).
He was unimpressed with the presentation of its manifesto document by its chief author, Suzanne Evans, “who gave us a kind of PowerPoint demonstration, though without much power or point”.
Donald McIntyre, in the Independent, was surprised that “the red-headed Ms Evans, a member of the party’s Sloane Ranger tendency” was “mysteriously wearing an elegant black coat on the warmest day of the year”.
John Crace, in the Guardian, agreed. “Quite an accomplished performer”, he thought, and “so cool... that she kept her coat on throughout despite everyone else in the room gasping for breath”.
Treneman, in noting that Farage “is intent on professionalising Ukip” remarked that “you can’t make a Savile Row suit out of a ragbag without it being a little rough round the edges”.
And so it proved when the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope asked: “Nigel, are you happy that the only black face in the document... ” The Kippers “went bonkers”, she wrote.
“In a Richard Curtis movie moment, all the black and brown Ukip people in the room stood up... You’ve heard of road rage. This was manifesto rage. Welcome to Ukip”.
It was, observed McIntyre, a “theatrical moment” when the “posse of ethnic minority Ukip loyalists stood up, triumphantly pointing at themselves amid general uproar”.
A punch-up “was only narrowly avoided” when Hope was shouted down, wrote Crace. But “like every good wedding, the fights were soon forgotten and Farage was keen that everyone should kiss and make up”.
The Telegraph’s Michael Deacon, naturally enough, saw matters through the prism of the attack on his colleague, Hope. “He’d have received a friendlier reception if he’d attacked a wasps’ nest with a spade,” he wrote.
“The room was angry. Not angry about the shortage of non-white faces in the brochure, obviously. Angry about the question. Angry that the shortage of non-white faces had been queried. The air crackled with menace...
Among the audience were a small number of non-white Ukip members. Glaring at my colleague, they rose from their seats. Many other members applauded them. The applause – angry applause – went on for over half a minute. It was almost enough to drown out the shouts and heckles. Eventually the din died down. I waited for Mr Farage to answer the question. He didn’t”.
Sadly, the Mail’s Quentin Letts chose to go to the Lib Dems’ manifesto launch. I’m sure he would have had more fun in Thurrock.