Hold on to your hats, British politics has entered an era of unprecedented volatility.
Our system, designed for two, is now struggling to accommodate four parties. Politics has never been less predictable.
The next Election will turn on what nearly one in four electors who voted UKIP on Thursday do come the national polls.
If they are convinced that it makes little difference whether David Cameron or Ed Miliband is Prime Minister – and keep on backing UKIP – then Cameron is doomed.
The Conservatives can’t win with UKIP taking such large bites out of their right flank.
The Conservatives know that to survive they have to win back these voters. So out goes the old approach of rubbishing UKIP and their supporters. Which is why Cameron was wheeled out to retract his infamous dismissal of UKIP as ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closest racists, mostly’.
‘It is not easy to admit you’re wrong. But it needed to be done,’ one member of the Conservative leadership observed afterwards.
But this shift can’t be just for the cameras. Too many people in Downing Street sneer at UKIP voters, mocking them for their simplistic world view. One senior member of the operation even calls them ‘life’s losers’. It’s an attitude that is as arrogant as it is self-defeating.
The Cameroons need to grasp that you can’t blame the voter. It’ll take more than Cameron minding his Ps and Qs to bring back these lost legions.
One senior Cabinet Minister tells me that the move towards more direct and robust policies needs to be accelerated.
Strain: Both David Cameron, left, and Ed Miliband are under pressure following this week's local election resultsWe’ll see this happening with the Queen’s Speech this week, which will contain an immigration Bill that makes it easier to deport people and limits EU immigrants’ access to the welfare state. There’ll also be tough new initiatives on benefits. As one Secretary of State says: ‘The larder is well stocked with policies to feed this appetite.’
A growing number of Conservative backbenchers are hungry too: many of them share the dietary requirements of UKIP voters. One influential backbencher gleefully remarked to me: ‘It’s the best result we could hope for. A huge wake-up call to Cameron.’
There is a sense among the bulk of MPs that the Prime Minister listens to his own side only when he has to.
A senior backbencher complains that the party hierarchy has ‘allowed voting UKIP to become the only way that the Conservative party can persuade the Conservative leadership to do Conservative things’.
Downing Street is trying to rectify this through the appointment of garrulous Right-winger John Hayes to act as a liaison between the Prime Minister and his own MPs.
But for many, the UKIP route is the most direct. It is this logic that will drive considerable numbers of Tory members to vote UKIP in next year’s European elections.
They’ll do so to push Cameron into taking a tougher position on the EU and the referendum. Even some MPs plan to do this. They joke that a kick in the ballots is the only language that the Cameroons understand.
Miliband is also working on how to appeal to the disillusioned voters casting their ballots for UKIP. But those close to the Labour leader stress that he won’t get into a bidding war on any issue. Their line is that ‘UKIP is a party of protest. Labour is a party of government, in temporary exile.’
UKIP are not the threat to Labour that they are to the Conservatives. Labour can win a majority on a far lower share of the vote than the Conservatives, so they fear a four-party system less.
The problem for Cameron is that the protest party used to be the Liberal Democrats, which drew two thirds of their vote from the Left. But now it is UKIP that draws two thirds of its support – from the Right.
Persuading the country that Cameron is a better bet than Miliband is essential to the Conservatives’ chances in 2015.
But Cameron has to find a way to deal with the UKIP threat, too. The Conservative party will never win outright in a four-party system.
JoJo's first job - fighting fires Jo Johnson, the new Head of Policy for the Conservative party, speaks during at meetingThe arrival of a Johnson in Downing Street was always going to generate a flurry of excitement.
First, there was all the attention on the rise of the Johnson clan – Jo’s brother Boris, of course, is London’s Mayor.
Then there was a row over ‘JoJo’ being another Old Etonian in David Cameron’s top team.
So it must have been a relief for JoJo, who dislikes the limelight almost as much as his brother enjoys it, to actually start working.
Over the past few days, he has held meetings with key political and policy aides.
His job is to connect the policy to the politics.
He is also meant to remedy the current situation where Downing Street is dangerously unaware of what is going on in the rest of government.
During one meeting with Whitehall aides, he asked: ‘What is coming up and what is about to blow up?’
The question drew some bullish answers. For example, Theresa May’s adviser replied: ‘We’ve cut immigration and crime, all while our budget’s been cut.’
The Treasury is now pulling together a dossier of apocalyptic predictions about the consequence of the austerity cuts that have not come to pass.
A presentation by a member of the No 10 press office wouldn’t normally draw much of a crowd. But to the Civil Service’s surprise, a briefing on engagement with ethnic minority media drew huge interest.
Even Government employees from Wales said they would make the trip to London for the occasion and staff had to keep moving the event to larger rooms. It was only when the invitation was shown to a member of Downing Street’s political staff that people realised the cause of the excitement: the talk was billed as being given by Alastair Campbell.
But to the disappointment of many, it was not THAT Alastair Campbell but an unassuming press officer who shares the same name.
However, as one source observed, the number of those wanting to come to see Campbell shows there are an awful lot of people in the bureaucracy pining for the old regime.
On Thursday afternoon, David Cameron said a temporary farewell to his diary secretary, Lara Moreno-Perez, who is heading off on maternity leave.
Moreno-Perez is responsible for determining where Cameron should be at any time of the day, balancing the demands of Government and the need for the Prime Minister to kiss babies on the campaign trail.
He joked at her send-off: ‘Looking after every aspect – including food, drink and sleep – of the life of a needy male is excellent preparation for motherhood.’
