No wonder UKIP is doing well, the three main parties are in bigger crises than many people realise.

If you define leadership by who’s got the authority, who’s making the running, then the Tories are not being led by David Cameron but by a bunch of anti EU fanatics.

The problems of the Lib Dems are well known. They are paying a heavy price for being in Coalition with few people giving them credit for restraining the worst excesses of the Conservatives.

But Labour’s difficulties get less publicity. I was at a conference of one of the party’s main think tanks last weekend. Gloom and pessimism were all around. There was discontent with Ed Miliband and a recognition that their performance in the county elections had not provided the springboard for government. Commenting on the Labour leadership spin put on the results pollster Peter Kellner told the Progress gathering “If a 29% share of the poll is called a success, I’d like to see what failure looks like.”

Although I wasn’t around (just) British politics has the appearance of the 1930s with weak leaders, a disillusioned electorate and a few people with dangerous ideas about how to sort it out.

I am not for a moment equating those that want to get out of the EU with the fascists of the thirties. Wanting Britain to sever its ties with the EU is a perfectly legitimate political position. However it would be a dangerous gamble with our economic prosperity.

What is more worrying is the complete obsession Tory eurosceptics have about the subject. Warned by Cameron not to bang on about Europe, they do nothing else. They care not a jot for the damage they do to the credibility of the Prime Minister.

Just look at the events of this week. While Cameron was in America negotiating a EUROPEAN trade deal, he was forced to offer concession after concession to the Euro clowns back home. What good did it do him publishing a draft Euro referendum bill? None, and we end the week with 116 Tories regretting its absence from the Queen’s Speech and the prospects of a Tory backbencher introducing the bill through the Private Members’ Ballot.

When will Cameron learn there is no appeasing these people. They will take every concession and up their demands. The Tory MPs who are making the running on this issue aren’t interested in renegotiating terms, they’re not really interested in a referendum. They want us out of the EU.

Why don’t pro European Tories speak up? I had an interesting conversation with a senior pro EU Minister in the Commons this week. The gist of his answer was that that pro European Tories value party unity. If they were to confront the Euro sceptics, it really would be civil war in the Conservative Party.

I’m afraid that smacks of appeasement.

What everyone needs to remember is the finding of IPSOS/MORI, one of our leading pollsters on this matter. UNPROMPTED, British people, when asked what their top priorities are, reply health, jobs, immigration and education. Europe is not in the top ten.

The out of the EU mob are trying to whip up a frenzy, so that we all come to believe that leaving the EU will solve all our problems. It wouldn’t and some of us are going to stand up against them with as much vigour as they display. Viva Europa!

Nigel Farage and Mayor Joe Anderson of Liverpool have gravitational pull at the moment. The effect is similar to dark matter; that’s the mystery force that’s controlling the behaviour of the universe. You can’t see it but you can detect it from the effect it has on other planets or in our case politicians.

Ides of May in St Helens

Marie Rimmer has been deposed as the leader of St Helens Council. That’s a shame because we need more women leading our local councils Marie has been a doughty fighter for her town and didn’t think much of the idea of a Merseyside regional mayor. This was partly because she thought it would mean domination by Liverpool and particularly Joe Anderson. Marie has been replaced by her deputy Barry Grunewald. He learnt the dark arts of politics in Labour’s North West headquarters in Warrington.

The suggestion is that Barry is more disposed to the idea of a city region mayor. The gravitational force of Mayor Joe may be at work. However it is up to the government to bring in the reform and my betting is that there will be little progress on that front in this parliament.

UKIP in the north

UKIP’s breakthrough in terms of councillors elected was predominantly in east and south east England where Eastern European workers have been prepared to pick the strawberries and dig the potatoes that British people aren’t prepared to do.

They secured very few council places in Downtown land. Two in North Yorkshire, bordering Leeds, where the Conservatives retained a substantial majority. They lost their seat in Derbyshire where Labour gained control and are not represented in Cumbria. The council is still hung but with Labour gaining ten seats, a continuation of the unlikely Labour/Tory coalition seems unlikely.

Now we come to Lancashire. Some commentators have said Labour should have taken the county outright. That was a big ask following the drubbing they took in 2009. 22 gains gives them largest party status and political momentum.

Coalitions have not been part of the Lancashire tradition. During the only previous period when no party had overall control (1985-89) Labour had minority rule. This option is open to Jenny Mein or she could do a deal with the Lib Dems who performed better than their national opinion poll ratings.

