article: First and foremost to the end of the stranglehold on British politics which the two big UK parties have had for so long. British politics is now a national contest between at least four parties - Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and UKIP - and arguably five or more if you add the Greens (who are polling as well as the Lib Dems), the SNP (who are threatening Labour's many former Labour strongholds) not to mention Plaid Cymru and Respect. Not since the emergence of the SDP in the early 1980s - after Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and others broke away from the Labour Party - has politics looked so fluid and unpredictable. What we are seeing now, though, differs fundamentally from what we saw then. UKIP's rise is not - not yet at least - about a public desire to create an alternative party of government. Their rise has been driven more by an anger with "all of the above", with the "Westminster parties" or what UKIP supporters like to call "the LibLabCon". In that sense - even if in no other - there are parallels between the rise of Nigel Farage and Alex Salmond. On the morning after his victory and near-victory before, Nigel Farage talked of holding the balance of power after the next election, of becoming the Minister for Europe having won more Tory seats in the South and Labour seats in the North. How realistic is that? Before giving the reasons why I think Mr Farage might be over-doing things just a tad it's worth pausing to say that so far his brave talk and giddy optimism has proved much more right than any of his critics or, indeed, the pundits. They said UKIP were extremists who only a few would vote for… They said UKIP could only win elections held under Proportional Representation… They said UKIP would never top 30% in a poll… They said Farage's party could only appeal to angry, former Tory blazer wearing Colonels in the south… They were wrong. UKIP have now proved that they can assemble a huge coalition of protest votes from the right, the left and the centre combining people who are angry about the state of the economy and the state of politics not just immigration and Europe. The academics Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin have studied the long term drivers of support to UKIP in their book "Revolt on the Right". They identified three - anger with Europe, anger about immigration and with the political system as a whole. A fifth of all voters shared all three concerns. Around a third shared two of the three. Thus, they conclude, UKIP's base support could be between 20% and the low 30s. Remember that UKIP's first place in the European elections in May was the first time any party other than the Conservatives or Labour had won a national election in 100 years and, contrary to the suggestions that they are a party of the English South, they won a seat in every region as well
summary: It's a breakthrough all right but a breakthrough to what?