The Taxpayers Alliance is a relatively new think-tank/pressure group that is beginning to have a useful impact on British politics, not least by commissioning a poll such as this:
On the eve of the European Election, a new ICM/TaxPayers’ Alliance landscape poll on attitudes to the European Union has revealed that voters of all political allegiances, all social classes and all regions are overwhelmingly in support of radical direct action by the British Government against harmful EU policies – saying that Britain should break EU rules and then refuse to pay any consequent fines. The poll, of 1,002 adults, also reveals a wider dissatisfaction with the European Union and a radical majority against the Euro, the Lisbon Treaty and further integration, and in support of removing powers from the EU. The financial crisis and the recession have made the British people far more eurosceptic. There are serious connotations for the main political parties, too. Amongst Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters a large majority of each parties’ supporters feel that none of the main parties adequately represent their views on Britain’s future relationship on the EU.
And that’s a gap that may cause the big three (if that’s the right term) some problems, something that concerns Tim Montgomerie over at Tory Diary. He is clearly worried that this may hurt, well, the Tories, and benefit the right-of-center, Darth Vader-endorsed, but decidedly oddball UKIP, a party that has almost always managed to throw away every opportunity that comes its way. The Daily Telegraph has some background on UKIP here, including this on its leader:
Mr Farage, who spends some of his spare weekends taking people on battlefield tours of the Western Front, doesn’t mind being thought of as “human”. Leader of Ukip since 2006, he likes a smoke (cigars and pipes now rather than cigarettes) and is known to enjoy the odd drink. Then there was a slightly embarrassing encounter with a Latvian woman he met on a night out in Kent. Mr Farage, who has four children and whose second wife is German, said he had fallen asleep in her home after having too much to drink. “Just as simple as that. Not clever,” he said in a newspaper interview last year.