However don’t underestimate Geoffrey Driver. As I write he has still not conceded power a week after polling day. UKIP may not have elected any councillors in the Red Rose county but they certainly exerted a powerful gravitational force on Mr Driver’s Tories. In twenty wards the combined Conservative/UKIP vote was greater than the winning total for Labour or other parties.

Driver faces Gordon Brown’s dilemma three years ago in trying to create a rainbow coalition. He needs more than the six Lib Dems. If the single Green Party councillor won’t play ball, The Tories would need two of the three Independents. It looks a bit rickety for Mr Driver who needs to keep his eye on ambitious Lytham councillor Tim Ashton.

You always need to watch your back in politics. Just ask Marie Rimmer.

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As we’ve seen in the local elections, UKIP don’t have to win masses of seats to have a big effect on British politics.

Tory backbenchers are terrified of them and now want  the European in/out referendum before the next election. They want legislation to trigger the vote in next week’s Queen’s Speech. Mr Cameron had tried to appease the Euro sceptics with a promise to put a renegotiated terms package to the people by 2017.

But there is no appeasing these anti EU fanatics, they will take the concessions and move on to the next demand.

How will the nation vote when actually faced with the consequences of coming out?

This week Downtown Liverpool held a debate and vote on this very subject. While it would be absurd to suggest the result is scientifically representative, nevertheless I think 17 for coming out of the EU, 21 against with a substantial 14 saying they don’t know feels as if it might be where public opinion is at the moment. In other words there is substantial support for withdrawal and a large number of votes to play for amongst people who choose not to obsess about Europe every day.

It was a lively debate, to be repeated in Manchester soon. I led off trying to cram too much into my allocated 5 minutes. I expressed my fear that Ed Miliband will be pressurised into supporting an in/out referendum, that the renegotiation will be unsuccessful, that nevertheless the three main parties will urge a vote to stay in and the British people will be swayed by the Murdoch press into voting to come out. I then foresaw a very difficult process of withdrawal with no guarantee that we could negotiate the same trade arrangements from outside the EU.

Dougal Paver, head of Paver Smith Communications Agency disagreed saying that it would not be in the EU’s interest to put tariffs on British goods. He also said that most of our trade was with the rest of the world now. He loved visiting Europe but didn’t want to be shackled by EU regulations on small businesses.

Kevin Doran is hoping to be elected as a Labour Euro MP next year and firmly wants to stay in the EU. He said David Cameron’s promise of a referendum had created uncertainty among long term potential investors in Britain. He also said it was unclear which powers Mr Cameron wanted to claw back from Europe.

The final speaker was Scott Fletcher, MD of ANS Group, who said the British people agreed to a European trade deal not the all singing, all dancing EU that we have got now. He said the way the EU was governed bore similarities to the old Soviet Union in terms of its unaccountability.

The vote was more or less a three way split and if that is where the UK is at the moment, pro Europeans are going to have their work cut out to prevent a disastrous no vote in 2017 whoever is in power.

Can Ed Miliband drill through the seam of local election apathy in Lancashire and release the gas that could help him soar to power in 2015?

The county has recently been shaken by shale gas exploration, could the same happen in the county elections next week? It is the Labour leader’s opportunity to show he has the ability to win back the middle class votes he needs in places like Chorley and Rossendale.

It is that time in the local election cycle when the cities fall silent and the voice of the rural north is heard. Voters will be going to the polls in the shire counties across England including North Yorkshire, which skirts the northern suburbs of Leeds, Derbyshire, Cumbria and crucially Lancashire.

Four years ago the county elections were a harbinger of doom for Gordon Brown. The Tories gained a massive 22 seats in the Red Rose County to sweep into power under the controversial Geoff Driver with a majority of 18. The Liberal Democrats, then untainted by decisions in government, also did well gaining 5 seats from Labour in Burnley alone.

It’s sad in many ways that Lancashire councillors will be very vulnerable to the national mood of the electorate. A good local track record cannot always save you from defeat. That may also be true for Cllr Driver who many feel has done a good job whilst ruffling a few feathers. But he’s been doing that since he was Chief Executive of Preston many years ago. He has been prepared to defy his own party clashing with Education Secretary Michael Gove over academy primary schools in the county.

Labour’s opinion poll lead has weakened recently and they lag the Tories when people are asked about economic competence. That said the Conservatives look set for the midterm blues as people facing benefit changes, no work or just a general squeeze on their living standards take it out on the Tories and their Lib Dem allies. Although that Lancashire Conservative majority of 18 looks secure, 14 wards are held by the party with majorities under 500.

