The first time as Priestley, the second as Farage - Common Wealth - UKIP's warning from history

UKIP are not the first 'new' party to achieve a breakthrough on the ragged shirt tails of an unpopular coalition. It happened last time.

In 1942, with the war raging and a "LibLabCon"government running the country a leftist group, under the sponsorship of the Picture Post's owner Edward G. Hulton, challenged the then existing agreement that by-elections would not be fought in war time and managed to win six seats in a row. The Common Wealth party, although of the left, had many characteristics similar to those of UKIP. It was broadly populist and appealed to the egalitarian sentiments of wartime British voters, while seeking to derive political capital out of a coalition government which by its very nature was making compromises to weather the crisis on the continent. Sound familiar?

Initially chaired and effectively led by the writer J.B. Priestley,  rivalry between him and the party's first sitting MP Richard Acland led to tensions and then a split.  The party's success was in a very large part down to the electoral pact but it could not keep up momentum in the post war years as the Coalition was replaced by Atlee's majority government. The Common Wealth party split into factions and eventually many of its members were subsumed into the Labour and Liberal parties.

Perhaps, what we are seeing with UKIP is a rerun of inevitable disenchantment inherent in coalition governments in a country that operates on first past the post. History, after all, does have an unnerving habit of repeating itself. The first time as Priestley, the second time as Farage?