Last month’s local election results are a wake-up call for all parties and all levels of government.
Despite UKIP’s average vote being lower than in last year’s county elections, and Labour and the Tories both taking many more extra wards, UKIP nevertheless won 161 seats and a higher share of the vote than either main party in parts of the country as different as South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Essex.
Until the May 22 elections many commentators believed UKIP was primarily taking support from the Tories but traditional Labour sympathisers are also increasingly switching to UKIP.
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