Andrew Sullivan, in a bid to find some silver lining to his Tories decisive defeat in last week's British elections,
blames Ukip, the UK Independence Party.
The right split, with the most hardcore anti-E.U. candidates forming their own party, the UK Independence party. A Brit blogger shows that the combined non-Tory right-wing vote, if given to the Tories, would have changed the outcome in 25 seats. The result would have been a Labour majority of merely 25 - a majority only Gordon Brown could have managed.
Well, it could just as easily be said that the Lib Dems cost Labour an absolute trashing of the Right. Combined, the two center-left parties had 57 percent of the vote, to the Tories' 32.3 percent.
Fact is, the Right in Britiain is thoroughly discredited. Its rallies were populated by the oldest crowds I've ever seen at political events. It's now the third-place party in roughly 210-220 constituencies -- or roughly a third of Parliament's 646 seats.