2015 election countdown: time to expose Ukip's weaknesses?

In a busy week of politics, one of the best stories was not widely reported. It concerned Ukip and junkets - and you could say it gave the lie to Ukip's pretence to be "the party for those who don't like politicians".

Very simply, Matthew Holehouse, a political correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, reported how he was barred from a fringe meeting at Ukip's party conference by Kirsten Farage, wife of party leader Nigel Farage.

In a suite overlooking Doncaster Racecourse, Madame Farage was helping organise a meeting at which Ukip Members of the European Parliament – of whom there are 24 following their election victory in May – would be "briefed" on how to exploit an EU-funded programme that subsidises constituents' holidays in Brussels and Strasbourg.

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In short, you can claim up to £200 of EU cash if you include in your European holiday a side-trip to either of the centres of the European Parliament. The money can be used to pay for hotel rooms, meals and transport.

So, for instance, if you fancy a short holiday in Alsace-Lorraine, in eastern France, you could knock £200 off the cost of your trip if you agree to spend a night in Strasbourg, go out for a choucroute dinner and pop round to the European Parliament for a quick tour with your friendly MEP.

"Oh dear," said Kirsten Farage when the Telegraph's intrepid reporter arrived at the event. "We didn't really want the press… I'm afraid I'm going to have to send you away."

You bet they didn't want him there. Ukip's entire raison d'etre is to argue that Britain must leave the EU, largely because of its wasteful spending. And yet they are happy to exploit a ridiculous scheme that costs £25 million a year – a scheme you would expect Ukip to be campaigning to scrap rather than endorse.

The European Parliament argues feebly that the scheme "allows voters to see their elected representatives at work regardless of wealth".

Yes, but why would Ukip MEPs want to show off the very democratic process they are intent on destroying?

A spokesman for the party told the Telegraph: "Information trips to Brussels for members of the public are open to and used by every political party."

Yes, but you keep saying you are NOT like every other party!

To the relief of the Tory high command, last night's YouGov poll, conducted after David Cameron's tax cut pledge at the Conservative Party conference, gives the party a one-point lead over Labour for the first time since March 2012.

But they need to get nine percentage points ahead if they are to win a majority in May 2015 and it seems unlikely that Cameron can win back large enough numbers of Ukip defectors with bold new policies and/or hard reasoning in the seven months left before the election.

• The Mole: Tax pledge gives Tories poll lead - but there's a long way to go

As Ukip-watcher Matthew Goodwin argues in a new piece for The Guardian, to the average Ukip member David Cameron is "a symbol of the Oxbridge-educated, socially liberal and financially privileged political class that has pushed Britain in a direction they find abhorrent and betrayed their brand of conservatism… With Cameron in charge, most Ukip voters will not return. It really is that simple."

Cameron has also made the fatal mistake, says Goodwin, of joining in the general ridiculing of Kippers as "gadflies, fruitcakes, clowns and racists" - or, as Boris Johnson joked this week, the sort of people who end up in A&E because they've tried to have sex with their vacuum cleaners.

The Conservatives need to stop attacking their fleeing supporters and do more to expose the ridiculous double standards and pretensions of the Ukip hierarchy and its candidates.

Look at John Bickley, the Ukip candidate in the 9 October by-election in Heywood and Middleton. He is representing a get-out-of-Europe party having happily taken £95,000 of EU cash to prop up his software company Genemation, something the Manchester Evening News reported when Bickley stood previously – and unsuccessfully – in the Wythenshawe and Sale East by-election earlier this year.

And what about William Cash Junior, son of the veteran Tory MP Bill Cash? He is Ukip's latest headline-grabbing recruit, taking up the appointment of "heritage spokesman" because he doesn't want a solar park development spoiling the countryside near his Shropshire manor, Upton Cressett Hall. He also hopes to stand for Ukip in Warwickshire in May.

William Jnr runs Spear's, an invitation-only subscription magazine for "high net worth individuals" who have £5 million or so to invest. It is ludicrous to suppose he has any appeal to the sort of Tories who are tempted to vote Ukip, described by Ken Clarke this week as "the disappointed elderly… grumpy old men … people who've had a bit of a hard time in life and think the country is going to the dogs…"

William's Tory father Bill told the Daily Telegraph he "completely disassociates" himself from his son, adding: “He has never taken any interest in politics or what I have been doing in the past 30 years… I know he has got a thing about the heritage, whatever that is supposed to mean."

Such is the hype surrounding Farage and Ukip that you'd be forgiven for thinking that the party stood to win dozens of seats at the May general election. Actually, because of our first-past-the-post system, the expert view is generally four seats maximum. Peter Kellner of YouGov once mentioned ten, but I have seen no higher estimate.

The only reason Ukip performed so well in Europe this May was because the EU Parliament uses a system of proportional representation and so few supporters of other parties turned out to vote.

Even before their headline-grabbing victory in May, two parallel myths were growing - that increasing numbers of British people were in favour of leaving Europe and that increasing numbers were coming to love Farage's style and Ukip's message.

Wrong on both counts. Polling by YouGov, presented on 2 June, a week after the EU election, showed that while Ukip's vote share was up from 16.5 per cent in the 2009 European election to 27.5 per cent in 2014, the number of people liking Ukip had fallen from 28 per cent to 22 per cent, and the share of people feeling negative about the party had risen from 37 to 53 per cent.

"How can Ukip win 27 per cent of the vote and yet be regarded positively by only 22 per cent of the electorate?" asked YouGov president Peter Kellner. "Part of the answer is that only one elector in three turned out to vote … Ukip won the support of just nine per cent of the electorate."

Overall, Kellner concluded, Ukip had "not so much won new friends as polarised public opinion".

YouGov's polling also exploded the myth that more and more Britons want to leave the EU completely. Asked in 2009 whether we should quit, 40 per cent agreed and 38 per cent disagreed; by this year, that had changed to only 35 per cent agreeing while 43 per cent disagreed.

However, more people did want Brussels to do less – taking the David Cameron position.

So, Farage and his party are not as likeable as the media would have us think, nor is their core policy – quitting Europe – as popular. They won so many seats in the EU election by default and will not do nearly as well in the general election.

But the damage they can do to the Tories by stealing votes in Tory/Labour marginal seats is potentially fatal.

Ridiculing ordinary Tory voters defecting to Ukip is no answer. Ridiculing Farage and his fellow candidates is a better option: who knows, get enough people onside and we could see tactical voting to keep Ukip out in May 2015.