Burnley will be the main battleground for the Liberal Democrats. On the back of their county success in 2009, Gordon Birtwhistle won the parliamentary seat a year later. If his local colleagues lose to Labour, his power base will be eroded.

There is a strong tradition of female Labour leadership in Lancashire. The successor to previous council leaders Louise Ellman and Hazel Harding is Jennifer Mein. She has not made a notable impact so far and indeed there are rumours that David Borrow, the ex Ribble South MP, may challenge her for the leadership after polling day.

The Green Party will hope to gain on their 2 seat representation on the county from the city of Lancaster. The BNP are a diminished force and are expected to lose their presence at County Hall. That leaves Tom Sharrett as the Idle Toad Party representative from South Ribble. He’ll be hopping mad if he loses!

Let’s hope local issues like the care of the elderly, education, roads and the council’s attitude to fracking for shale gas get an airing in the campaign rather than it just being an opinion poll on the Coalition.

Cumbria County Council recently faced a similar major decision affecting the environment when it said no to permanent underground storage of nuclear waste. The county is run by an unusual Conservative-Labour coalition. It will be interesting to see if the two parties stick together if Labour becomes the largest party.

Labour will expect to regain Derbyshire whilst North Yorkshire looks set to retain a Tory majority even in this difficult year for the party.

The wild card in these elections is UKIP. Their policies on local government remain vague. But how many voters will stop to ask themselves what could a UKIP councillor actually do for me at the Town Hall where our membership of the European Union is not an issue?

UKIP will take most, but not all votes from the Tories. They may not win many seats but could make the difference in marginal wards.

Why is so much freight imported through Felixstowe and Southampton and then trundled up North?

It is a very pertinent question with fuel prices rising so fast.

Across the North we need to accelerate a concept that has been around for a few years now, the Atlantic Gateway. It is a concept based on the widening of the Panama Canal and the building of a new deep water terminal in Liverpool (work begins on that very soon). The idea then is that freight from the Americas and Ireland can use the land bridge across the North of England to Hull to access North West Europe.

Along the land bridge jobs will be created using the fantastic assets that are there. They range from Stobart’s Multi Modal Depot at Widnes, the soon to be built Mersey Gateway bridge between Runcorn and Widnes, the Manchester Ship Canal with new port depots along its length, Manchester Airport City and the Northern Hub which will benefit rail transport across the Pennines where the M62 heads for the rapidly developing city of Leeds and on to Hull, the gateway to the Baltic.

Although this is a grand design and big firms will play a major part, there is a crucial role for SMEs. This was highlighted at a recent conference that focused on the often dry subject of logistics. This is because the purpose of the Atlantic Gateway project is to get products to distributors and manufacturers as soon as possible.

Organised by the Liverpool Local Enterprise Partnership and supported by Jaguar Land Rover at Halewood and Unipart the conference looked at the current state of the economy as this huge project is embarked upon.

Kieran Ring, Chief Executive of the Global Institute of Logistics said that the widened Panama Canal would dramatically affect global trade. The price of oil is really impacting the cost of inland distribution and short sea crossings would grow. Liverpool was in the right place to benefit.

Closer to home, Stephen Carr, Head of Business Development for Peel Ports said the Mersey/Atlantic Gateway concept was already being practised by companies like Heinz in Wigan, Typhoo tea and Kellogg’s in Trafford Park. He wryly observed that there actually was nothing new in the Gateway concept producing an 1894 map showing the rail connections around the new Manchester Ship Canal.

Scott Hardy, Freight Strategy Manager at Jaguar Land Rover was in buoyant mood. JLR had their best ever month in March with great sales figures for the new Range Rover, the Freelander and Evoque. He illustrated the formidable logistics exercise that JLR had to undertake between their factories at Halewood, Castle Bromwich and Solihull in the UK and their Chinese operation. It all depended on being highly competitive with stock levels. There was a big opportunity to increase imports from America through Liverpool.

Liverpool MP Louise Ellman is also chair of the Transport Select Committee. She announced an inquiry into Britain’s ports. She attacked the lopsided investment in transport infrastructure spend between the North and the South. She said this was because decisions on spend were based on congestion (always a problem in the South) not the economic impact investment would have in the North.

It’s important we get on with the Atlantic Gateway project across the North so that we are ready for the pickup in the economy when it eventually comes.

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Margaret Thatcher dominated my early journalistic career and the memories have come flooding back this week.

