The UK Independence Party made another significant clamber up the climbing wall of mainstream political legitimacy over the last fortnight as leader Nigel Farage and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg embarked on their prime time TV debates.
Regardless of whether one might feel an affinity with UKIP or not, there can be no denying that a large proportion of the electorate, disenchanted by the often shambolic mishandling of immigration policy under New Labour and the subsequent obfuscation by the Con-Dem coalition, have found themselves courted by the rise of UKIP, pushing their anti-Europe ideology, at times appearing to resemble something of a single-issue party.
For all that UKIP might be lambasted and demonized by certain strands of the media and the political establishment, the fact remains that were it not for the latter's woeful shying away of any substantive or meaningful engagement with the issue, their elevation to the mainstream needn't have been so inevitable.
Watching the debates, the manifest problems could be seen to be two-fold. Firstly, they swiftly became ensconced in a kind of tedious Newton's Cradle swinging between one's promotion of facts and statistics and the other's condemnation of them as lies. The only hope one might have of hacking a truthful path through this overgrowth of contradiction would seemingly rest only in being more au fait with EU facts and figures than the average sane person frankly has any sense in being.
Secondly, the manner in which the debates were depicted as being couched under a veil of victory or defeat merely serves to perpetuate the adversarial charade that is so much to blame for the apathetic and disaffected prism through which so many have come to view political discourse. The only residual outcome of the debates worthy of note appears to have been Farage's victory over Clegg, without any meaningful or enlightened progress made on the issues at hand.
Regardless of the left's denigrating of 'Nasty Nigel', his undoubted appeal lies in his bonhomie bluster, his adoption of a 'common sense' populist approach, and his apparent bypassing of the politician's stock-in-trade hedging and artifice. For David Cameron's Tories, the primary focus before next year's election will now lie in dredging the burgeoning river of UKIP support being fed by tributaries from traditional Conservative heartlands. Their promise of a referendum on Europe being the focal point of this counter-attack.
For Farage, the main goal is to get a UKIP Member of Parliament elected, and has stated his resolve to stand down as leader should this achievement fail to be met. In this epoch where the cult of personality often surpasses any context or content, Farage's stock places him firmly in the upper decile of the political firmament.
Aside from the laughing stock that is Godfrey Bloom, I remain unable to name a single other UKIP politician, and my ignorance is unlikely to place me in the minority. Should Farage stand down, I believe the atrophying of UKIP's influence and prominence in mainstream politics would be a natural consequence.
UKIP's ascension is firmly aligned with post-financial collapse return to right wing politics across Europe, from the Golden Dawn in Greece to Marine Le Pen's Front National gaining traction in France.
It seems to me that what the desiccated left wing movement needs, if not in Europe then certainly in the UK, is a Nigel Farage of their own. Someone who, if not entirely imbued with integrity or candour, but with the force of character and will to at least try and rejuvenate the kind of socialist ideals that have been neglected and left to decay in this country for so long.
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