Having Turkey in the EU would also put a spanner in the works of any further political integration of the EU, which is why Bush, and the more Eurosceptic countries such as the UK and the accession countries, are pro-Turkish membership and why all the Euro-nuts in Belgium are horrified by the idea. Personally I'm against it, because of Turkey's human rights record and because of its relatively corrupt and backward economy. Human rights reform would have to come before membership, or else what is the incentive? We need to keep the standards as high as possible imo.


back to the main question - think that conservatism is deeply ingrained into British culture, so from the polls it seems unlikely that the total Conservative + UKIP vote would fall below about 30%. Even when the Tories were at their most reviled they didn't fall below that. So I would argue that only if UKIP split the vote will the Tories fall below the Lib Dems. The last poll I saw put them only 2 points ahead, but I suspect that when the crunch comes we will see people who now say that they would vote UKIP going back to the Tories for practical reasons.

I would guess that only if UKIP survives will we see the Tories struggle, but I suspect that UKIP may be a flash in the pan. It has all the hallmarks of a populist release of anger - passion and energy combined with a lack of depth and fatal unprofessionalism.

I also suspect that the decline of the Conservatives isn't quite what British politics needs right now. There seems to be some kind of political realignment going on, though its nature isn't clear. What is clear is that neither Labour nor the Lib Dems could represent that large conservative core which still exists. At the moment only the Conservatives can represent the conservatives. British politics, as elsewhere, has long been drawn up as left v right, but, as a guy of 23, I know of very few (none?) of my friends, interested in politics though they may be, who would call themselves socialists or conservatives, or if they did they wouldn't necessarily mean it in the traditional economic sense. I think people are so focused on government integrity that it overrides anything else.

I am just totally rambling now. I'll stop.