I first met her when she was a Shadow Minister in Ted Heath’s Opposition team at the October 1974 election. It was The Grocer’s last throw, soon he would be defeated by the grocer’s daughter. At that time she had none of the aura that subsequently attached to her. She had been the controversial Education Secretary who had taken away kid’s free milk, but in October 74 Heath had given her the junior job of Shadow Environment Secretary.

The renowned Norman Jackson was the Political Correspondent of the Manchester Evening News. He was well known to Thatcher and he was late. But rather than getting on with the press conference she told the rest of us that we had better all wait for Norman to arrive. This week I reflected on this early patient Thatcher who one day would bully poor old Geoffrey Howe with spectacular consequences.

My next memorable encounter with her was on the night that South Georgia was recaptured from the Argentineans in 1982. We were summoned to the door step at No 10 for the great announcement. When I ventured the opinion to the great lady that this was only South Georgia and the Falklands was still under the heel of the junta, I was told to “rejoice at that news!” It became a famous sound bite.

Three years later I was an hour from being in the Grand Hotel Brighton when the IRA bomb went off. Eric Taylor, chairman of the North West Conservatives was killed and I wandered down to the conference hall fully believing the whole event would be called off. Not a bit of it. There was Mrs Thatcher telling the nation that terrorism would never defeat democracy.

There were other encounters but that gives you a flavour of what it was like for a journalist covering the Great Lady. She was from time to time courageous, arrogant, personally caring but unfeeling about the impact of her policies, particularly on the north of England.

The impact of her policies came thick and fast. It was a momentous time for journalists. In Liverpool Michael Heseltine held the ring between Militant and a government that wanted the city to settle into managed decline. In Manchester and other northern cities, councillors refused to fix a rate year after year in the mid eighties, in a protest against cuts.

Then there was the Miners Strike. Its greatest impact was in the Yorkshire coalfield culminating in the Battle of Orgreave but it also wiped out the remaining pits in Lancashire. The Miners Union defeated, next were the printers. The violent picketing outside the Messenger Group of papers in Warrington was a taster of what was to come at Wapping. Eddie Shah was determined to end the union’s restrictive practices. He had Thatcher’s backing as did Rupert Murdoch in London.

The unions defeated, council house sales underway, industries privatised, she should have called it a day after her 1987 victory but on she went with the poll tax and an increasingly aggressive attitude to Europe.

By the autumn of 1990 my task was to sniff out the northern Tory MPs who had had enough. They were afraid in case the plot failed. I remember snatching an interview on a train waiting in Runcorn station with Crosby MP Malcolm Thornton. It took so long to get him to say she must go that I only just got off the train before it departed. Next stop Euston.

But she had her loyal supporters too. None more so than Sir Fergus Montgomery, her parliamentary aide and MP for Altrincham. He died a few weeks before the Prime Minister he was devoted to.

Britain needed a Thatcher type figure in 1979. The unions had too much power and the sale of council houses was a brilliant stroke that united her with blue collar supporters. But she was also responsible for introducing a selfish, get rich quick mentality to Britain.

On Europe having strongly supported the Yes campaign just after she became Opposition leader in 1975, by the end of her Premiership she had sowed the seeds of division in her party on the issue which remains to this day. UKIP is now full of Tories who followed Thatcher.

David Cameron will be sad on a personal basis that she has died but will be breathing a sigh of relief her death wasn’t closer to the General Election. He has never remotely commanded the affection of the Tory grass roots that she did, and many will remember that as Margaret Thatcher’s coffin is carried into St Paul’s.

Eric Pickles seems to be relishing his role as the axe man in chief of Town Hall spending. The Communities and Local Government Secretary was in typical form addressing the parliamentary press the other day, telling us that councils knew the cuts were coming and that they had the capacity to be “enormously adaptive.”

He left his most substantial jibe for northern councils complaining about the unfairness of the cuts. He said their leaders were like the characters in the famous Monty Python sketch where they compete in telling each other what a deprived background they had. You know the one. “You were lucky to live in a slum; we lived in a cardboard box!”

Mr Pickles referred in particular to the comments of the Mayor of Liverpool. Joe Anderson. He has led the charge against, what The Mayor sees, as the disproportionate impact the cuts are having on northern cities. The Minister said the problem with this approach was that having painted a picture of poverty and deprivation, the Mayor would then say what a great place Liverpool was to invest in. Pickles then made a similar criticism of the leadership of Bradford Council, an authority he once led.

