The prime minister is still reluctant to fight Ukip head-on, says Dan Hodges in The Daily Telegraph. His latest plan “to limit EU migration by capping the number of national insurance numbers distributed to foreign nationals” just shows that David Cameron “has chosen to dance with Nigel Farage”.
Cameron’s strategy in the upcoming Rochester by-election will be “an attempt to neutralise Farage’s party” by imitation rather than taking the fight to Ukip. “Sooner or later Cameron is going to have to make a choice. Either he will have to confront Ukip head on, or he will have to pack his bags and move out of Downing Street.”
“Cameron has been feeding Ukip for nearly two years in the hope its support can be assuaged,” says Patrick Wintour in The Guardian. He “first tried to kill Ukip in January 2013, in his Bloomberg speech offering an EU referendum by 2017”.
This summer he “announced plans to halve the time that European migrants can claim British benefits”. But the net effect of all these gestures “has only served to legitimise Ukip”.
Regardless of Ukip’s focus on immigration, “polls show that immigration is a comparatively minor issue for voters when it comes to casting their votes”, claims Ian Birrell in the FT.
Despite this, “instead of challenging an outmoded world view and confronting empty rhetoric, [Farage’s] opponents pander to prejudice and fail to defend British success stories”.
It’s worth noting that Ukip performed poorly in recent elections in London – probably because “the city is younger, better educated and more diverse than the rest of Britain”. Perhaps, Birrell suggests, London should have its own political party that “proudly champions cosmopolitan values”.
Meanwhile, many voters don’t believe Cameron when he strikes eurosceptic poses, according to Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan in The Spectator. “People aren’t impressed by the PM being rude about José Manual Barroso when, at the same time, they see him ordering his MPs to vote to opt back into the illiberal European arrest warrant.”
Part of the problem for the Conservative party is that “since the mid-1990s, our rhetoric has been increasingly eurosceptic, but we have gone along with a more and more centralised EU”.
What’s more, “Downing Street is again in danger of talking up expectations it will struggle to meet”, says Rachel Sylvester in The Times. For example, Croatia is often cited as an example of a country that requires other EU citizens to have a work permit – but this is a temporary measure agreed when Croatia joined the EU.
Cameron may also struggle to win concessions from other EU leaders in any renegotiation, says Sylvester. “Britain will need allies… and is losing them fast.” Indeed, “there is a growing mood in other European capitals that Cameron is more focused on party management… than on keeping Britain in a reshaped EU”.
While Cameron may not be bluffing, “neither are other countries and the prime minister, outnumbered, could find that he has a losing hand”.