Those watching nervously across the Irish Sea the UK's drift towards an EU exit can only be delighted that at least one party leader is fighting the case for British membership. Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has decided to defy the conventional wisdom of the pundits to make a virtue of the party's EU sympathies and take on Nigel Farrage and his UK Independence Party (Ukip). With the Tories, and to a lesser extent Labour, trapped like terrified rabbits in the beam of Ukip's headlights and xenophobic agenda, the danger has been that its arguments would be won simply by default.
But, however welcome, what is driving Clegg’s wish to differentiate his party from Ukip is unclear. Ukip’s voters are not by and large drawn from the ranks of disillusioned Lib Dem voters, and so a strategy of “winning them back” is not likely to be profitable.
On the contrary, the Ukip threat, a new study confirms, is primarily to Tory voters, although to Labour too. Revolt on the Right , by academics Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin, argues that far from being a party of disillusioned middle class little Englanders from the shires, as in popular myth, Ukip's supporters are largely drawn from older, white, working class voters, many with poor education, who blame Europe and immigration for life passing them by. Indeed, eight out of 10 winnable seats for the party at the next general election are held by Labour, although the Tories are likely to be hurt worst overall as the surging Ukip vote may squeeze the party's vote and deprive it of the chance to contest many more seats.
Clegg's gambit in appealing against national chauvinism and xenophobia will certainly touch a chord among voters not enamoured with his party's role in coalition. It is likely to re-enthuse former voters who have deserted the ranks and remind them why they voted Lib Dem in the first place, and to put clear blue water between them and both Tories and Labour – less a campaign against extremism, more a campaign for the middle ground.