So has he got a point? Well the Liverpool Mayor and the leaders of our great northern cities like Leeds and Manchester are in a bind. Politically they have to speak up for their communities. They also have to try and lure investors in. If too bleak a picture is painted of the impact the cuts are going to have, it could well put off some potential employers.

Meanwhile Mr Pickles continues to rough up the councils. He is after all one of the token northerners in a cabinet of posh boys. He is frustrated that some authorities like Manchester have managed to get around his 2% council tax limit because levies by police and fire authorities are not under Town Hall control. He is already threatening fire and brimstone for the rebels next year.

“Sooner or later councils are going to have to sit down with their electorates and decide what to spend” said Mr Pickles.

Then there is the Graph of Doom. That’s not something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Instead it is a forecast that at the current rate of cuts and the growing need for elderly care, it won’t be long before councils will only have sufficient funds to empty the bins and look after the old. They won’t be able to do anything else. What does Indiana Pickles say about this Graph of Doom?

“Share services, end duplication, adapt. You knew it was coming,” that’s his uncompromising message.

Added to all these challenges, councils are soon going to face the ending of restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians coming to Britain. How many school places and houses should Town Halls prepare for?

Eric Bloodaxe’s answer is honest if not helpful. “Nobody knows. All that government can do is be careful of the ‘pull factors’ like housing and health benefits.” He then added an awkward truth about the Eastern European immigrants: “very few carrots would be picked without them.”

A major national bank is closing its branch in my village. No doubt they will say there wasn’t enough business. Perhaps that’s because a couple of years ago it decided to close my branch on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Traders who need to deposit cash every day took their business away and the downward spiral was achieved.

The people responsible for this decision have probably never heard of my village. On a wider scale what do the big national banks know of  small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) in the north asking for loans. It’s unlikely they have the knowledge about the regional economy to make good judgements. The huge central and international banks are not fit for the purpose of helping our SMEs. Net lending by banks participating in the government’s Funding for Lending Scheme, fell by £2.4bn in the last quarter of 2012.

So in this week when the Chancellor has grabbed the headlines with his Budget, let’s give a cheer to Ed Miliband’s proposal for regional banks. Labour would give their backing to regional banks in Yorkshire and the North West. The model would be based on the German system where local banks performed far better in the recession than the country’s large banks.

The Sparkassen (regional banks) ran up less debt and

avoided ruinous high risk investment. As a result while lending by big German banks fell by 10% between 2006 and 2011, the Sparkassen increased lending by 17%.

The purpose of this policy proposal is to rebalance the British economy and the concept of basing it on a regional footprint is a sound one. Labour has yet to be persuaded to restore regional development agencies or a council of the North but at least this provides financial backing over a larger footprint than the Local Enterprise Partnerships that many feel cover areas that are too small to be effective

The Hannah Mitchell Society which is campaigning for Northern Regional government welcomed Mr Miliband’s move calling it creative and radical.

LEEDS AND MANCHESTER STAR AT MIPIM.

Both cities used their time well at MIPIM. The international property market held in Cannes is an important gathering for local councils whatever the Taxpayers Alliance might say.

Leeds told delegates about the increased co-operation with Bradford and Wakefield, learning some of the lessons of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. The city region is reported to be worth £54bn.

Despite shrinking workforces and cuts in budgets, councils like Leeds are often the largest landowner, biggest capital spender and the highways and planning authority. MIPIM was told about the Trinity Leeds shopping development opening this year and work getting underway in June on the Sovereign Street office block. Bruce Springsteen is to be the first major band to play the Leeds Arena in July. Considering what the MEN Arena did for Manchester, and the ACC Arena being acknowledged as one of the major legacy benefits of Liverpool’s Capital of Culture; this should be a major boost for the West Yorkshire economy.

Meanwhile there was much interest at MIPIM about Manchester’s acquisition of Stansted Airport. The conference was told of ambitions to get passenger flow through the twenty million mark. Manchester Airport is approaching that now and its all still owned by the ten local authorities of Greater Manchester

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Ted Heath remains a hate figure for many Tories. Two reasons for this are well known. He took us into Europe and he conducted the longest sulk in political history when he was deposed by Margaret Thatcher. The third, less publicised reason, was the economic U turn he performed midway through his government in the early seventies.

In 1970 Heath came to power with a right wing agenda to deregulate and  make a transfer from direct to indirect taxation. Rising unemployment knocked him off course and his Chancellor Anthony Barber reflated the economy. The resulting inflation was controlled by an incomes policy which led to the miners strike, the three day week and the Conservatives lost the 1974 election.

