DEMOCRACY is like water in that it finds its own level. When the political parties fail to articulate the grievances of the voters and conspire to maintain the status quo, public opinion will find a way to be heard.

On Sunday the Euro-consensus enforced by a tripartite agreement of the professional politicians and their allies in the media was shattered by a raw and angry expression of popular patriotism and a determination to maintain the national identity — and the nationhood itself — of the United Kingdom.

It has been my pleasure and joy to have worked with the UK Independence Party ever since Roger Knapman, the party leader, and his wife Carolyn approached me aboard a cruise ship gliding over the Mediterranean. A small party, with only three members in the eunuch-like European Parliament, it was clear that the Independence Party was expressing the will of a huge, but neglected, part of the British electorate. It remained only to penetrate the political and media monopoly of the pro-EU establishment to tell UK voters that there was another option.

But this was no easy task. Barred from using radio or television ads, lumped with the racist British National Party and the extremist Green Party as one of the “others” in the national polling, and shut out of all media coverage, it was not easy to bring even the fact of UKIP’s existence to the attention of the average British voter.

Further, the reasons for opposition to the EU spanned a wide range of political sentiment. A horizontal issue, cutting across all areas of British life, the intrusion of Brussels into the domestic life of the UK spurred broad resentment for a variety of reasons. Some opposed the EU because of its inherently undemocratic nature — government by bureaucracy not democracy. Others chaffed at its fiats and regulations. Many failed to see why the UK should give the EU twice as much money as it gets back. Opposition to the euro and the new constitution fueled the fire.

Meanwhile, it was evident that Tony Blair was in trouble and that the Labour Party was falling in the national polls. But the media, focused on Iraq, chalked up his troubles to the chaos in Baghdad rather than the rapid erosion of British sovereignty that was taking place on his watch and with his complicity.

It remained for the UK Independence Party to summarise the case against the EU in a single word: “No”. “No” was a blank slate on which voters could write their own reasons for opposing Brussels. The constraints placed on the UKIP’s campaign by regulations, finances and the national media made it hard to project more than a single-word campaign — but “no” sufficed quite well to express its views.

Once the message was clear, the question remained how to project it. Denied access to media advertising and unable to penetrate the wall of censorship by the Euro-friendly news organisations, the party resorted to billboards animated by its one- word slogan: “No”. The response was electrifying. Suddenly, tens of thousands of frustrated Brits called the Independence Party and rallied to its cause. Nobody had stood up to the European juggernaut before and now that a party was openly demanding withdrawal from Brussels, the British people flocked to its standard.

The resounding affirmation of the UKIP position in the European parliamentary election will likely reshape politics in Britain and on the Continent for the next four or five years. The Conservative Party will no longer be able to straddle the Europe issue, opposing integration while out of power but leading the UK into the Common Market and Maastricht once safely ensconced in Downing Street.

If the Tories are to entertain any realistic hope of attaining power at the next general election they will have to shift their party position and advocate withdrawal from the European Union as it is currently constituted. As their erstwhile leader Margaret Thatcher has pointed out, unless the Tories are willing to pull out, their demand for renegotiation of the EU treaties will never amount to anything.

For its part, Labour in general — and Tony Blair in particular — will have to come to realise that its blue- collar base will not happily assent to the erosion of national sovereignty and that while their party leaders seem to see no real point in preserving a separate United Kingdom, they most assuredly do.

The Liberal Democrats, accustomed to defeat, will likely be the last to respond, just adding the opposition of Independence Party voters to the long list of reasons why they will never take power.

But perhaps the most important impact of the UKIP revolution will be on the press and the media. The election results will open the eyes of the national media, long in the habit of ignoring anti-EU sentiment, and force it to take account of the broad dissatisfaction with the European Union and the political integration it portends. The British media has often treated those who resisted European political integration as racists. But there is nothing remotely racist or even reactionary about the

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