When Margaret Thatcher faced a similar economic crisis early in her premiership, she was not for turning and became a heroine of her party. Such a status is never likely to be available to David Cameron and George Osborne but next week they do face a similar situation. The cries to modify the austerity and borrow our way out are deafening. Labour point out that as the economy flat lines we are borrowing more anyway.

I don’t expect the Chancellor to ease up. The Budget is likely to include fuel duty relief and more spending on infrastructure but I expect a broadly neutral budget as ministers cross their fingers and hope that the economic course on which they are set, works.

There are economic indicators which support the Chancellor’s approach, the mortgage market is easing,  business start ups are growing and unemployment is down.

It is worth reflecting on that last point. It is one of the outstanding features of this recession. In Heath and Thatcher’s time, unemployment rocketed up as the economy slumped. Why hasn’t it happened this time. It is partly because the figures mask the fact that a lot of people are part time or under employed. Workers have been prepared to suffer wage freezes and reduced hours to keep their jobs. The trade unions, once able to bring down governments, are whispering from the sidelines. Sad but true, strikes are not really an option in the 21st century.

Huhne pays Pryce, Nicholson does not.

One of the many reasons why people are turned off from politics is that the great and the good generally don’t pay with their jobs when things go wrong.

If a brickie builds a dodgy wall and it falls down he gets sacked. If a car mechanic does a shoddy job on your vehicle; same fate.

But when it comes to police officers failing to pick up on complaints about Jimmy Savile or health disasters like Mid Staffs, none of the people at the top lose their jobs.

The glaring example is Sir David Nicholson, head of the strategic health authority which covered Mid Staffs. Now head of the whole NHS for England, he has defied repeated calls to resign.

Just occasionally justice is served as we saw this week with Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce, but this does not detract from the need for people who take high salaries to walk the plank if things go wrong.

Do Peel Holdings have the voters of Eastleigh to thank for the government go ahead for the massive Liverpool Waters project?

The decision not to hold a public inquiry is a clear sign that ministers are pinning their hopes on infrastructure growth to get us out of this economic malaise. While it’s true that it will be years before the scheme is completed, the government want to create a sense of momentum and confidence with projects like the Northern Hub, High Speed Rail and Liverpool Waters.

The other reaction has been for some Tory ministers to flirt with ever more right wing policies in the face of the UKIP advance. The suggestion that the UK might quit the European Court of Human Rights is a disgrace. The spectacle of the country that stood alone in the Second World War to preserve democracy and liberty, quitting the institution that protects those freedoms is deeply depressing. It would have unforeseen consequences at home and abroad would send all the wrong signals to countries where attachment to democratic values is tenuous.

I forecast that the Lib Dems would hold Eastleigh, but that was before the accusations came up about Lord Rennard. Given that and the fact that the by election was caused by the lies of Chris Huhne. Neither of these issues prevented the Lib Dems holding on. Of course this was an ideal seat for them to defend, nevertheless it does suggest that people care less and less about the scandals of the Westminster village and more and more about practical local issues that affect them.

It is all part of the huge disengagement people feel with conventional politics. The scale of the disenchantment is now becoming clear whether it be a stand up comedian doing well in the Italian elections or UKIP in Eastleigh. Heaven knows what the American public are making of the continued deadlock between the President and the House of Representatives. I raised this issue with Jack Straw the other day given his long experience in high office and as MP for Blackburn since 1979. He had no clear answer to my question as to when people might trust their politicians again. He did agree with me that apart from issues like expenses and poor moral behaviour, the continuing recession meant that politicians can no longer promise a visionary future of prosperity because they just would not be believed.

So where do the parties stand after Eastleigh. Nick Clegg gets a reprieve and the Coalition remains stable but Eastleigh was an ideal seat for them and they won’t be able to put in that massive effort across the country where their poll ratings remain weak.

 UKIP are on a surge. They have been accused of being a one man band in the shape of leader Nigel Farage, but I thought their Eastleigh candidate, Diane James, was the best of the bunch. Now they face the challenge of the county council elections. What are UKIP’s policies for running Lancashire County Council?

Tory backbench reaction remained muted after coming third, but backbenchers remain unhappy with David Cameron and a flat budget might see a summer of discontent.

Labour didn’t try in Eastleigh putting up a candidate who had made highly offensive remarks about Margaret Thatcher. They are still blamed for the economic mess and need to start fleshing out their proposals for the future more.

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